by Rob Binkley
I jumped into the fray, yelling, “Everyone calm down! I’m responsible for these boys!” After a few seconds, the fighting stopped. Then Brian ruined the peace by leaping up and tackling the biggest bouncer, which took things to Defcon 1.
All I could think of during the melee was I was trying to be a peacemaker in women’s shoes. I didn’t want to fight. My shoes wouldn’t go over well in jail. Just then, some random Aussie with big knuckles gave me a cheap shot across my chin. All I heard was a loud crack! Somehow I didn’t go down.
“What the hell’d you do that for?!!” I yelled, lunging at Mr. Knuckles as he walked away. The police sirens were getting close so the bouncers took mercy on Brian and stopped pounding him. Gillian was cursing a blue streak while I yanked Brian up from his protective fetal cocoon and dragged him away. Mike (being a Canadian pacifist) had smartly vanished in the dustup.
Last thing I heard was the bouncers laughing, “Go home, you Yankee poofters, you’re drunk!”
So we went home.
We limped back to the hotel in pain, where Gillian tried to tend to our wounds. Brian held a can of beer he picked off the ground to his swollen eye. He put his arm around me. “Sorry for doing the turkey dance. It’s good to know you can take a punch.”
“It’s disturbing to know you’re a complete idiot. You’re lucky they didn’t rob you.”
Brian laughed. “C’mon man. That’s just the pain talking.”
The next morning, my jaw felt shattered. Black-eyed Brian brought me some Australian Rice Krispies in bed to apologize. He inspected my swollen face and said he felt bad since he was the cause of it, being the “king smartass and all.” I just sat there looking at my bowl of cereal.
“Snap, crackle, pop goes our bones, am I right?”
I didn’t smile. “It’s turning into the theme of this trip.” Brian gave me a courtesy laugh, “Haha, yeah.”
Later, as I inspected my swollen face in the mirror, I had an epiphany. “You realize we have to change our trajectory before we both end up in body casts, right?”
I waited for Brian’s response. All I heard were snores.
After our high class, high-heeled pummeling in the fancy resort town of Noosa, Mike, Brian, Rana, Monica, and I got out of town.
I asked Brian, “Doesn’t it seem like we’re always getting run out of town?”
“Yeah. This bus is our getaway car.”
We stopped for a night at the Dingo, a thirty-five thousand acre cattle ranch out in the middle of nowhere. There was another Oz Bus in the Dingo car park when we arrived. Black-eyed Brian was happy to see that the ranch was already full of backpacking crazies. “Let’s get this party started!”
I tried to be the voice of reason. “C’mon, man, not again … I’m in triple-traction here.”
“Let’s just go in for a peek-a-loo.”
We mingled with our new friends and met the owner of the Dingo who said, “Welcome to the Dingo, boys! The only rules here are wear a condom if you screw my dog.”
That statement summed up the Dingo energy. There was no avoiding the debauchery tonight. We’d veered into the eye of another party hurricane and there was nowhere to hide.
That night, the Dingo crew threw a party for all the new arrivals at the bar. Brian said, “If I’ve learned anything on this trip, it’s Australia is one big bloody party,” as he watched our new friends drinking, singing, and dancing on tables.
“Emphasis on the bloody,” I said, rubbing my swollen face.
The only thing that made us forget our bumps and bruises were the libations and Emma, a good-looking redhead from England who was a ranch hand. We heard she had “meetings” in the back all the time, and would occasionally mess around with some of the backpackers if you were lucky. I struck up a conversation with her, hoping to arrange a meeting for later, but she proved elusive. Maybe it was because I looked like a two-bit stuntman on holiday with all my injuries.
At the end of the night, there was a striptease show. “Just another night in the Outback!” Emma said to me as she got up to lead the nude dancing event. After the striptease, which was an eye-opener, we all drank cheap wine out of a box and danced around in the dirt to bad music until everyone fell over or passed out.
