Wake-Up!...
I had heard about Wake-Up! from a friend of mine, Jessica, who had stayed there during her trip to Sydney about a year ago. Funny enough, she was also the one who had originally made me aware of Cairns, and rekindled my childhood passion to make my way down here in the first place. Formally, I would like to thank her soon, for helping to fertilize the seed of the idea that helped me consider getting the fuck off of my ass, and branching out elsewhere. And, I chuckle a bit now, in considering how the decisions we make in our lives, can do well to inspire or affect others if they allow it.
Remember to thank Jessica.
The Wake-Up! building itself sits cornered at one of Sydney’s busiest intersections, which sits cornered by one of Sydney’s busiest blocks. The block itself houses a collective of three thousand beds in a variety of hostels, making it a popular harbor for armadas of backpackers. All of whom seem to share a similar passion for pleasure and dissimilar languages. It is a modern age Tower of Babel sans divine intervention. And the brick and mortar called for in that blueprinted tower towards elation are composed of chemicals and decibels. There’s a bar at every corner, and a sound system in nearly every room. I fucking love it. Kevin and I could hear the music seeping out through the front doors of Wake-Up! as we made our way towards the steps of the eight story building.
Today, Wake-Up! is among Sydney’s Heritage buildings. Originally constructed as a department store way back in the day, it dons its history well from the outside. The red bricked, gothic architecture does well to take you back to a time when the men were men, the sheep were nervous, and Franz Ferdinand had yet to take a cap to the jugular. The inside however had an entirely different time-lapse effect all on its own...
Kevin and I stepped past the sliding glass doors, smiling like two boners in a brothel.
“Holy shit...”
The lobby was bright white and palatial. And had we not been consistently reminding ourselves of our location, we would have easily considered that we had stepped through a time warp, and into every pubescent fantasy we’d had about our high school and College years. The place was the epitome of every communal joint in Saved By The Bell that you’d hoped would exist in high school or college, but didn’t. A bar down the stairs to our left, equipped with an arcade and barmaids on par with Playmates, lobby decor and furniture straight out of The Max, and an ensemble of super-hot, foreign girls to compliment the contours of said furniture with the utmost perfection, clicking away on their laptops, before donning their make-up and dresses for a night of drunken promiscuity.
Holy shit... I am eighteen again, living back in the most epic of dorms. But this time, I know now, what I didn’t know then. Maybe, I’ll do it better this time?
Not a chance. You still don’t know much. And what you do know, you do fuck all with...
Fair enough...
We checked in and made our way up to our new room. Kevin and I grinned like fat kids in a fudge factory when an array of women’s perfumes soaked our senses upon entry.
Awesome.
This place was better everywhere. The room was huge. A spacious ten bed dorm with a vaulted ceiling and giant gothic windows, we would share with eight other people. Four of whom, would stay long enough for us to get to know, during our two weeks there. One of whom, by simply meeting her, would aid in shaping the path which took me to where I am today. Formally, I would like to thank her soon for being the great friend that she is.
Remember to thank Sharon.
Sharon and Tess were the only two there when we walked in. Dead asleep and hiding from grey midday light like two vampires wrapped in shadows and coffins of comforter, it was a sight we’d soon get used to. We’d quickly learn, that If they weren’t out drinking or shopping, they were in bed. Not that Sharon was lazy, I would later see her hold down two jobs alongside a predisposition to alcoholism like a champ. She just loves the shit out of sleeping. Francesca on the other hand is a different story all together, and one that kind of sucks at that, so we’ll appropriately pass that turd to the tail-end of these introductions... As for Johnny and Greg, they had yet to be met until later that day. As usual, Johnny was at work, and Greg was checking out the sights around town. Either way, we would meet them, and over the majority of the next couple of weeks, we would all share the same room, a few different stories, and a good deal of experiences which marked some of my firsts in a foreign country, with foreign people, a foreign face, my life on my back, and my sights set forward on an unknown road ahead.
Sharon, Greg, Johnny, and Tessa...
Sharon arrived in Australia shortly before Kevin and I had. A thirty year old Irish girl from Belfast, she had become burned out on her government job back in the UK as a parol officer, sworn off dong for a year--a decision I assumed had been birthed from the death of an awful relationship--packed her shit, and headed out to Australia to ‘backpack’. A term that both her and I use loosely to describe her travel, as she came to Australia with three Cadillac-sized suitcases, full of more shit than necessary to clothe an army of cross-dressing eskimos. An exercise of excess that one could see, if they chose, as merely the materialization of her passionate nature. She loves with all of her heart, laughs with all of her lungs, hates with hot blood and a sharp tongue, and packs like she might have owned a fucking department store at some point in her life. She’s a bit posh, a bit republican, a bit OCD, a bit crazy, a lot smart, a lot beautiful, a lot fun, and most of all, as I mentioned before, a lot loving. I consider myself lucky to have met her, and that she still puts up with all of my shit.
