nah - im just getting out of melbourne
these came to be six or seven words i'd find myself repeating quite often over the weekend - and the six or seven of them put together were true - i had no reason to be there - i had nothing to do there - i had no plans or idea of what i was doing - the only thing i was doing was lugging around a small bag with in it a couple of tshirts and books and notebook
i had my boots, and my sunnies, and my jeans and i was feeling cool - i watched the film adaptation of willy vlautin's the motel life the night before, and a couple of nights before that, rewatched easy rider for the first time in years - silly, and juvenile, i know - but i like it - it makes me feel good, and empowered, and it simply makes things fun
i bought a ticket for a bus - i sat in the corner of the cold and dark underground concrete bus-station, and ate two cheap cheeseburgers as the people lined up to board - i got on last, my bag by myside - i took the seat up in the back corner and eased, watching the beautifully tortured victorian country-side soon dominate, as the city, suburbs and warehouse out-skirts eventually thinned out - hills and grasslands and trees that could be nothing but australian - eventually i put some music in my ears - theatrical instrumental nick-cave/warren ellis music - glancing around the bus, my fellow passengers were all asleep - their heads buzzing and vibrating as they rested against the windows - one man almost broke his neck as his head bopped and jerked down in mighty sleep-pangs - i looked out the window and watched the land pass - it was spectacular
the most depressing thing i saw that day was an abandoned old service station, just outside a small country town - it mustn't have been used for almost seventeen years, i reckon - inside one of the smashed windows i saw one of those ridiculous late-night tv exercise machines - it was the only thing inside - the hot afternoon sun shone down and ripped the whole place apart - and it was almost too much to take
arriving at my destination, it took me all of ten seconds to find my accommodation - one of the two pubs in this one road town - i sat at the bus stop and drank some water, waving a thank you to the bus driver has he took off with his sleepy haul - i was the first and only person to get off the bus - it's next and final stop was a major one - i got out just in time - far enough away i guess
i walked into the pub, and read some articles posted on the wall about a local teenage girl doing the town proud with her long distance running and the potential of future championships as i waited for the barman to get off the phone - he did and gave me the key to the room out the back - and it was nice - damn - i put my bag down and put the cricket on - australian were down - i took out my notebook and my wallet and headed out to see the town
that took all of thirty seconds - not much aroud - three pubs, though one had closed down - a small supermarket - an opshop full of shit - some sort of milkbar/pizza place/fish'n'chip shop all in the one little building that was up for sale - a bakery and a handful of bullshit antiquey shops selling overpriced tins
i sat down at the bakery and ordered the last of the beef and curry pies from the smiling young girl behind the counter, much to the disappointment to the woman next in line, who had to settle for beef and cheese - i looked out the window to the perfectly positioned rusted and worn water-towers and silos just over the train tracks - there wasn't a cloud behind them - i took out my notebook and wrote these words...
i believe that to find the best looking girls in any small town in australia, you should head straight to the bakery
in my experience, this is true
i walked into the pub that i wasn't staying out - a quick glance confirmed they had the cricket on - i ordered a beer and took a seat at the bar, happy to waste the afternoon away drinking and watching the cricket - i was the only person in the pub, but i and the woman behind the bar didn't mind - as i took my first sip, the players retired to their tea-break so i turned and gazed out the window
a couple of cars and trucks from time to time - eventually three men who looked like they'd spent everyday of their life drinking in the sun in paddocks and fields, or at least in the shade of a tractor, crossed the road and made their way into the pub - and soon the pub was full of middle aged men in singlets, covered in dirt and history - rural history - farmland history - now, im no pretty-boy in the city, but i soon felt like i was abou to be bought and sold - used as currency - i felt like i was the most feminine thing within five kilometers - i caught glimpses of myself in the mirror opposite the bar, sitting next to these men, cursing myself for washing my long hair that morning - they made jokes about tractors that i didn't understand - they all knew each other, and i can't remember the last time i'd heard the word poofter used in such a casual, everyday manner - in the same way i'd use the word - couch - they all drank a lot and make jokes about drinking a lot, and drinking on the job, behind tractors - utes would drive through the drive-thru and drinkers at the bar would yell out "only one?" when they saw one of their mates order a slab of beer - and it was genuine surprise they were showing
