City of Milfs

I’m not quite sure why I see it, why I notice it so much. Maybe it’s because I moved from winter to summer, from girls bundled up and making me use the full power of my imagination to girls in flimsy summer dresses with their arms and legs and chests glistening in the death rays of the Australian sun. Maybe it’s something in my own biological clock that makes me notice all of these babies and my unconscious is trying to tell me to reproduce and create dozens of babies, my own babies, enough to create a Kyle Army that will take over the world one beard at a time. Maybe I just hate babies so I notice each one that I see—but I don’t mind babies so much as long as I don’t have to take one home with me.

On my way back from lunch today, I was stuck on the sidewalk behind a young woman who was walking particularly slow. I didn’t mind so much because she had quality assets that I could numbingly stare at until I reached the hotel. After following her for a few blocks, she turned down a street and I saw her pushing a stroller. Another one! I thought to myself.

A week ago I was strolling around the Broadway Mall, keeping cool and considering lunch. I settled on a smoothie and sat down to look at my fellow shoppers, everyone seemingly having somewhere to go, walking and eating with a purpose. I just plopped down at a table and spread my observational ooze. A family sat down at the opposite end of the long table where I had settled. After about a dozen glances in that direction, I picked up a stroller, two young looking parents, and a middle-aged set of parents. I gathered that the young baby boy had these barely 20-something parents and 40-something grandparents. The younger parents were cute and smiling, and I genuinely wanted to regurgitate my smoothie.

They are everywhere, these parents, these young budding families, or these seemingly single mothers walking in the warm afternoon with their little baby girl or their little baby boy. I feel that so many of them are younger than I am, and I feel that so many of them have tied themselves to a babbling, burping, barfing, crying, crawling, dirt collecting stake. They are in it for a good eighteen years and probably longer.

For the last decade or more, I’ve had textbooks and the evening news drill into my head that families were becoming smaller and smaller and couples were having children later and later in their lives—if at all. But that was in America. Is Australia really this much different? Is it just Sydney? Is it just a fluke of my observations? I’ve yet to ask any of my Aussie friends about this phenomena. Marshall, though, offered a guess, “I think they get tax breaks. And they only have like a tenth of our population. Nothing wrong with more babies and more population.”

“But it’s just a shame, Marshall. You know what these babies do? They stretch everything out. The stomach, the vagina, the breasts. They all get stretched out. Sure, they are in good-looking shape, I’m surprised really, but their poor tummies were stretched so far, too far. And even if they have a cesarean, there’s a scar on the tummy. I love the stomach so much Marshall, from under the breasts to above the pubes. They don’t have to be wafer thin or perfectly flat, but I really don’t want a hideous scar desecrating such a beautiful thing. If she has a child, fine, that’s not something I’ll complain about unless she wants me involved, but their bodies just aren’t as young as they look.”

“Oh, come on Kyle, you know you’d still hit it. Twice.”

“In all of your dualistic wisdom, you’re right. Maybe three times.”

Birds Fucking

Bird are fucking all over the place. All over Victoria Park. All over Hyde Park. All over Sydney. They’re white parrot type looking birds and they make a loud racket while they’re fucking. I haven’t been fucked enough to Wikipedia what kind of birds they are, and I’m not brash enough to ask Aussies on the street what the birds are called. I’m sure they hardly notice the noise if they’ve lived here for long enough. Birds fucking loudly, though, is an entirely new concept to me.

Llamas fucking is a lot different. I’ve often heard the sounds of llamas fucking. Homosexual llamas, actually. In my experience with witnessing homosexual llama activity, there is a dominate male llama and a subordinate, younger, smaller llama that gets fucked. By the way, llamas spit. Especially when one is trying to rape another one.

Imagine brown shag carpeting, a mass of brown shaggy dirty carpeting drunkenly galloping towards another dirty brown galloping piece of shit, spit flying, horns blaring, hormones raging, and one very erect llama penis. It ain’t a horsecock, but it’s unsettling. The shag carpeting races around the fields until the smaller one tires and gets violated.

Now imagine, if you’re ever so brave, that you’re sitting down to a nice cup of coffee at your family’s dinner table. It’s about 8am, and for some reason I’m awake, but I’m having pleasant conversation with my parents, and since it’s a pleasant spring afternoon, the windows are open. Before we can talk about the pleasant weather, the sounds of hell reverberate through our quaint little suburban home. This is what we get for living next to a small farm that keeps llamas. It’s a mini earthquake of pounding and foghorns and violent terrified spitting and pure llama sexual desire that no one should be subjected to in front of their parents.

Now theses birds aren’t quite as ferocious as the llamas, and I’m assuming these birds are mostly heterosexual, but when I’m sitting on a park bench reading Tropic of Cancer, I would rather the birds not fuck right above my heads. I was just beginning to understand why I had enjoyed the novel when I first read it—Henry Miller liberally uses the word cunt—but I even began to comprehend why Randomhouse named it one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century. It’s loose; it’s free; it’s optimistic. Why are we alive? We aren’t alive! It doesn’t matter! I am free to do what I please and I just don’t give a fuck.