Oh, and she farts like a Clydesdale... I kid... But, seriously...
Greg, was a twenty-eight year old Irish kid from Limerick, who had arrived in Australia months before us with his girlfriend, and had driven across the country with her before she had flown back to Ireland and left him to do some more traveling on his own. And, to this day, unless he has murdered a bus full of children since we’ve last spoke, is one of the most genuine and good-hearted people I have ever met. There were six and a half feet, and two hundred and twenty pounds to Greg, all completely void of malice. He’s the kind of guy who would proffer a pint and a cheer on your best day, and a pint and an ear on your worst. Both without even knowing your name. There’s an understanding in his nature that just might bring peace to the world if they understood as he did. It’s an understanding that I adopted long ago, even before it was broadened and reconfirmed in my studies as a cultural anthropology student. I try to remain cognizant of it every day.
“Do, and allow others to do whatever brings happiness in life, as long as it doesn’t endanger, oppress, or physically hurt anybody else.”
It’s considering simple lessons like that, which make me wish they taught basic anthropology to young kids in school. Somewhere amongst learning how to count the similarities we all share as humans instead of just the differences, and that humanity should always transcend nationality, would be swell. But, that’s utopian circle-jerk fodder of mine, fit for another time...
Aside from our shared experience with the quagmires that were our ‘careers’ in radio, Greg and I shared a fervency for music, which could easily flag us as nerds. He was a former night-time DJ back in Ireland, and had an expansive knowledge on some of my favorite bands. The first second he mentioned The Hold Steady, was the start of a collective fifteen hours we spent conversing on chords and lyrics, and comparing band boners. We also shared a keenness for comedy and writing, that would further motivate me to pursue my passion, and put this all on paper. Granted, it would take another meeting with Greg at roughly twelve hundred miles away to discover said keenness, but nonetheless, it happened, and I consider myself lucky that it did.
Johnny, unfortunately, I didn’t get to know much about. He was the only one of us with a full-time job making money, while the rest of maintained full-time jobs blowing it. I did, however, come to understand a few things for certain. He was twenty-three, from Newcastle, UK, and maintained a confident cool about him equatable to Clooney in the Ocean’s series. Well-dressed and laid-back, he was a good-looking smooth-talker with a sharp wit, and charm that seemed by itself, potent enough to impregnate any female sitting in earshot. As far as I knew, he was loyal to his girlfriend back in the UK, he never seemed to give out the wrong impression, and women fully aware of his monogamous situation still stood in line for the sold-out spectacle. Whether we were in the bar, or back in the room, there was never let down in his response to anything, nor did he ever seem unpleasantly surprised by anything. He had an aura of ease about him that appeared to calm those in proximity. And regardless if he was bluffing or not, it looked as though he took the hand he was dealt in any situation, and made the game work in his fashion. An approach I applauded at times we all sat shooting the shit in that bar downstairs, and still do to this day. He was just plain, fucking cool. And while I’m sure I don’t need to, I hope that he is doing well.
And now that we’ve appropriately placed that veritable poo in the punchbowl...
Tessa, delightfully, was a twenty-four year old train-wreck from somewhere in the UK, where they might raise their children solely on beatings and boredom. And while I’m sure that she had told me exactly where that was a multitude of times, I’ll chalk up ignorance to the indifference that inevitably appropriated my attention at roughly three minutes into any one of her thirty minute droning disquisitions. Not that I didn’t try, I really did at first, but said disquisitions eventually tended to take to me like anchors, and I suppose detachment seemed like the best way to keep my spirits from sinking. Most of the time, her stories were focused on how ‘bored’ or ‘miserable’ she had become, and were drenched in enough despondency to affect the mouth that affected her speech. When she spoke, listlessness had her lips nearly paralytic. Sentences were mashed up into incomprehensible mumbles, and sometimes just trailed-off into silence halfway through, as if she had exhausted herself just thinking about the melancholic monologue. I think the only time I heard her speak clearly enough to easily comprehend was when she was unloading some snarky slight amidst the jubilant laughter of everybody else. Another missile amongst her munitions of misery with which she could effectively attrit the life, joy, and happiness out of any situation.
It should also be noted, that such munitions had a propensity for sinking blasts into me that resonated with heavy dissonance far beyond the light-hearted ambiance of those situations. Mostly on account of disconcerting introspection, during, and post-bombardment. Perhaps that’s why I seem so impassioned on the topic of her petulant bullshit, and felt so inclined to distance myself in the first place. Well get to that later, though.