i went back to the pub i was staying at for something to eat - on the menu, under european cuisine, they had a red thai curry and singapore noodles - i ordered something i didn't really want but it was something that they had available - i bored the bar staff after they asked me what i did for a living - the night cricket was televised that night, but they had some american sitcom on and i couldn't be bothered asking them to change it - i finished most of my meal, and went to my room
the next morning i had a needlessly greasy breakfast and took a walk down by the river out the back of town - it was isolated and very nice - silent except for the cockatoos that harked and screamed, and my boots that crunched slowly on the dirt and stone path that i followed - i casually shoed the flies away, but they didn't really bother me - i walked slow, stopping from time to time for no reason at all - a fence here - some fallen logs there - some shade by that tree up ahead
i drank the afternoon away in my room - reading two books at once - swapping whenever i felt like it - i had the cricket on and the window open - the window looked out to the driveway out the back of the pub's drive-thru bottle shop - so every fifteen minutes or so a ute would drive by my window with a slab of beer in the back or in the passenger seat - a laughed a little every time
a siren started to wail - i leaned out the window and listened, imagining the whole town evacuating and forgetting about the weird skinny silky-long-haired potential-poofter in the room behind the pub - i imagined the whole place going up in flames and being left to myself to fight and survive anyway i could - eventually i sat back down on the couch and picked up one of my books, and continued reading, as the australian cricket team took back control - i opened another beer and felt good
i walked back to the pub i was drinking at the previous afternoon, hoping the food would be better there - a similar sort of crowd lingered around the bar, and i took a stool for myself - already the bar staff knew my drink of choice and poured me a beer before i had to ask - cheers, i said, and left my money and wallet on the bar for their taking whenever i needed a refill
i got to talking - talking to some members of the local lawn bowls club - i asked them how they went today and they told me the score but i failed to interpret the strange numbers they told me, and still don't know who won - i talked cricket and footy, and i explained to them what i was doing in town, and why i didn't want to continue up the road to the bigger country towns - they seemed pleased with me - not impressed, but they definitely understood and didn't question my non-existent-motive for visiting their town - i was a drinker, a loner, an out-of-towner, but they liked having me around - a couple of the local footballers came in from training - i asked how the team was going, and it sounded like they had fair success, despite them asking me later on if i was interested in joining the team - i don't think i'd be much help, i said - they said i might be surprised - i was careful not to reciprocate the subtle flirtations from the young trainee girl behind the bar - and the night carried on, beer after beer - until it was time to get some takeaways, and get back to my room
in saying goodbye, and thanking the bar for their hospitality, the owner suggested i call him the next time im in town, and offered to let me camp out the back of his pub, instead of paying for a room at the pub where i was staying - sounded like a good deal, and i thanked him for the offer - i walked out of the pub with my two-take-away beers in a brown paper bag, and some of the men i didn't even speak to waved a friendly goodbye as well - back in my room, i drank the beers and listened to some music on my ipod until i guess i fell asleep sometime
i'd set an alarm for the next morning - enough to get something to eat, shower, and make the fifty meters to the train stations for my ride home - it was the perfect country train station, over shadowed by even more silos - an old man pretended to read a newspaper as he watched me from his front porch over the tracks
my bag on the seat beside me, i let my eyes rest behind my sunnies, and knocked my sleepy head against the window trying to push on with some more morning sleeping - the woman in front of me boasted to an elderly couple that she always asked customer service staff as many questions as possible - i don't even care if i repeat myself, she said - she had some weird ideas about how to take control of things - two young girls behind me wondered if they'd have enough time for a smoke before they got their connecting bus to wherever it was they were going - the dude sitting opposite me looked like a cross-between of bob dylan and les hiddens, the bush-tucker man
i drifted in and out of sleep and found myself home after some sort of sleep-deprived time-warp - i was home in no time, despite the fact over three hours had passed - there were no post-holidays blues that have grown to knock me out time and again throughout my life - i guess because it wasn't really a holiday - not one where anything actually happened anyway - just getting out of melbourne i guess - being anonymous for a little bit, and feeling welcome in a place where no-one knows your name