I was the last one standing and it seemed Emma had disappeared in the back with someone else. So with no companion but the owner’s skinny dog, I decided it was a good idea to strip naked, put on a trench coat, and run around everyone’s sleeping quarters while singing like a drunken cowboy. I remember nothing other than I was feeling no pain. (So much for my blackout pledge.)
The next morning, I woke up outside with no pants on, no Emma in sight, and a huge headache. My only cuddle buddy was the ubiquitous skinny dog that was quietly farting in my face.
I found my bearings and hobbled into my sleeping quarters. Everyone was already up. I didn’t take long to notice all my new “friends” were giving me mean looks. When Brian saw me all he could say was, “Duuuuuuuude,” like I was in some kind of trouble. I was too hungover to remember my offenses, so Mike took pleasure in reminding me. He said my Mad Flasher routine didn’t stop until I ran into a tree and knocked myself out. “I heard a loud ‘smack’ then you hit the ground, said ‘bollocks,’ then you were snoring. So we just left you out there.”
“Ugh…. Did I screw the pooch?” I asked. Mike said, “You mean Emma? She stayed with me last night. But you may have screwed Vegemite, the owner’s dog, though!” Then he laughed and walked away. It was appropriate the dog was named after a disgusting Australian breakfast paste. His farts smelled terrible.
Shamed and friendless, except for Brian and Vegemite, I dragged myself onto the next Oz Bus. Late that night, we pulled into Airlie Beach, one of the main points of departure for the Great Barrier Reef. Everyone on the bus had been talking about how Cyclone Justin was on the way, but like morons Brian and I didn’t pay attention.
The next morning with Cyclone Justin lurking, we decided to sober up for a few days and enroll in the PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) Open Water Scuba Diving program. We passed the two-day class then went to the Great Barrier Reef to earn our PADI Open Water Certification. Located in the Coral Sea, the reef stretches across nine hundred islands and is composed of nearly three thousand individual reefs. It’s the largest living organism on earth, which is built from billions of tiny organisms known as coral polyps and is home to many other life forms. It’s so huge that it’s one of the few natural wonders that you can see from space.
Brian and I boarded the Anaconda yacht, a ninety-five-foot sailboat, and headed out to the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system and one of the best diving spots in the world. It was remarkable we could even afford the trip on this amazing skiff, but it was inexpensive—maybe because the cyclone was about to hit and all the sane people were heading inland.
We made two dives the first day, but the waters were stormy so the visuals weren’t great, matching our minds. That night, we were so tired from all the nitrogen our body had absorbed that after dinner we went to our bunks and crashed.
We dove thirty meters the next day as a part of our deep-diving training. We were warned about getting nitrogen narcosis, which gives you the feeling of euphoria and drunkenness right before death. I piped up, “How will I know I’ve got it? That’s how I’ve felt the entire time in Australia.” Brad, the dive instructor, didn’t laugh. He was dead serious, so I stopped joking around and paid attention.
Cyclone Justin hit the final night of our dive training. We waited it out at the local pub. I went back on my promise and bought a bottle of Bundaberg Rum and drank the whole thing with Brian, Mike, and Paul and Brad, our two dive instructors. With the Bundaberg coursing through our veins, Brad and I danced around the bar while everyone that wasn’t with our diving crew wondered what the hell we were celebrating during this hellacious cyclone attack.
We went to another bar and met two guys, one named Beauty, who was a lunatic, and the o
ther, Roger, was from Holland. Beauty got sloppy drunk, so we left him to go outside into the cyclone and howl into the night like a bunch of idiots in a hundred mile-per-hour windstorm. Brian almost got stabbed through the forehead with a flying blade of grass that ended up impaling a wooden fence. When we witnessed that amazing feat, we ran back into the bar.
I was on a mission to dive on the Barrier Reef if the cyclone would just pass, so the next morning Brian, Mike, the Norwegian girls, and I took the bus to Cairns, another beach town on the eastern coast in Queensland. We lost Brian to amorous intentions with one of the Norwegian girls, who finally fell for his charms.
