Let's Go Mad

by Rob Binkley

  As for what happened to me … After Brian disappeared again, I needed someone to help me prepare for my reentry back into the states. Watching him leave made me realize my days of freedom were numbered. I must move on and head home to face my American reality. I needed to start my life again as a man, not as a backpacking juvenile, but was I the same guy? Could I still make a buck with Uncle Sam strapped to my back?

  Lost and seemingly without a friend, when I got back to Bavaria, I called Jody like I always had for the past five years. First, she laid into me for still not paying her (which I apologized for once again), then she told me Elena laughed at the fake eviction papers she slid under the door—and I certainly “would have to involve the real authorities” to get her out of my house.

  I sighed. Jody said, “But you know … if you ever actually get around to paying me, you can always stay with, um, me, if you want …”

  I thought about that for a minute, then on a whim asked her if she wanted to come see me in Europe since I still hadn’t paid her. I offered to buy her ticket and pay for everything on top of the back pay. “To make up for the past year of hell I put you through, and will continue to put you through … C’mon, whaddaya say, kid?”

  She was silent for a good while. “Two weeks in Europe, huh. You’re lucky I’m on Christmas break. (She was in graduate school.) Can we go to Prague?”

  “Done and done.”

  Two days later, I met her at the Munich airport. She took one look at me and said I “looked like I’d been run over by a freight train full of shit,” then she gave me a big warm hug. We drove out of the airport in a car I rented for the drive. After the initial chatter died down and silence filled the air, I asked her, “This isn’t awkward or anything, is it? You being here.”

  “Just as long as you’re not trying to seduce me,” she said with a deadpan stare, followed by that cute sideways look she always gave me right after she lobbed an insult my way.

  We left Munich and I drove us over to the Czech Republic, which was a four-hour drive, and the old capital of Prague. It is an absolutely amazing city, one of my favorites in the world. It’s like the weirder, smarter, cooler brother of sexy, sophisticated Paris.

  We checked in at the Golden Horse House hotel—and I got us two double beds so she didn’t think I was up to any funny business, although at this point I was thinking about it. We went out to see the city. Americans were everywhere, but not so many obvious backpackers. My pack seemed out of place; Prague was quirky cosmopolitan and I felt like Indy Jones in the big city. Jody was definitely dressed better than me; she looked stunning, sexy even. Prague is one uniquely intelligent and beautiful town … I don’t know if it was because I had been away from America for a year, or maybe because Jody had blossomed while I was gone, but I was suddenly turned on by her everything.

  We walked all over the medieval, gothic city for days, exploring its museums, restaurants, and cobblestone streets. It’s amazing to think this city has been around for thousands of years while my hometown had barely been around for two hundred.

  “Think of all the ghosts that haunt this place,” Jody said while we wandered our way through its hidden gardens, cool cafés, and gothic cemeteries. “This city feels important, ya know … I could get inspired to do great things here.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “A lot of great thinkers have had moments of clarity walking these very streets … Kafka … Mozart … Rilke, to name a few.”

  “You’re smarter than you look,” Jody said and took my arm for the first time, like we were lovers. At the end of day, we collapsed in our separate beds and talked all night.

  No funny stuff. Not yet.

  The next day we just kept walking and talking. Talking and walking. We knew we couldn’t experience everything in one trip, but we were trying to squeeze every drop of coolness out of the experience. The restaurants were elegant yet inexpensive, so I could take her out and not blow the rest of my money on food. I didn’t let myself get caught up in a drinking tour of the city, not this time.

  Prague, like its sister city Paris, is great for lovers, and since I hadn’t had a girlfriend in almost a year, I admit I was maybe giving off some strange romantic vibes to my quasi-former employee who I always knew had the hots for me, but I’d never reciprocated for some reason.

  We visited the St. Vitus Cathedral, which might be the most beautiful cathedral I had ever seen. It looked ancient, and part of it was, but it was only officially completed in 1929, which was shocking to me.

  “So, are you one of those guys who believes ‘new things’ lack depth?” Jody asked, clearly alluding to the fact she was a few years younger than me, yet seemingly wiser than any woman I’d been with—maybe ever.

  “Never judge a book by its cover,” I said.

  “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my cover?” She punched me in the arm and gave me that sideways look again.

  “Never … You’re lovelier than ever,” I said.

  “I know your game, Binkley … You’re just trying to grease my wheels so you don’t have to pay up,” she smiled.

