by Rob Binkley
When the vendor bent down to pick up his watches, he saw Brian and snapped. With one swipe of his hand, he cleared his entire booth of watches, shouting and stomping on his own goods. This was the first time we had witnessed a native lose his mind.
Our Indonesian adventure had definitely come to an end. We walked over to the travel office and booked our flight to Australia.
After a month on the island, we had the rest of the night to relax and lay low before our flight the next morning. We splurged on good Indonesian pizza; it was terrible but we loved it. We had officially lowered our standards so “what didn’t kill us was amazing.”
Over dinner, we heard Heinrich from Sweden got knocked out during a bar brawl a few nights back. Felix said, “I guess the natural progression of absolute madness is the world around you goes ‘mannie’ too.”
I thought about it. “That’s a profound statement.” Brian tried to laugh but he was too rattled. He kept looking over his shoulder all night.
Despite the bumps and bruises, we enjoyed going crazy in Indonesia: the sunburns, the friendship, the hangovers, the unadulterated debauchery, getting beaten by a tiny gang, tied up by a kinky Swede, menaced by a gang of hookers, licking frogs, jumping chickens, making sexy with Brazilian girls, the dog attacks—we even enjoyed the boat from hell now that it was over.
It seems a lot of people travel to places, find what they like, then do it a million times. This is a backwards attitude, if you ask me. To enjoy every country for what it has to offer, you have to free your mind from all preconceptions, “be here now” and “go with the flow.” These are the keys to a good travel experience. But what the hell do I know.
After dinner we went back to our guesthouse and listened to Elvis on the radio I lifted from Inga in our exodus from Palm Gardens. We reflected on our journey and anticipated what was to come. Brian blew out our lucky candle and let the tree frogs serenade us to sleep. “Get ready, Rob. Tomorrow may hold the greatest surprise so far.”
I closed my eyes and envisioned Australia. “Can’t wait to see what happens next.”
3
Getting Down Undah
WE KEPT PUSHING OUR GONZO adventure to the limit.
Our dreams of escaping the tsunami of unbridled capitalism in America had led us into a hurricane of debauchery overseas. “This is not how I envisioned this trip turning out,” I said as we boarded our flight out of Bali.
“Don’t worry.” Brian smiled. “We still have eleven months to turn it all around.”
After nearly a month exploring Indonesia, we departed for Singapore on our way to Australia. I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched the islands vanish beneath us. Brian was already wearing his sleep mask. He didn’t look back, he just mumbled, “We’re lucky they let us leave with our limbs.”
“I don’t think I learned a damn thing from that place.”
“I learned never try to outdrink a three hundred pound Swede with a suitcase full of sex toys.”
“No, I mean real stuff, personal renaissance stuff.”
“Oh, that … Did you really think we’d leave California and suddenly be magically healed of all our fatal flaws?” Brian asked.
“I dunno. Maybe.”
“At least while you’re living the question, you’re living like your heroes.”
“What the hell does that mean? Living what question?”
“The meaning of life, dumbass. You know, Dr. Thompson and Captain Kerouac would have gone on an epic drunk if they were in our flip-flops.”
“But they were writing about it. I barely remember half of our gonzo exploits.”
“That’s on you. Do some memory exercises, brother. I’m going to watch the inside of my eye flaps.”
Brian went to sleep and I took out my journal and started to write my first complete sentence of the entire trip: In the end, Indonesia was a lovely place, full of two hundred and fifty million small, friendly people with a few insane ones (Brian did get beaten and nearly raped), with many beautiful islands full of traveling lunatics…. But it was time to go.
Then my pen ran out of ink. Still, it was a start.
Our flight took us to Singapore, where we had another brief layover. Since it was our travel hub, we wanted to explore it during our short stays. Our Canadian friend Eric, who watched monkeys screw for a living, picked us up from the airport and took us to a food bazaar to try the Singaporean cuisine, which I quickly dubbed the “Best in Asia” before even visiting the other countries. We devoured spicy swordfish, squid omelets, and Tiger Beer, then went back to the airport to catch our plane to Sydney.
