So how was I going to get to a guy like that? Call him – what? Wonder Boy? Mr Ice? King of the Ice Holes? We were just starting this little jaunt to what we hoped would be unexplored sections of caves in northern Thailand, and I had no ammunition with which to rankle Will. This was an intolerable situation. Why should he escape daily degradation just because he happened to be a talented and decent human being? If I was going to aggravate Will, for the good of all, I needed something maddening, some nickname designed to generate an ongoing annoyance. But what?
The answer came some hours after our party landed in Chiang Mai. We had taken a cab from the airport to a small hotel and now, somehow, the cab driver had become infuriated and was screaming at my friend Will Gadd.
‘I love a car’, the driver spluttered. ‘You love a car.’ The man’s voice rose to a shriek. ‘You wouldn’t do that to your own car.’
It is my experience that, in Thailand, people generally avoid angry confrontations. You have to do something tremendously insulting or appallingly disrespectful to drive your average Thai into such a spittle-spewing rage.
‘I’m very sorry’, Will said. ‘I didn’t know.’
But everybody in Thailand knows. I knew. What Will had just done was, by the driver’s standards, unforgivable. The cabbie now assumed he was addressing a disrespectful liar. ‘Really,’ Will said, more than a bit confused, ‘really, I apologise.’
He had no idea what he’d done. I watched carefully. It was possible I could get something out of this.
The driver was not mollified, not even a little bit. A big tip didn’t help much. This Thai gentleman stood next to his car, on guard, protecting his vehicle from the barbarian, and continued to mutter about Will’s questionable ancestry, his dearth of common courtesy, his severely limited intelligence.
We gathered up our bags and made our way in to the little hotel where we were staying for the night.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ Will asked, when we were safely in the lobby and the cab driver had left in a squeal of burning rubber.
‘It’s a bottom-of-the-foot thing’, I said. ‘It’s considered disrespectful to show someone the bottom of your feet here.’
‘I didn’t show him my feet.’
‘You did worse’, I said. Something good was going to come out of this, I knew; something I could use as annoyance ammunition.
Tomorrow we would rent cars and drive several hundred miles to the west to explore those caves in the hill country. We were carrying cave gear, several different kinds of backpacks, and clothes. Will, who was making a video of the trip, had brought along a lot of delicate camera and sound gear. When the taxi had dropped us at the hotel, we’d off-loaded that gear, putting most of the equipment on the pavement. Will had grabbed the last of his paraphernalia and his arms were full. He’d turned from the empty cab and closed the back door with his foot. This was the action that had thrown the cab driver into a rage.
‘It was about closing the door?’ Will asked when I told him what he’d done. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘I’m not.’
‘He asked if I did that at home. I do it all the time.’
‘So do I.’
‘So what’s this foot thing all about?’
‘I don’t know’, I said. ‘But it happens in India, too. I have a theory about it, though.’
‘Tell me.’
‘Ah, it’s sorta disgusting. You don’t want to know.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I could be all wrong.’
‘Listen,’ Will said in a menacing Clint Eastwood sort of whisper, ‘tell me or I can’t be responsible for any violence that may occur.’
‘Okay.’ I paused, trying to formulate a delicate explication. ‘You know what a lot of the toilets are like in this part of the world, right?’ They are mere holes in concrete or wooden flooring. There are usually two ribbed rectangles on either side of the hole where the feet are placed. Then one squats over the hole and performs the necessities in question. The ribbed flooring is there because not everyone is entirely accurate and the corrugations prevent slips on the disagreeable material which is often spread on the floor itself, and caked in the concrete ribbing where the feet go. It is for this reason that you really don’t want to spend a lot of time examining the soles of someone’s feet or shoes.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘that’s what I think. I’m not sure people here would explain it that way. I think it’s just something they grow up with. Bottoms of the feet are disgusting to people here.’