But those birds just did not allow me to form any such an opinion while I was sitting on that park bench. I had to form those opinions back at the hotel room, free from fucking birds, free from nature. Those white parrot shaped tropical looking birds fucking and squawking above my head can go fuck themselves rather than each other; I’d prefer just a bit more peace and quiet, but I guess in Sydney at the end of February it’s bird love time. Spring is in the air even though we’re closer to fall in the Southern Hemisphere. All that I'm asking for is a quiet little robin that hops around looking for worms and bugs and seeds.

Better Off Canadian

I’ve now been here in Sydney for over a week, and I thought I’d take a bit of time to reflect back at my first week in Australia in a more bullet point fashion.

• The most common thing I’ve done in my first week is hop from hotel to hotel. I am writing from my third hotel room. Tomorrow morning Marshall and I are moving into the fourth hotel room. When we haven’t been changing hotels, I’ve been looking for the next hotel while Marshall is preparing for his year of schooling.
• I’m excited about this new hotel. It’s located pretty much across the street from where I would like to live—the Lansdowne Hotel. I will be there for a week (so will Marshall if his living arrangements fall through), and this will hopefully allow me to relax and settle a bit. Ideally I’d like to get into a bit of a flow in Sydney . This hotel will be the cheapest yet, but it is still a little more AU$ a week than I’d ideally like to be spending. If I end up staying in Sydney and not traveling to other cities right away, I’ll be looking to get a room at a shared house. A private bedroom is all I really ask for.

• As I have already mentioned, I have a lot of change. I don’t think I’ll ever spend all of my change. This morning I tried to use up a lot of the change I had when buying a train ticket, but alas, there is a 10 coin limit for the machine. I really pissed off the machine and had to watch as all of my silver dropped back in the tray to be collected and thrown back in my pocket.

• Another common theme is not going to Star City, Sydney’s only casino. I would often make plans to go there, but when the time came to head on over and check the place out, either something would come up or I wouldn’t feel like going. It’s not like it’s in a bad location or anything. I’m just lazy.

• Surprisingly I have spent a majority of my time here sober. Part of that has to do with the comparatively weaker beers than I am used to and not drinking enough wine. Sadly only last night was I able to keep my white wine count high. Australia knows what they’re doing when it comes to wine, and it certainly packs more punch (economically and alcohololy) for your AU$ than your other choices at the bar.

• I realize now that the title of this blog entry doesn’t really make much sense for what I have typed. In general it comes from the idea that it’s better to pretend you’re a Canadian traveler if you happen to be an American traveler. I really haven’t noticed any anti-American sentiments in my travels, but then again I’ve only traveled to other English speaking countries.
• The other day while Marshall and I were hanging out at a bar. It was noted by a lady that we were “rather quiet for Americans.” I brought this up with a couple of my Aussie friends, and they too acknowledged that I am rather quiet for an American. I know I am perfectly capable of making quite a lot of racket, but I suppose I do refrain the best I can from being an obnoxious asshole, at least when meeting someone for the first time.

• That still doesn’t exactly justify keeping this title for this blog entry, but I do think it has a nice ring to it. No offense to my former neighbors to the north, but I have yet to wish or pretend that I am from their kind nation.

What the Hell Am I Doing?

“Yes, I come from Germany. Years ago that was. Had a wife. She’s no more . . .” An old man named Michael was telling me as I was sitting outside a Subway eating my turkey and ham on Italian herbs and cheese. Instead of getting oil and vinegar on it, I got honey mustard because the idea of putting oil and vinegar on a sandwich doesn’t seem to exist here.

“I speak seven languages. Seven. You go through all these years. Australia. Germany. Everything kaputt. Es kaputt.”

“Seven languages? Wow, I barely know this one.” I had stopped tasting my sandwich and focused all my concentration on trying to hear what Michael was telling me. I had taken German for a good eight years in school, but I had never been good at understanding the spoken language, and those eight years of study are long behind me. The only German word I recognized in his mumbling mess of slurring and spitting was “kaputt.” He used it often.

“Glebe here. 220 a week here. 220. Kaputt. Down on [inexplicable street name] I pay 220 a week. Bathroom. Kitchenette. Bed. Es kaputt.”

“220 seems pretty standard around here if not more.”

“Oh, it’s expensive though. My wife and I in Germany years ago. Come to Australia and . . . why Australia?” Michael gestured out in the distance. “Are you from around here?”

“No, I’m from the states.”

Michael leaned back and looked off at nothing. He was incredibly drunk and rambling, and for every ten words he spoke, I struggled to hear one or two of them. I was getting the impression that he wasn’t understand many of the words I was saying either, but that was okay because I let Michael do all the talking. It seemed to comfort him.