On our flight over the Indian Ocean, I played Nintendo golf while Brian snored incessantly. Somehow Brian had talked us into first class again. He was good for something. Seven hours later, we landed in Sydney.
Brian and I didn’t know much about Australia other than what we’d learned from repeated viewings of Crocodile Dundee and the traveling Aussies we met on the road. From our encounters, they all seemed to be fun-loving and full of wanderlust. The ones we partied with were always quick with a laugh and had wonderfully entertaining drinking problems. We always seemed to fit right in with them.
Besides their charming alcoholism, all the Aussies I knew were constantly traveling, which at first made me think their homeland wasn’t all that great but I would soon discover Australia is a lot of fun—too much fun. It’s beautiful, dangerous, wild, and free—kind of like Texas meets California meets New Orleans. The only problem is, Australia is so far away from the rest of the Western world I couldn’t imagine myself living here, which makes sense since it was originally founded as a British penal colony, like a giant Alcatraz.
Now that Brian and I were finally here, we were ready to explore their turf like the Aussies did the world—with reckless abandon. We found a traveler’s kiosk in the airport that was set up for backpackers like us, then headed for the tourist mecca Bondi Beach, a few miles from Sydney, where we shacked up in the thick of things at the reasonably priced Hotel Biltmore, right on the beach.
We settled in, then did a half-ass jog along the beach. The scenery was jaw-dropping. Later we hung out on the beach all day and worked on our color, which was coming along nicely. Brian pointed out Bondi Beach had an underwater shark net; he was interested in the marine life. He was using someone’s binoculars to see if he could spot pods of whales or the warm water fairy penguins that sometimes swam close to shore among the many surfers.
After a while, I noticed his gaze drifted to all the bikinis around us, which were more appealing to his eye.
That night Felix took us to the Bondi Beach Hotel to “go mad” again. Later, we found a small casino where Brian won two hundred Aussie bucks, which we blew on expensive shots of Louis XIII cognac. After way too much money won, lost, and spent—the drinks proved more expensive in a first-world country no matter what we ordered—we cursed our high tolerances and fled back to our hotel to drink the cheap hooch we had stashed in our rooms.
The next day, Felix took us to a secluded beach where we spent the day jumping off ridiculously high cliffs into shark-infested waters. Before our first jump, I was gripped by sheer terror.
“You know, Felix … I noticed some of the other beaches have shark nets to keep the sharks away. But not here.” He just laughed and jumped into the sea, giving off a crazed Mohican yelp. It took two seconds for Brian to follow suit, “See you in the emergency roooooooooooooooooom!” Splash! Splash! They both popped up laughing, then mocked me until I jumped in, too.
On our way home, we magically found two unopened bags of marijuana; the goddess of travel was finally smiling on us. Brian was elated, “Dude, high times! We’re the lucky strollers.”
I was less enthusiastic. “Stay cool, this could be some kind of Aussie sting operation.”
Brian agreed. “Right …. No more Ingas.” We crouched behind some shrubs and waited.
“You wankers been watching too many Scorsese movies,” Felix said, then he walked over and picked
up the bags and speedwalked away. Brian and I looked at each other. “Hard to argue with that.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon high, stumbling around Bondi Beach laughing at how trendy it was. It was a surreal contrast from a week before in the deserted jungle terrain of Komodo Island, where our idea of fun was leaping dragons. We sat down at an outside café and watched all the pretty girls walk by.
“Australian girls win the world contest for best-looking legs,” Brian observed.
“Hands down,” I said.
Felix piped in. “I prefer the California birds.”
“You always want what you can’t have,” I mused, like it was some kind of original thought.
“You should write that proverb in your journal.” Brian was mocking me for writing stuff down now.
“Better watch out. This journal’s gonna be Exhibit A when they finally lock you up.”
“It won’t be admissible. You’re an unreliable narrator.”
“Didn’t know you were a writer, mate.” Felix seemed impressed.