‘Ah,’ Will said, ‘so when I touched that guy’s car with the bottom of my foot, he thought…’
‘That’s exactly what he thought’, I said, and Will’s annoyance name for the entire expedition popped into my head, unbidden. I felt the need to use it immediately. ‘I mean, I think you really have to learn to be a little bit more culturally sensitive, Faeces Foot.’
REAL COWBOYS WEAR POLKA DOTS
JUDY TIERNEY
Judy Tierney took a year-long sabbatical from corporate America to travel through Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand. Her current work as a freelance consultant allows her the flexibility to continue to explore and write about her adventures. Her work has appeared in Backpacker magazine, the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post, the Atlanta Journal Constitution and on www.travelerstales.com. A Texas native, she now resides in San Francisco.
‘I reckon we oughta get a move on’, Jeff said, finishing the last few bites of his three-alarm tacos – a mixture of scrambled eggs, potatoes, cheese, jalapenos and chipotle sauce wrapped in flour tortillas. Back at home in San Francisco Jeff started the day with sourdough toast and jam, but he casually wiped his eyes and nose with a napkin as if he were used to eating peppers for breakfast. He emptied his glass of water in one big gulp and then reached across the table for mine.
As we left Austin’s Magnolia Café, Jeff waved at our bighaired, blonde waitress.
‘Thank ya’, darling”, he called out in the Texas drawl he’d been practising ever since I’d invited him home with me for the holidays.
I thought Jeff, a California-born and -bred Berkeley grad, would love Austin’s eclectic mix of herbal medicine shops, antique stores and taco stands along South Congress Avenue. But as we walked past the funky boutiques, Jeff wouldn’t stop to browse. He had one mission on his mind. Four blocks down, a six-foot replica of a red Justin boot standing on a wood-shingled roof marked the spot he was seeking.
Jeff pushed open the glass door of Allen’s Boots. Inside, the aroma of leather and a pint-sized sales girl named Amber greeted us.
‘How y’all doin’?’ she welcomed us in a voice that was larger than her four-foot, ten-inch frame. Amber’s chestnut pony tail swayed from side to side as she walked towards us. She wore a Western-style button-down plaid shirt and a smile bigger and brighter than her Texas-sized belt buckle emblazoned with two shimmering silver hearts engraved with roses.
Jeff sensed he had found an expert.
‘Ya reckon ya could rustle me up some boots here?’ he asked her.
‘Yep! We’ve got ‘em all – crocodile, elephant, goat, stingray, you name it’, she said. ‘The ostrich is my favourite.’
‘Ostrich?’ Jeff replied in disbelief. ‘What do those look like?’
Nodding at her feet, Amber showed off black cherry cowboy boots emerging from painted-on Wranglers. Small bumps covered the surface.
Amber swung her foot up on a wooden bench so we could get a closer look. ‘See those dots?’ she said. ‘Those are where they pulled out the feathers!’
We followed Amber past racks of fringed suede jackets, chaps and thick cowhide belts, and Jeff’s eyes grew wide as he stared at aisles upon aisles of cowboy boots. Amber escorted us to the area with his particular size, where wooden shelves were stacked high with every style and colour of boots imaginable. He turned directly to Amber.
‘Which do you recommend?’ he asked.
Even though I grew up in Fort Wo
rth and Dallas, I’d lived in New York and San Francisco for the past fifteen years. I no longer even owned a pair of boots and was no match for the twentyish Amber, who looked like she could ride the range with the best of them.
Amber sized up Jeff in his silk Nordstrom sweater, tidy jeans and loafers, and pulled one of the most expensive pairs off the shelf, a pair of shiny black full-quill ostrich Lucchese boots. ‘One of our best boots, all handmade and hand-stitched.’
Jeff studied the hide. It was as exquisite as the leather of the dozen-or-so pairs of fine Italian dress shoes in his closet at home. ‘But these look awful fancy’, Jeff replied, reluctantly slipping them on.
I thought they were a perfect fit for Jeff’s metrosexual lifestyle, but apparently the city-slicker look was not the one he had in mind.
