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older/gbook/>>(in
case of__)__//before&after
___my youtube__... My novel 2004.. My novel 2006.. My novel 2008.. (diaryland) November 05, 2010 - 7:26 a.m. November Novelling. Quite prolifically at the moment. A bit scared of the next bit, though. Here's the start. Chapter Three � Somewhere Only We Know in wilderness I am - Yaqui 15 Flower World Variations The thing was, the last night wasn�t like all the other nights on the trip. Bryn felt a twinge inside, and it wasn�t to do with the huge amounts of dust he had ingested that morning. He was feeling OK now, by the way. He had actually drunk some water that afternoon, and magically, the headache receded. Well, it wasn�t magic. It was more like recovery from extreme dehydration. He should have had some electrolytes. Bryn Mossman was feeling this thing called nostalgia. They were all at some Australian-themed bar, actually. Along the way, over the last twenty-five days, pretty much every nationality of everyone on the trip had been represented by imbibing at some largely incorrect interpretation of a pub. Even the Polish twins had been honoured by Lenny calling around a bit in Boston and finding a Polish dinner club. It had been full of old guys speaking Polish, though, so the group hadn�t been there long. It was a weird, insular vibe. Not a billiards and fun kind of vibe. So they hung around for twenty minutes, before they went to fourteen Irish bars, just long enough to find out that they were actually complete amateurs when it came to consumption of spirits. Those old Polish dudes can really pack it away. This was the first night Bryn wasn�t drinking. He was sitting there in a big, puffy bench, completely unlike any cracked vinyl bench he�d sat on in any pub in his homeland. He looked around him. Jesus, were all these themed pubs this crap? He�d seen all the other ones through a drunken haze. There were a couple of numberplates on the deep maroon stippled wall. They were just normal ones you�d get on cars in Melbourne and Tasmania. �Melbourne � On the Move.� And cow horns. And a wagon wheel. It might as well have been an American pub, really, except the shape of the bar staff�s hats were slightly, slightly different to the ones you see in mass produced Nashville Country Music videos. And the numberplates would have to be jimmied off the wall. Keith Urban was on a big telly in the corner, juxtaposed with powerpoint presentations of dazed looking people holding up t-shirts that probably had something to do with eating and/or drinking incredibly irresponsibly. Bryn couldn�t tell how Australian Keith Urban really was. He seemed to be Australian only on a technicality, like this pub. This pub sucked. It wasn�t even that full. Bryn was probably seeing this trip for the first time. You know, metaphysically. All the other days, he�d just been on the trip, vomiting. But he was evaluating. Maybe none of the bars had been all that full. Maybe everyone else looked just as bleary as Bryn did, and that their outsides were all party, and their insides were all careening towards a big grey wall of career. It was just that Bryn was a bit closer to that grey wall. When you went up to that wall, you got absorbed by it, then got spit out on the other side at 65, worse for wear. Marcelle was over there, talking to the French guy. Shit. Bryn took another sip of his lemonade and sank further down into the puffy, microfibre seat, all alone in his booth, surrounded by everyone else�s yard glasses in varying states of half-emptiness. His heart was sore. He realised that he would never see Marcelle again. Ever. Again. She would be in Canada, doing Health Food Store stuff in whatever the hell city she was from (he didn�t think he�d asked), and he would be in Melbourne. Forever. He wasn�t the kind of guy who moved to different countries. He was just an accountant. And if one day he ever went on a holiday back to the American continent, he wouldn�t try and sort out a place and time to catch up because it wouldn�t be right. They would have moved on, and they wouldn�t talk pick up their conversations where they had left off because it wasn�t like old times. Yeah, she looked crap in her sleep. And she liked Kings of Leon. But Bryn didn�t hold either thing against her anymore. He just wished for time to stop being an arsehole and replacing nice things with selective memories, and real people with their living ghosts. Why did time have to go on? Why did he go on this holiday? Fuck. He sucked meaningfully through his little bendy straw. Bryn struggled out of the puffy seat a little bit and craned his neck at Marcelle. She didn�t glance over. That was OK. It wasn�t like he was in her eyeline. She was pretty far away, talking to that French guy. They were both bathed in a soft pink neon light above them that said, �Cheers, Big Ears.