  We made our way to the famed Charles Bridge; it was simply amazing to walk over. We strolled past the thirty statues of saints on the bridge; they were ghostly in the morning fog like visitors who got cemented for all eternity into the landscape.

  On the bridge, I started to see Jody in a completely different light. She was so much more beautiful than I remembered. I began to wonder: If I’d had this great girl staring me in the face all this time, why hadn’t I noticed her until now? Had I been blinded by the surface sex appeal and fire attraction of crazy women like Elena all this time?

  We stopped to look at the river. I tried to explain all these new feelings I had to Jody, but she just put her hand to my mouth and said, “Shhh … Shut up and kiss me, fool.”

  So I did.

  After we kissed, she asked, “What do you think all these ghostly saints are telling you now?”

  I smiled. “They’re saying … follow your bliss, young lovers … cause we only go around once.”

  “Bet you tell that to all the girls.”

  We kept strolling around town, holding hands like two lovers. I hadn’t felt this happy in years. We walked past a public fountain where two stone figures were peeing in a puddle that spelled out literary quotations. “Why am I suddenly thirsty?” she asked. We both laughed. “Want to get a drink?”

  We came across one of those tucked away pubs on the corner of some winding cobblestone path and popped in for a pint, my first in Prague. It was as quiet as a library and so very old. “If these walls could talk, think of all the stories they could tell….”

  A few lone patrons were sipping beer and reading. We sat down in a corner table. You could order beer without saying a word by just placing a beer note on the table, which we did. In a minute, the waitress came by, picked up the card and then came back with our drinks.

  I looked at Jody’s order. “I always thought you’d be the Cosmo kind of girl.”

  “Cosmos are for wussies,” she said. “I like beer.”

  “My kind of woman.”

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  “Elena hates beer.”

  “Forget Elena.”

  We took big gulps of beer and went “ahh” at the same time. “Jinx … So made for each other,” she said coyly under her breath.

  “You’re tellin’ me. Oh momma,” I said and pulled out my journal.

  “This is amazing … What you got there?” Jody asked.

  I started scribbling, “This one’s going in the book.”

  “Book?”

  “I’ve been keeping this road journal and I have to mention the beer, which is by far the best in the world.”

  “So hyperbolic you are … Didn’t know you could spell, much less write.”

  “I can’t really … It’s just a hobby.”

  “Don’t undersell yourself, dude … You’re always talking about wanting to b
reak free from the dreaded routine of America; I mean, you fled the freaking country to change your life for God’s sake. You gotta think outside the box if you really want to live a life less ordinary.”

  “Where did all this wisdom come from?”

  “I’m an old soul, can’t you tell? You could move to some island utopia and write—”

  “Wait, wait, wait—did you just say ‘Utopia’?”

  “Yeah. Really write a book about your trip … Stay off the grid … If you play your cards right, I’ll even help you edit.”

  “That’s what Brian said … ‘do or do not.’ No in-between. Can’t believe he missed this place.”

  Jody stopped me from writing. I looked up. She leaned in close and stared at me with eyes so direct I knew I’d met my match.

  “Forget about Brian … You’ve got a new dance partner now.”

  Some new friends I met in Indonesia—we bought some pot to go back to the hostel and wake up Brian to smoke (it turned out to be just parsley).

  During the second month of our journey, we rented and camped with this Toyota on Fraser’s Island (the world’s largest sand island), in Australia.

  Brian and I camel back-riding in Australia, with another backpacker friend in the background.

  Brian and I cross-dressed and went out in Surfer’s Paradise, Australia, for a hostel party—the prize if you won was all the free beer you could drink!

  Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

  After shaving my head bald in Bangkok, right before we went to Vietnam.

  Wearing rice hats with a backpacker buddy in Vietnam.

  Mamma Hahn and I on her booze cruise of the Vietnam coast, where she painted my head.

  Hiking the Annapurna Trail in Nepal. I had worn some new boots that wore my heel down to the bone and I had to tape up flip flops to go over the glaciers and finish the hike.

  In Tibet, spinning the prayer wheels at the Potala Palace, home of the ousted Dalai Lama.

  Children watching us hike by in the Annapurna mountains in Nepal.

  Kids borrowing my book while in the 3rd class train compartment going across India.

  The Taj Mahal.

  Brian and I were walking the backstreets in Dehli, India, and ran into this Hindi Sadhu and some cobra charmers.

  Brian and a Sadhu in Varanasi, the most sacred place in India.