Swaggering down the aisle, thumbs stuck into his front pockets and jeans tucked into the boots, Jeff looked into the mirror. ‘I reckon I oughta go round up the wagons’, he said in his best John Wayne imitation. He studied his reflection for a moment, and then shook his head.
‘The Duke wouldn’t be caught dead in boots this pristine’, he said to me, and then explained to Amber, ‘I’m looking for something a little more rugged.’
Amber pulled down a pair of golden-hued Tony Lama lizards, while I hummed along to Garth Brooks’ ‘I’ve Got Friends in Low Places’ playing on the store’s radio. The song transported me back to high school and college, riding in pick-ups with guys in ten-gallon hats, line-dancing at the bars in the Fort Worth stockyards, and watching George Strait and my other favourite country-and-western singers perform at the annual livestock show and rodeo.
‘These are real nice, but you gotta treat the scales every month with reptile conditioner or they’ll dry out’, she explained to Jeff. ‘It’s kinda a pain.’
Jeff tried them on, but wasn’t sure about the colour. He looked at the tag. ‘Buttercup?’ he said, turning up his nose. ‘Do you think Jessie James would wear buttercup boots?’
‘I don’t think anyone at your yoga studio is going to know that the colour is called buttercup’, I said.
Amber giggled. Jeff looked at me and rolled his eyes.
He turned back to Amber. ‘Don’t you have anything that looks more like, well, a cowboy boot?’
While Amber plucked boots from the shelf, Jeff seemed to drift off into a daydream. I imagined him musing about the days when cowboys drove cattle herds along the Chisholm Trail, stopping at ‘Big Daddy Joe’ Justin’s shop in Spanish Fort, Texas, to get fitted for custom boots that would protect against snakes, snow, cacti and other hazards of the range.
Amber handed Jeff a pair of camel-coloured ropers. They were simple and casual, and made of calf skin. I’d dated Jeff for eighteen months and I knew immediately that they lacked the flair that the exotic skins exuded and that he preferred.
But Jeff examined them and pretended to take a liking to their practicality.
He turned and sauntered down the aisle, talking in a Texas twang. ‘Well, I guess these oughta be jes fine for workin’ out on the ranch.’
‘I’m sure they would,’ I interjected, ‘but you’re a software engineer, remember?’
‘They’re too big, anyway’, he said, brushing off my sarcasm. ‘My heel slips when I walk.’
‘You know, boots don’t fit like regular shoes’, Amber explained. ‘They’re supposed to slip about an inch. Plus, once you buy a pair, you’ll be wearing a thicker sock, not like that fancy one you got on now.’
Jeff tried on the smaller size anyway, and said they were too tight.
‘Trust me. They’re gonna feel weird at first’, Amber explained. ‘But once you break ‘em in, you’ll love ‘em. I work all day in mine. I won’t wear anything else.’
Jeff pressed on for the perfect pair.
Amber showed him more styles. ‘These are good for two-stepping’, she explained, holding up a pair with a low heel and a short shaft.
A scary image of Jeff in a cowboy bar, wearing tight jeans and swigging whisky, popped into my mind.
‘Do you have a pair that’s good for wine bars and ethnic restaurants?’ I asked.
Jeff ignored me and asked Amber to show him more boots.
I was amazed at Amber’s patience. She must be used to this, I thought. I wondered how many tourists visited the store thinking that a pair of boots would instantly turn them into a cowboy. Was buying boots in Texas like buying sarongs in Thailand? Did tourists think that by donning a pair of boots they’d immediately fit right in with the locals?
Jeff contemplated some pythons, but when another customer with a pierced eyebrow and a tint of blue hair walked by in a similar pair, Jeff decided he didn’t look like an ass-kicker in them. He wanted boots that would make Clint Eastwood proud.
Feeling a bit guilty and noticing Jeff’s increasingly short tone, I told him how good he’d looked in the original pair he’d tried on.
‘Boots are so mainstream these days that people wear them for just about anything’, I told him. ‘Those ostrich boots look like a pair JR Ewing might wear to his office in downtown Dallas.’