Anyway, she left for Australia after she had become bored with her rather comfortable lifestyle back in the UK, would eventually leave for Cairns because she was bored of Sydney, and at the moment, is probably subjecting some sorry sap to another story about how bored she is ‘now’ that the only way he feels he can leave it, is by boring himself with a .45 caliber slug, from chin to skull-cap.
I speak from experience....
But, to be honest, I would be lying to say that none of the time that we spent together in Sydney was tolerable. Ninety percent of the time we shared, she was a menstrual maelstrom that I found myself trying to ignore. She wore a frown like a pale, angry clown, with sunken blue eyes, straight brown hair that struggled to meet her drooping shoulders, and she carried her mood like a fucking pallbearer. The other ten percent of the time we spent together, I didn’t know what to do with. It usually occurred when the both of us somehow found each other at night, blitzed on a mix of bad booze and good music, somewhere in the building where both were readily available. Sometimes, it was simply slamming sauce in the dorm room and trading tunes back and forth while the roommates downed drinks around us. Sometimes it was downstairs in that bar, trading verses back and forth while the music blared, and the entire hostel downed drinks around us. And whether it was the clear liquor and distorted chords that pleasantly clouded my perception--as such combinations seem to do with me--or she genuinely checked her bitch bags at the door and came to life in the party, there was something about her during those times to which I was slightly drawn. Like a withered plant resurrected by heavy rains, she seemed resurrected with heavy waves of wine and sound in a rather miraculous fashion. There was a spark that lit up in her whenever said waves hit, and it seemed to catch and warm her frigid fame. Her eyes brightened, her face would flush to the complexion of a living person, and there was something in the way that she laughed, and looked at the ceiling when she danced that I kind of liked for some reason. The reason of course, I would later on recognize with a snatch of chagrin and a chuckle to boot. Either way, it was this ten percent that would eventually blind my better judgement, as that spark would once be bright enough in my hazy phase to blot out the other ninety percent of her that was a vapid vortex of suck, and subsequently leave me with a situation I had known quite well should be avoided. But that’s over a week away at this point.
Told you, you wouldn’t do it better this time.
Stupid me... Fuck it!
Kevin and I dropped off our gear and immediately hit the streets again, to begin what would seem like our routine for the next week in Sydney. And although the weather had officially developed an enduring routine of it’s own in blanketing the skies, or just plain dumping on us, our dedication maintained resilience. Wake up, hit the city streets, eat some grub, hit the city sights, shower up, head down, drink through city nights, puke, pass out, repeat. A rather rigid regimen shaped and driven by the almost boyish fixation we had with our new environment, and the sense of bewilderment that the abundance of stimulus in this city seemed to provide us with. Even if we had to experience the majority of them soaked and sunless. Most days, we’d spend wet, running around to some of the city’s best attractions, elated at every stop--the Opera House, the Botanic Gardens, the Aquarium, the Wildlife Park, Hyde Park. Most nights, we’d try to spend dry in that bar downstairs, watching some of the city’s best attractions running around, elated at every sip--blondes, brunettes, English, French, Brazilians, Australians. An exchange of environment that Kevin and I considered pleasantly adequate. We would simply move from a flood of precipitation, into a flood of sexed up, stilettoed captivation. We were Bobbie and Whitney in a sea of crack... And that sea seemed faintly familiar in so many aspects. One night, mid-sip, with the brim of my glass over the bridge of my nose, I strove to cook up comparisons as I watched six femme fatales stroll across the dance floor. Hot, neon light bending with their stalking stems that swam like an electric, moving watercolor through the refracting bow of my amber-glazed tumbler.
“Jesus Christ. This is almost like being back at State...”
I glanced again to see the tall blonde in the back flip tapered waves of her platinum hair over a lightly bronzed, naked shoulder. It caught a beam of ruby light as it flew and bursted like a firework before falling to a halt, behind the back of her black satin dress. The dress itself, struggling not to slip above or below the slender curves of her nearly bare body. She turned her head in our direction, and lit up the distance between us with bright green eyes. I struggled not to let my beer slip above or below my fingers.
“Yeah, bro. Except there’s... Holy shit, those girls are gorgeous. ...No class.”
“Yeah, I saw them... Good point. And it appears this place accommodates accordingly, it’s been a perpetual party pit for the last five nights. ...And I think that tall blonde just turned me ‘tarded. I just spilled beer on myself, like a fucking infant.”
“Yeah. Fucking Side Bar’s got us. ...I can’t stop staring at them.”
“Haha. Good call. Let me rephrase that, ‘this is almost like being on a pseudo classy, college Spring Break.’ ...Yeah, I might need a brain wash, it’s getting filthy up there.”
“I know, man. I feel like I’m in a movie right now. Dude...”
“Rad. Let me know at which point in your script, those girls get all Australian Pie on us.”
“Cheers.”