“He’s not—but he patterns his life after Charles Bukowski.”
“Dr. Thompson, man. Hunter is my god…. C’mon, let’s go get weird.”
That night, inspired by all the gonzo writer talk, Brian and I reverted back to our old habits. We ran amok at Kings Cross; the locals call it “The Cross” even though there was nothing remotely holy about it. It was dominated by bars and strip clubs. We danced all night at the Soho Bar with two girls named Heidi and Amy who were going to a wedding the next day. I tried to talk them into letting us tag along, but couldn’t convince them we’d act our age.
“We respect holy unions!”
Brian chimed in, “He’s lying.”
We ended the night getting kicked out of bars thanks to Felix, who couldn’t handle his liquor. When it was near dawn, I said goodbye to Heidi and Amy and took a cab back to our hotel. I lost Felix and Brian somewhere along the way.
I woke at three o’clock in the afternoon the next day with a sour anvil on my head. I got up and walked around Bondi Beach with a hangover and tried to soak in the beauty. It was a small beach community with little houses on cliffs that overlooked the ocean. Charming … I needed to sit down.
I slinked into a café and had a cappuccino. I sat in a slumped stupor watching all the beautiful legs walk by until sunset. Brian was still passed out back in our room; he missed the entire day. I tried to write in my journal but it hurt. All I could manage was one sentence: “I’m turning into a drunken vampire….”
The next morning, we were once again down at Bondi Beach licking our wounds from a two-day-old hangover.
Brian was semi-conscious with his head on the table. “We gotta keep movin’,” I moaned. “We’ve been gone a month and half and have only been to two countries? If we don’t see at least twenty countries this year we are total losers…. What is wrong with us?”
Brian tried to lift his head off the table but couldn’t. “We both know the answer to that question.”
“I need to find sweet Utopia,” I mumbled to myself.
Brian had no idea what I was talking about. “Is that a strip club?”
I’d never really talked about it with Brian, but I’d been dreaming of Utopia my entire life. Call it what you want—Utopia, Xanadu, Oz, heaven on earth—I yearned to live someplace free from all the trappings of the modern world.
Does it exist? Did it ever?
I have a feeling it did and still does, somewhere, but where? Maybe I was just naive, but I didn’t think it was such a crazy idea. I wasn’t looking for some easy way out of reality—I didn’t want to bask in hedonism in some land of milk and honey where beautiful women fed me grapes all day (though that would be nice). I just wanted a purer way of life, free from all the fake plastic trees and fake plastic people that seemed to have spread everywhere, like some vapid virus. Maybe that’s why I drank so much. I’ve been caught up dreaming some outdated hippie fantasy.
When I told all this to Brian, his only response was, “And look what happened to the hippies—they’re all driving Volvos.”
I was lost in an existential haze and needed guidance, so I dug out my old friend: the Lonely Planet travel book. It recommended we flee the city on a famous backpacker bus called the Oz Experience.
I perked up, “Oz … That sounds like heaven.” After paying a fixed price, the Oz Experience would take us north up the eastern coast from Sydney to Cairns for around two hundred dollars. The best part was we could get off wherever and whenever we wanted. This was a brilliant concept for any backpacker.
Brian and I staggered down to the Oz office to lock up our transportation. I bought us the entire eastern Australia option for two hundred and fifty dollars. After I got the tickets, I found Brian outside. He was still staring into the void.
“God is dead …. God is dead, Rob. What chance do we really have?”
“Dude, snap out of it! They said we can jump on and off. And get this, you can drink on the bus!”
Brian turned to me like a lobotomy patient, then he smiled like he’d been awakened by the devil. “Sounds like … the best bus ever.”
The night before we left Sydney, Felix got all his “friends” together and threw us a going away bash. My first mistake of the evening was drinking half a bottle of Bundaberg Rum before we even left the hotel. Bundaberg is fifty-seven percent alcohol and will sting you in the butt, especially when you chug half a bottle in two hours.