� He wanted to see her feet. They weren�t pointing at the French guy. They were pointing in Bryn�s direction. Both of them. That was a pop body language thing. It meant she was thinking about him too. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He reabsorbed himself into the chair and made slurpy noises with the straw, feeling chuffed for about thirty seconds. He had triumphed against the French. The slurpy noises were drowned out by Keith Urban. �Taste of wild honey. Listen to the sound of the wind that�s blowing through the trees.� How awful. That slightly euphoric feeling that Bryn had experienced seeing Marcelle�s muddy wedged feet pointing at him didn�t even register on the graph on giant piece of paper called Life. That�s how slight and brief that feeling was. Yeah, that feeling had gone already. One day, some day soon, her feet wouldn�t point in Bryn�s direction anymore, like he was Mecca and she was a mosque. It could even be a few days away. He was flying out at 6AM, one of the earliest to go. She was going to hang out and visit her sister in some town vaguely in the west, and that French guy was probably going to stick around too. He seemed like such a structureless guy, oozing with parental riches. Bryn knew he was an economist, but he seemed to have no intention of going straight back to work. He was taking a year off to �discover.� Just �discover�. How French. Bryn knew that because they all had to sit cross-legged around in a circle at the start of the trip, in Central Park. It seemed kind of dicey at the time � it was about to piss down with rain and there were people in filthy beanies scurrying around will filled, formless cardboard boxes. Everyone in the circle had to say their names, their Spirit Animal (Bryn had chosen a Welsh pony and had regretted it), and �what they were about.� That�s how Bryn knew that the French guy wanted to �discover.� Marcelle caught his eye. He did a little pout. She came over. �Hey, you OK?� she asked, over the country music. �Yeah,� he said. That was all he could say. Why was he even going to bother now. The rest of history was already written. She sat down. �Come on. Don�t be a sooky,� she said, bumping him affectionately with her shoulder. �I know why you�re glum.� �Do you? Do you really?� he asked, with a little lump in his throat. �Yeah. This is the end of our awesome time together. It�s the end of an era.� He knew it wasn�t the end of her era. Just his. Somehow, he could sense that the Divine Bell Curve of his life was poised to start its slow decline to the other side. He could feel that inky needle, graphing it out in another dimension. �I have to go to bed now,� he said. It was true enough. It was half-past one. �OK. Do you want me to come back with you?� she asked. �No,� he said. He did, and he wanted nothing to change. But this was a Contiki Trip. He couldn�t even bring himself to say No, thanks. �Alright, then. Wake me up in the morning before you go,� she said, and gave him a pat on the head. His head wobbled in the after effects. She got up, and went into the loo. It said �Sheilas� on it. He extricated himself from the microfibre prison, with the bolted in table way too close to be comfy, left his lemonade ice cubes to melt the night away, and strolled back to the hostel under a constant stream of backlit planes. He did not wake Marcelle in the morning, four and a half hours later. She didn�t look crap in her sleep. She looked cozy. He looked at the bedroom for about three minutes, trying to make sure he was making a very detailed mental photograph. It was easy, in a way. Everything had shadows on them. Then, he left noiselessly. The airport had basically nobody in it. It was big. Not the biggest, but big. It was dark, and old-fashioned. He was early. He felt nervous. The thought popped into his head that Marcelle might come running in and give him one last hug or something. She didn�t. He did not sleep on the plane. Two days, but basically half the hours later, he was in Bangkok. He was supposed to meet up with his friend Trevor there, somewhere in the