Cairns is the end of the road for many backpackers because it’s where the other international airport is located in Australia. It’s a great spot to hang out with other backpackers because there are always people coming and going. I was hoping to dry out and just dive for several days while Brian was away, but as it turned out the damn cyclone followed us up the coast.
No diving for me. We were trapped inside, so I was resigned to sleep in, read a lot, and then poison myself silly at night at a bar called the Woolshed. I couldn’t escape the Aussie party even when I tried. Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in.
When Brian caught up with us two days later he was full of energy and ready to binge drink. “I’m back, baby! I’m a new man, I finally got to wet my beak!” he announced right before he got naked at the Woolshed while two rugby players carried him around on their shoulders with a piece of cardboard crammed in his ass. This ritual had a name: They called it “The Landshark.” I thought it was a big joke, but apparently everyone has done it once or twice in these parts. The entire bar was laughing at Brian. I just shook my head. All I could think was, “Is this what we came here to do? Get things crammed up our butt?”
Our spiritual quest had bottomed out in an Australian party bus. After the nonstop bacchanal that was the infernal Outback, Brian and I were mentally wrecked. I was probably sober only twenty percent of the time I was in Australia, and it had taken a toll. I knew I had lost complete track of time when I saw a calendar and didn’t know what month it was. “Is that calendar right? What month is it?”
“March, I think.” Brian said.
“March what? How long have we been here??”
“I don’t know…. Two months?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. I thought it was still February.”
“Dude … you need help.”
When I finally sobered up long enough to realize we had not just had a “lost weekend” in Australia, we’d had a lost two months, I felt like an idiot for wasting so much time rampaging around the eastern ass of the Outback like a couple of blotto outlaws.
Brian spent the next hour going on about how his brain cells were melting with every passing day we stayed here. “I forgot what I ever wanted out of this trip … I need to start over. I need to go back to kindergarten, man.”
We didn’t know where to go next, but we agreed we had to flee to a country that would challenge us in some way. Australia we understood; the formula here was adventure, party, friendship, party, fight, party, pass out, party, try not to screw the pooch, and party some more. Although I still love Aussies to this day with all my enlarged heart, we never once got out of our comfort zone—unless you count me possibly getting raped.
I needed more. My liver needed less and I still wanted to be shocked and amazed by life.
“Where should we go next?” I asked him.
“I dunno,” Brian said, “but wherever we go, we’re back to square one on the evolutionary scale.”
While we thought about our next move, for symmetry purposes we spent our last nights in Cairns wasted out of our minds. I have no idea where Brian disappeared to—I was with Lea, my Danish girlfriend who had traveled with us for the past two weeks.
One late night in Cairns on the way back to Lea’s hostel, we stopped at a phone booth. You’ve probably noticed I have this strange personality quirk where I want to talk to my mom when I’m drunk. I can’t say that she ever wants to talk to me, but it’s something I’ve done my entire life. I know drunk dialing your mom is bizarre and probably Freudian, but it’s even worse when you bring your barely legal girlfriend that you promised to travel with for the next month in Australia into the phone booth with you. You definitely don’t want her to overhear you telling Mom that you’re leaving for Singapore tomorrow, which is what happened. When I let it slip, I tried to backtrack but Lea flipped out.
After I saw how hurt Lea was, I felt like a complete jerk for misleading her. I apologized and promised I would stay two more nights to say a proper goodbye. I genuinely liked Lea and had vowed to make a real effort not to treat every woman I met on the trip like a transitional woman after the way things ended with Elena, even though that’s what they might’ve been.
I mean, what were the odds Brian or I would find true love on this yearlong escapade? What are the odds anyone does? Ever? When I posited this to Brian, he said, “Gotta live the question, man. Gotta live the question.”