“To fucking Side Bar...”
And while I write this now, I feel like if I could travel back in time and do it again, said salut would have to be loaded with far more sentiment than either of us had intended the first round. In fact, while writing this, I had almost scrapped the anecdote above in fear of being too tangential. But the reality is, as I think about it, that place and moments in it like that, played a huge role in shaping our collective experience in Sydney. Side Bar had become like our base. A pivot point between consciousness and lack thereof, where I would have as many servings of reality as surreality, and make memories of as many moments as I would forget, blacked-out beneath a strobe light. It was a beacon and a black hole to us, all the same. We’d convince ourselves, after a long day out, that it was a place for us to hang our hats and relax with a cold beer and a hot meal without blowing the bank. But as I mentioned before, the place had a certain setting to it that tended to line us in, via our wide open eyes and ears--and balls for that matter, as long as we’re being honest, because we know what’s running the show most of the time, especially with surroundings like that. The music would start pumping, and our testosterone levels would follow suit as droves of beautiful women descended into that basement from somewhere up above. And as follows, the two or three intended beers would multiply into into twelve or more in a rough two hours time, and the durability of that bank would be heavily tested.
For the most part, however, I don’t think the either of us really gave a shit big enough about that bank to deter us once those tumblers started tilting for those first seven days there. For one, we were just having too much fun. We were amazed by the novelty of our situation, and figured we might as well experience it to the fullest. We were halfway around the world, jobless, young, single, untethered by the burdens of our past (or at least attempting to be in my case), and uncertain of our futures. I think we were just trying to live in the present. Second of all, when it came down to it, we were really just fucking tired of worrying about money. Kevin had been stressing about it for the last year, after being laid off from his job, subsequent to a mere eleven months of service. And I had spent the last few years, busting my balls between two jobs, battling to keep the balance in my account over zero, and stressing over the plausibility of overdrafting with every $1.80 transaction.
A battle, which when lost, would be succeeded by an application of overkill on behalf of the lovely Wells Fargo, that was sure to make you feel not only like you might have just lost next week’s meal money, but that you were also kind of losing at life. A disposition which they had seemed far from reluctant to compound and exploit. Because nothing really says, “Fuck you, poor guy!" quite like tacking a thirty-five dollar fee onto a buck-eighty cup of coffee that was purchased after the morning shift, in order to stay awake for the night shift.
Although, I suppose if you’re a bank that’s going to take in a record three-billion dollars in profit in your first quarter of the year, you need to pull it from whatever pockets you can. And I guess that paycheck to paycheck type of lifestyle was one that I adopted when I decided to punch in for pennies and nickels at that station. Not that I regret it, I don’t. The friends and experience I walked away with from that place are worth far more than any paycheck could have ever amounted to.
And I’m obliged to raise this warm Sapporo to some of them now...
Remember to thank Nate and Jason...
But, I digress. The fact is, being poor totally fucking sucked, and when I stepped onto that outbound plane in San Diego, after selling my Ranger, my computer, and nearly all of the secondhand furniture we had accumulated over the years, I had more money in that account than I had ever had in my life. And Kevin was able to compile enough savings to make his account comparable after shacking back up with the parents, and being bill-free for a few months. And while it really wasn’t much, it was enough to allow us to put our stress at rest, and feel like kings for a short period of time. So, we dined and drank accordingly. At least in juxtaposition to what we were used to. Even the ten dollar steak deal down in Side Bar seemed like a meal beyond our former means.
“Bro, this is ridiculous, we’ve been eating steak for the last four nights.”
“I know. I’m eating better here than I ever did back in the States.”
“Yeah. It beats the shit out of Mac & Cheese without milk every night.”
“The ‘Mac’ has been Pac-man, Paquiao’d.”
“”Nother beer?”
“Several, please.”
And so, the cycle would catch wind again, and we’d rage on like a hurricane, blowing money and braincells out onto anything we saw fit to feed the euphoria fix, without any regrets the next day. Steaks, beers, shots, fifteen dollar cocktails, a sixteen dollar pack of cigarettes, twenty-five dollar breakfasts to settle gurgling guts the morning after. All of it, without hesitation. But like all things, good or bad, they must come to and end. And nearing the end of that week we’d find ourselves subjected to a series of events, and revelations that would rightfully throw us from our thrones, and put the kibosh on our drinking and spending spree. Or, at least attempt to. Let’s stay in it for a while though. Because even after hurricane California had been officially neutralized and subsequently drained by the elements of that Harbour Town, I don’t regret a thing. It was fun as shit. And I suppose now, would be the appropriate time to summarize the rest of the novel experiences with certain things, events, and people, that and who, made it that way. Including, a rather comical clash of character, which later lead to the both of us having shit beat out of us in the middle of a cold, wet street.