airport. But he couldn�t be fucked. He just couldn�t be fucked. He�d see him in about a month-and-a-half�s time anyway. He went to the youth hostel and lay there on the bed, feeling the feeling that he felt. Because it was a giant room with twenty beds in it, a fair few people watched him as he was doing this. It was kind of distracting. When you�re trying to feel a feeling and memorise it so you can feel it whenever you feel like you want to feel the feeling, and the bed�s uncomfy, and there�s people looking at you feeling the feeling, it�s hard. Next time you want to feel the feeling, all you�ll be doing is trying to feel the feeling but instead mostly thinking about those arseholes who were staring. So the feeling the next time would be sullied with anger at those guys. In fact, it was getting that way now. Bryn decided he knew how to get the feeling again, and not on an uncomfy bed. He got up and looked out the window. Yep, just as he suspected. Outside, he ran through the rain for about eight seconds. Then he was in an internet caf�. He leapt onto facebook. It was something that was beyond his control. He logged in. He had about twenty-seven updates. Whatever. He�d been a bit crap with checking it on the Contiki Trip. He didn�t want to know what anyone was doing. Now he did. He really, really did. Well, he did and he didn�t. It depended what she said. He searched through his friends for Marcelle. They�d decided to become facebook friends on day two of the trip, a whole week before they became a couple. Bryn was pretty sure at the time it was a sign. He jumped onto her page. The first thing that he saw was that her relationship status said, �single.� A cold little chill went through him. What did that mean? Well, �it�s complicated� may have been worse. He thought rationally for a moment. His relationship status said, �single.� He was the one vomiting all holiday, so he should have been the first person to say, �in a relationship,� because he was clearly the less responsible one, or the more preoccupied one. Preoccupied with vomiting. He forced himself to go beyond that. He looked at her latest status update. It was from two hours ago. Two hours ago? It felt too immediate, like he could still reach out and push her on the shoulder to let her know he was queasy again. �Marcelle Landry had an awesome time on the trip. Now time to see her sister then couchsurf up to home. Sweet!� Awesome time on the trip. Awesome time on the trip. What did that mean? Couch surfing? God. Bryn wished he�d never read that update. Couchsurfing. She was going to look crap in her sleep on all kinds of people�s couches. All kinds of people who were fun and interesting and hippies and health food store kinds of people who were under twenty as well, so Bryn would be forced out of her brain even more quickly than would have been under normal circumstances. This was the worst day of his life. I�m using hyperbole here, according to Bryn�s experiences up to this point. Things would get a lot worse, especially when he saw what his room was like at home. Then other stuff that was even more crazy and even more worse. We�ll cover that later, in Part Two. Couchsurfing. Shit. It just made Bryn want to couchsurf all the way across the world, just to beat her. Then, he noticed that she had been updating pretty regularly, through the whole trip. He realised that it wasn�t such a difficult thing when you were sober for short stretches of time. �Marcelle Landry saw the grand Canyon. Fourth time!� �Marcelle Landry won the rodeo game! Yesss! Gets to keep the hat!!!!� Bryn didn�t even remember that event. Oh, yeah, he did. There were twenty-three comments and seven likes on that one. Jesus, how popular was she? �Marcelle Landry having a great time in New Mexico!� Thirteen likes. Nobody he knew. Did she have a great time in New Mexico because they were there together, or did she just have a great time in New Mexico? AARGH. Bryn shut the browser. Then he opened it again. He went back into facebook, which was actually a good thing because he hadn�t logged out. He�d just snapped the window shut. He wrote a status update. It took about twenty minutes to word it right. �Bryn Mossman. Man about World.