“What do you do here?” That wasn’t the exact why he put it.

“Oh, I don’t know. Travel? I like Glebe here.”

“Eh. 220 a week. It’s expensive here.” Michael mumbled a lot more. “Do you have the time? Must be about quarter to four.”

“It’s 11:15.”

“Quarter to four?”

“No, it’s only 11:15.” Michael’s eyes widened with surprise.

“I could have sworn it was almost four.”

When I was first approached by Michael, I expected him to ask me for money. He was wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. They looked old and dirty. It looked like neither he nor his clothes had been cleaned in quite a long time. He came up to me introduce himself as Michael and asked if he could have a seat. I said sure.

I eventually gave up trying to actually hear what he was saying, just nodding and smiling and laughing where it seemed appropriate. I began to try to observe him, and I noticed his fingernails. His fingernails were grotesque. Yellow and black and untrimmed with each nail sporting a different length and shape. Some of them were long and pointed while others looked like they are broken off at random angles. Regardless of what he said about renting in Glebe for 220 a week, I guessed he was homeless.

I finished my sandwich without tasting it. I thought that I should at least get a chance to taste my chocolate chip cookie, so I stood up and wished Michael good luck and to have a nice day. He asked me for 2.50 for some coffee, and because I had collected an incredibly heavy pocket filled with silver (the 50, 20, 10, and 5 cent coins are called silver while I assume that the 1 and 2 dollar coin are considered gold because of their respective appearances), I was happy to oblige Michael and lessen the weight of the silver in my right pocket.

With a lighter pocket, I walked toward Victoria Park next to the University of Sydney campus, found a bench and ate my chocolate chip cookie. I asked myself the question I’ve been asking myself for the last few days, “What the hell am I doing here?”

I am surprised just how overwhelming and intimidating the feeling of nearly infinite freedom can be. It’s certainly not something that I have considered in the past.

It Pays To Be a Doctor on a Plane

I landed in Sydney about 8:00am. I was only feeling slightly like a zombie, and I distinctly lacked the same pure enthusiasm and excitement that I felt when I arrived in Sydney the first time. I mostly just wanted to find my hotel and lay horizontally for the first time in over a day.

It had been a long trip. An hour drive to O’Hare, a four and a half hour flight to San Francisco, a 5+ hour layover, and an adventure filled fourteen hour flight to Sydney. The adventure began about half way into the flight. I had finished watching three episodes of Fawlty Towers and attempted for a long time to drift off to sleep. I’m not quite sure if it was actual sleep or just a lack of conscience, but I awoke with an urgent desire to vomit. Without considering fumbling for the airsick bag, I threw off my seatbelt, jumped up, and ran to the toilets. Since I was the second row up from the back of the plane, I didn’t have far to run, but when I reached the toilets I saw that they were occupied. I turned around and the next thing I know I’m on my back looking up at a number of faces.

“Are you okay? How are you feeling?”

“A lot better actually.” Amazingly I had not actually vomited.

“Just sit tight right there, I’m a doctor,” one of the faces said. He was the man who guided me to a sitting position, gave me some juice and cookies, and explained to me that fainting on planes was quite common. Basically a lot of my blood had found its way to my lower legs, and when I stood up quickly I threw my body into a state of confusion. I later learned that he and his wife had been sitting right behind me.

On these trans-pacific flights they stress that it’s a good idea to do some exercises for your lower extremities to keep the blood flowing so that it doesn’t pool. Fourteen hours is a long time to sit in one position, and I have always tried to get up and walk around a bit or use the toilet about every two hours on these marathon flights; however, I had been sitting for a good four hours watching the tiny screen on the back of the headrest of the seat in front of me and doing something like sleeping.

I felt both embarrassed and bad that I worried all these kind Qantas employees and all my fellow travelers at the back of the 747. I was expecting someone to laugh because, hey, I fall down a lot and I’m usually quite awkward looking when I fall, and I understand that it is a humorous thing to witness. But no one laughed and everyone was extremely kind and concerned for my wellbeing. Outside of feeling a bit shaky at first, I felt fine and never had the urge to vomit for the rest of the flight.

The kind doctor, a young looking Canadian, and his American wife were well deserving of the bottle of Dom that Qantas gave them for assisting me through my fainting episode. I felt bad that all I had to thank him with was my words, but he insisted that he was a doctor—a stroke specialist—and that’s what he does, he helps people. I got his email address, and I need to email him soon and thank him again and ask him how he is enjoying Sydney.

I suppose I was able to help him a little bit. I told him that if you buy something in the Duty Free shop before you reach immigration and customs, you are allowed to go to an express line to help expedite the process of being let into Australia. When I was in that express line I saw him a dozen or so people behind me and gave him a wave and a smile and he returned the same gestures.