‘I don’t want to look like a cowboy wannabe’, he told me.
Amber wrinkled her nose. ‘All the pairs you’ve tried on look great’, she agreed. ‘Why don’t ya just pick one?’
‘Slow down thar little filly’, he said, holding up another pair – chocolate-coloured kangaroo skins this time.
‘Are these any good?’ he asked.
‘I told ya. They’re all good’, Amber replied. ‘Well, any of ‘em except them roach killers.’ She gestured to a pair of boots with extremely pointy toes and twisted her foot on the rug as if squashing a humongous bug. ‘We call those Yankee boots.’
All Jeff wanted was to look like a real cowboy.
Feeling confident with his boot education, Jeff eyed a pair of bluish grey elephant skins, with a unique dark streak across one of the toes. ‘This must be the natural colouring of the hide’, he ventured.
Amber rubbed her fingers on the sticky stain. ‘No. I think some kid wiped a sucker across it.’
I sat back among the pile of rejected boots strewn along the aisle – shark, python, eel, American buffalo and caiman. In the last hour and a half, Jeff had tried on practically every pair in his size. He’d tried on Dan Post, Tony Lama, Nocona, Justin and Lucchese. He’d tried them in plain black, tan, peanut brittle, almond, cognac, denim and buttercup.
Alan Jackson crooned ‘Way Down Yonder on the Chattahoochee’ on the radio while Jeff imitated John Wayne in the mirror. Amber whispered to me, asking what else she could do to help him make a decision.
Jeff overheard and tried once again to explain his perspective. ‘I don’t look like I’m going out to rope cattle in those polka dot ones.’
‘They’re not polka dots, they’re ostrich!’ Amber shot back, exasperated. ‘And our other sales rep Dale ropes cattle. Those are exactly the ones he wears.’
Jeff didn’t know what to say.
‘I can throw some mud on them if that’ll make you feel better’, she said.
‘I think I just need a little time to find the perfect pair’, he said as he put his loafers back on.
I took Amber aside and told her we’d probably be back the next day. ‘He’s a little overwhelmed. It’s his first time in Texas.’
‘Well, thank y’all for coming in.’ The worn-out Amber started to walk us to the door, but to our surprise, Jeff wasn’t ready to leave.
‘Hold on thar lil lady’, he spoke in the best Western drawl he could muster. ‘Ain’t ya’ gonna show this cowboy some Stetsons?’
YOU AIN’T SEEN NUTHIN’ YET
SEAN CONDON
Sean Condon is the author of three travelogues, Sean & David’s Long Drive, Drive Thru America and My ’Dam Life, as well as the novel Film and the humour collection The Secret of Success is a Secret. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.
‘You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!’ I supposed that was true enough – we
were just a few miles out of the station in Springfield, Massachusetts, on a highway heading towards Vermont – and we hadn’t seen anything you could really call spectacular. ‘Don’t even bother looking out the window, ‘cause you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!’ This was my Uncle Bill, behind the wheel, giving the orders, telling me what I hadn’t seen. What I had not seen so far was a large, crystal-blue lake, lots of trees and the occasional majestic hill with an exclusive girls’ school on top – the usual stuff you don’t see just outside many small cities in northeast America. The thing was, I’d just come from a week in Manhattan, and I liked what I wasn’t seeing. It seemed an eternity since I’d been surrounded by anything other than snarling traffic, looming skyscrapers and impenetrable clubs with majestic girls inside.
A few minutes after we crossed the state line into Vermont, the Green Mountain State, Uncle Bill asked, ‘What do you see out there now?’
‘Umm… more trees?’ I suggested. ‘I don’t know what sort, but they’re very nice.’
‘And what don’t you see?’
‘Oh not this again, please. I’ve already adjusted to seeing things.’
‘Come on – what’s not there?’
‘Dolphins’, I said. ‘I haven’t seen a single dolphin since I got here. No porpoise, either.’
By the Seat of My Pants Page 9