� As soon as he submitted that, he realised it was the crappest thing anyone had ever written on facebook. What did it even mean? Yeah, it was like Man about Town and all that, but more worldly but what did it mean? What the fuck was he doing? But if you delete a status update, it means you care what people think. And if you have a friend who happens to be on facebook, and they see your little stupid status update appear, and then disappear to be replaced with something more sensical, then you�ve been sprung. You overtly care what people think. So he left it. He stared blankly at his profile again. He didn�t look at his updates. Most of them were probably Farmville. He still couldn�t be motivated to get those messages to be automatically chucked in the junk mail. He refreshed. ONE PERSON HAD LIKED HIS STATUS. Already. Who was it? Oh, fuck. If it had been Marcelle, it would have been the best thing in the world. He felt like he was going to wet his pants, alone but not alone in the sweaty, noisy internet caf�. But it was Feng. Just his housemate. Up at all hours back at home, as usual. Feng wasn�t counted. Bryn logged out. There were still thirty-three minutes until his paid internet time ran out. He slumped in the chair and wondered whether he should write an e-mail to his parents or his brother. Eh, fuck it. He just watched the time whittle itself down. He was having a shit time in Thailand. �Bryn? Shit. Bryn?� Bryn shook his head awake to full attention. Whoever the fuck he knew was on the other side of the row of computers. He craned his head. There was Trevor�s bespectacled face, looking glum, the glasses steamed up. Fuck. What were the odds? Fuck. Shit. Busted. �Uh, hey, man,� said Bryn, trying to think of something to say; some Incredible Excuse for not meeting up with him at the airport. It didn�t matter, because Trevor started talking and it negated everything. �Look, I�m so fucking sorry man about not meeting up with you at the airport. It�s just that I�d had a rough last night in London, and I was feeling like crap, and, you know.� �Yeah,� said Bryn. He knew. More than Trevor would ever know. �You want to go and grab a drink?� asked Trevor. �Yeah,� said Bryn. The last thirty-one minutes and twelve seconds of Bryn�s internet time was left to someone else to write about how awesome their holiday was. For the next two days, they were inseparable, and just about always silent, kind of exactly how they were when they were at work. They never elaborated on why they both felt crap. That would have been crap. They kept to dark bars, wasting their time, doing very little sightseeing. They parted ways. Bryn back to home, back to the office. He promised to make sure that Trevor�s shit on his desk didn�t get touched for the next month-and-a-half till he came back to defend them himself. He was off to Malaysia. They patted each other on the back, and Bryn left the last dark bar of Thailand. He had to walk past the infamous internet caf� to get to the bus. Suddenly, he felt a pang of childlike superstition as he went past some dodgy DVD table. He wanted a sign before he touched down in Melbourne. To see if Marcelle would ever think of him again. He rifled through all the DVDs for a sign. Maybe a title, or a girl who looked like her, or something. Beverley Hillbillies, Andre Rieu, The Lucy Show, Andre Rieu, Minority Report, Andre Rieu, Andre Rieu, Andre Rieu, Andre Rieu (all different ones). And there was the sign, quite possibly. �The Best of Marcel Marceau,� with a chilling front cover of a the guy with a caked on frowny face. That was kind of Marcelle�s name, except the guy form. And there was a frowny face on it. Well, that would have to do as the sign. He spent the bus trip listening to a song on his ipod that he hoped nobody would ever find on it. Because it was for wusses. God, he was such a sook and so overtired. He HAD to sleep on the plane. And yet, he did not. He touched down at Tullamarine at 5AM. It was incredibly rainy outside. He could hear it from within layers and layers of security and baggage claim, and family reunions. What the fuck? Melbourne was never incredibly rainy anymore. Nobody was there to meet him as he appeared from International, but that was what he expected. From the Skybus, he just couldn�t help himself. He rang Marcelle. �Uh, hello?� �Hey, um, it�s Bryn.� �Yeah, I know. It�s, like, not even 6AM or something.� �OK, yeah, you�re right. Sorry. Bye.� He hung up like a shot. Shit. Why did he ring at not even 6AM? Hey. Hey, wait a sec. Here it might have been not even 6AM, but over there��..? What the fuck? Bryn turned off his phone. He felt at unease. He took at first train of the day home.
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