Brian said, “You drink like a combination between Bluto Blutarsky and Charles Bukowski. Your new drunk nickname is Blutarsky Bukowski.”
I just looked at him. “I have no response to that.”
The sun went down and we met up with Felix’s “friends” down on Oxford Street at the old Paddington Inn, one of our favorite haunts. I walked in glowing from the Bundaberg, and had the strangest conversation with an attractive girl named Pippa, who told me she liked to get “choked out” when she was having sex.
I asked Pippa—whose drunk nickname became “Choke Out”—all sorts of questions. “What happens if he does too good of a job?” When Pippa finally ended our conversation, I said, “Nice to meet you. Maybe someday I can choke you!”
She said, “That would be great.” I almost ran after her, but decided against it.
Later, I met a girl named Missy, who was extremely drunk and belligerent. By this time I was hammered, so I proceeded to provoke her belligerence with a stick. I asked Missy provocative questions, and she started throwing drinks on me. I thought this was awesome. Her friends, however, were horrified at her behavior.
So for fun, whenever her nice friend wasn’t listening, I’d whisper obnoxious obscenities in Missy’s ear and she would erupt like clockwork. Then her nice friend would come over to yell at her again while I sat there innocently. All this happened while a cockatoo was perched on my shoulder.
This asshole game I was playing reminded me of an old high school friend who liked to get girls very angry with him, then he’d try and turn things around and sleep with them. I was amazed at what he was capable of; he was more successful than not.
He later became a psychiatrist.
After the Inn, we went to a nightclub and it got ugly. This is when I officially began to regret taking Felix under my soused wing. On the outside he seemed to be one of those classic Beat characters, a soiled angel with a broken heart and a shady past, which was intriguing at first. When we met him he was mourning his lost love, so I thought, why not let him tag along?
Turned out Felix was a little more broken than we thought he was. The first sign of trouble was he kept getting us kicked out of everywhere. The second sign was he kept running into “frenemies” who wanted him to pay for past delinquent debts, which he assured us were figments of their imaginations.
Felix kept getting booted out of bar after bar. The night was turning into a creep show of skeletons from Felix’s closet, all of them screaming, “Break your pawkets,” a phrase they must have picked up f
rom American gangster rappers. When Felix did “break his pockets,” all he had in his waterproof Ocean Pacific wallet was twenty-eight Aussie bucks, a condom, and a picture of his lost girl, which didn’t get him far.
His antics had me drinking heavily. Every time a new frenemy came out of the woodwork, I pretended I didn’t know Felix. Brian had no such decorum. He just stood there pointing and hooting, “I’ve never seen one guy’s closet full of skeletons come back to haunt him all in one night!”
The Bundaberg helped me black out the rest of the unpleasantness. When I regained consciousness, I was back in my room—I thought. Then through the darkness I heard a strange voice in my ear, “You Yanks are the best lovers.” Even in my blurred state, I found that quite odd. I mean, this mystery woman’s voice sounded a bit too gravely for my usual taste. Maybe she’s a smoker. Then I felt something touch my crotchal region. It was a hand, a bit too calloused and large for a woman.
A cold chill came over me as I opened my eyes into my new reality. I was in bed with no woman. It was some dude on top of me. I heard myself screaming like I was being screwed by the devil, “Get off!”
Brian woke up screaming, “Inga!! Intruder!” He began wildly swinging a walking stick. Then he flipped on the lights. We saw someone rolling around mummified in my sheets. It was our intruder alright, but it was no Inga.
It was Felix on the ground, giving me the death stare.
Who am I? What was in that Bundaberg??
Felix didn’t say a word; he just dashed out of the room into the night wrapped only in a sheet, leaving his empty Ocean Pacific wallet behind. Brian eventually stopped swinging the walking stick, went to the open door, and watched Felix run off into the distance.
He quietly closed the door and sat back down on the bed. “You don’t see that every day.”
“He was trying to steal third base when I woke up!”
Brian smiled. “Oh I’d say he stole it clean.”