He kept repeating “live the question” so damn much it became our private mantra, the one that really defined our trip. “Let’s go mad” was the public mantra we shared with the rest of the world in times of extreme revelry, but in private we had a deeper quest. No one else we met on the trip knew this, but us “stupid Yanks” had a few tricks up our sleeves yet.
I bid Lea farewell two days later. We promised to stay in touch, but in the end (spoiler alert) we never did. I went looking for Brian, who I found passed out in our room. He looked like warmed-over shit. He mumbled something about running into “our Depends stripper from Surfers Paradise at the end of the world” last night.
“You mean Nashda?”
“Nasty Nashda … You just missed her.” He said she spent the night with him in my bed. I felt a twinge of jealousy since I still had a thing for Nashda, but what did I have to be jealous about? She wasn’t mine. No one was anybody’s on this global gallivant.
Brian bringing a stripper into the dorm at night sure got the gossip going at the hostel. Not only was it against their policy, but the word trickled down to a few of our lady friends who had become slightly attached to us. By the end of our final day, it was clear we had to get out of the country since we had promised several girls we would travel with them to four different countries—none of which we planned to actually visit.
We mercifully departed Australia on the 25th of March—a month too late. I watched another country vanish beneath us. “We always leave when the shit’s about to hit the fan.”
Brian smiled with his sleep mask firmly fastened. “It’s the first rule of showmanship: always leave ‘em wanting more.”
With no idea where we were going next, we flew into Singapore and spent the night at the apartment of one of my parents’ friends.
The apartment had all the modern amenities. Brian and I wasted a day doing laundry and watching TV, neither of which had been done in a month. While staring at the tube and catching up on American sitcoms and the news, I realized how easy it was to step outside of the spinning world and not miss it. I turned off the TV and looked at Brian, who was splayed out on the couch. “Well, nothing happened in the world in three months.”
Brian yawned. “I can’t remember half of what happened either.”
I pulled my clothes out of the dryer. “I guess it’s a wash then….”
Brian yelled, “So, I hate to ask, but where should we go next??”
“Well, I’ve given this some thought. Since we’ve been run out of every country we’ve visited so far, maybe it’s time for a slap in the face.”
Brian didn’t like the sound of that. “Slap? Dude I’m still healing. I can’t take anymore—”
“A metaphoric slap, a forced wakeup call … something to snap us back into reality. Something to make us think.”
“Like visiting the Cambodian killing fields or Auschwitz or something?”
“Maybe … but how abo
ut we go visit Jack’s ghost first?”
“You’re blowing what’s left of my mind.”
“We’re really close.”
“Why now?”
“I think I have to … with or without you.”
“You don’t have to do anything. Your psyche is already fragile—and my head is as soft as a newborn’s. Why jeopardize our sanity with a giant bong hit of reality? We haven’t even gotten to the nude beaches of Thailand yet!”
“Will you just listen? You’ve been driving this ship for nearly three months and look where it’s gotten us.”
“You’re blaming all this on me? You said you wanted Utopia, so I brought you there. It’s not my fault we can’t control our animal impulses.”
“Well, it’s partly your fault …”
“Point taken. All right.” Brian was too tired to put up much of a fight. “I’ll let you drive. I’m reasonable. I want growth as much as you do.”
“Then it’s settled. The ‘Cirrhosis Tour’ stops now.”
4
Philistines in the Philippines
BRIAN AND I WERE AS sober as we’d been all year when we packed up our belongings and hopped a flight to Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines and one of the most populated islands in the world.
“Really think Jack’s still hangin’ around here?” Brian muttered while sipping his first virgin Bloody Mary ever.
“There’s no place he’d rather be,” I said.
I was dragging Brian to a bittersweet reunion with a past I could no longer ignore. We were returning to the “scene of the crime” where my childhood ended—the place where my family was torn apart and I developed my thirst for whiskey and women. This is the part of the story where you find out why I call my mom when I’m drunk. It’s a habit born from one man; he had many (good and bad) habits, and they were all passed down to me.
