GUMSUCKER
Introduction: I'm not an writer however I did feel I needed to record some of the experiences I've had in life for the future. Think of this as a 80,000 diary entry haha. I will add extra chapters to my blog as the weeks pass. Again, the writing might be a bit crass. The book is about 10 years old and is a reflection of the time I lived in Australia and became homeless and was typed heavily under the influence of wine and weed.
Note: This book is unique to read.cash. The contents have never been released.
1.
A friend once said to me ‘The funny thing about Airports is you can be whoever you want to be’. Now, when I read it back on paper it doesn’t make any fucking sense, but at the time it was the most profound thing I’d ever heard.
It was nice thought, but for me the departure lounge was a cold waiting room for inevitable death. There is no time for pretend. I’m always too busy controlling my anxieties and imposing fears. I stand at the big glass windows common to every shite airport around the world and helplessly gaze out at the planes. Forget Aerospace Engineers and experts; those flimsy looking death machines always look beat to shit. The retired achievements of human engineering, old horses that nobody wants to bet on.
I always watch the Captain and his co-pilot in the cockpit, applying their fake tan, fumbling with the knobs and switches, they look like two kids getting ready for Halloween, it’s all a big game to them, they’re talking to gibberish to each other, debating about whether any of the air hostess is up for giving out a hand job. All pilots sound unsure to me, unsure of the weather, unsure of the altitude, unsure of the destination or why the flights been delayed. They’re always completely hung over from a night of shagging the young flight attendants, wild staff nights in at expensive hotels. They speak in that monotonous pilots tone; half-hearted words of welcome and thanks whilst the flight attendants float up and down the aisle making sure the irrelevant procedures are in place, with their hauntingly fake smiles of hospitality.
Once I’ve boarded and I’ve comfortably strapped myself to my seat, with the belt cutting off the circulation of blood to my legs, and all my electronics switched off because the placebo effects of following these pointless rules keeps me calm whilst I wait for the pilot to welcome us on board. All pilots sound unsure to me, unsure of the weather, unsure of the altitude they’ll be flying at, unsure of the destination or why take-off has been delayed.
I have to watch the flight attendants facial expressions before, during and after take-off, it helps me relax. Considering them to have the most verified experience of flying, familiar with every click, crack and bang like a brain surgeon recognises every tiny nerve. However my anxiety convinces me there’s something seriously wrong, the planes going down for sure, the engine doesn’t sound quite right, the brain surgeons slipped and cut the wrong vein and there’s blood and gasoline pouring out all over the place, my muscles start to tighten, my jaw clenches up, my teeth grinding back and forth repeatedly until my cheekbones ache and my throat turns to sand. I’m yelling “I need a glass of fucking water over here!” and If the flight attendants are laid back, not in a great hurry to serve me, or talking unprofessionally to their colleagues about who fucked who last night “that little whore”, only then can I relax and start breathing again.
2.
I hadn’t flown in 3 years. Avoiding it religiously by using the much better faith of train travel. Long drawn out rides across vast lands, watching the earth change before your own eyes. I’d just done this all the way from my home town in Scotland to the south of Vietnam. So by the time I found myself in Ho Chi Me International Airport in the middle of a monsoon I began to feel the fear creeping back. All the insecurities of flying came flooding back.
I stood by the big windows and watched the clouds cackle in the sky and roar down on the helpless world. The pilots sat in their death machines fiddling, and all the little Vietnamese workers in their mushroom hats swarmed around the them, talking into their flashing radios coded nonsense that meant something to someone somewhere, attaching the long cold tunnel that leads to what seems to me like death row. I felt completely and utterly helpless in every sense of the word.
I had been moving around with three English boys I’d met in Hanoi. They kept saying things to me like; ‘That weather doesn’t sound to healthy, my Uncles a pilot and he says lightning can bring a plane down in a flash’. I ignored their persistent attempts to make me feel worse. We sat in the bar and waited for the boarding call. I asked the bar-tender to make me up something fairly lethal to help take the edge off. ‘How about a Long Island Ice Tea?’ He suggested. I knocked it back and ordered a beer to chase.
The boys went on trying to scare me but I focused my mind else ware and drank a second beer. A couple of girls sat down opposite us. One of them caught my eye and smiled. She was blonde, probably Scandinavian or something similar. She had the most enchanting eyes, a rich ocean blue, they were deep and full of life, they made my heart drop to the floor. I admired her colourful ragged sarong and greasy hair and the way she lazily tied it back with an elastic band. I wanted to go over and talk to her but it was useless, my brain was melting down and I was too busy trying to control my anxieties.
I drank two more beers and began to realise I was completely smashed. The boys kept hampering on and the blonde girl kept glancing at me, feeding me smiles, torturing my inhibitions and making me feel sad. It had been so long since I’d felt the gentle touch of a women, and here was this Scandinavian goddess across the room toying with my pain. Teasing me with what I can’t just reach out and touch.
The plane finally boarded, I fumbled my passport and papers and dropped them all over the ground. The flight attendant looked me in the eye and asked if I was drunk. I wanted to ask her “Did the Captain’s cock tasted like you’d hoped it would?”. Instead I dodged the question and squeezed my way through the aisle trying to connect the digits and letters on my ticket to the ones above the seats but my eyes just wandered off in all directions. I sat down and started my routine. I stared out the oval window and decided it offered little protection from the outside world. Surely it will crumble under the pressure of this huge storm, considering strongly about mentioning it to the flight attendant but finally deciding this could only add to her suspicion that I was severely intoxicated.
The rain battered down relentlessly on the two wings, there was one of those strange flashing automobiles with a cherry picker stationed next to my window and a Vietnamese man in a yellow vest and shorts was jabbing a broom into the engine and sweeping out the trapped rain water. I felt as sick as a dog. I buried my head into my knees and waited patiently for take-off.
I felt someone sit next to me, but I remained in the foetal position until the flight attendant told me to sit up straight. When I sat back all I could see was those enchanting ocean eyes, a few centimetres away this time, and more blue, more mysterious and more painful than ever before. I acknowledged her with a smile. She thought carefully for a moment and said ‘You’re that boy who was staring at me in the bar, aren’t you?’. I told her I wasn’t staring, she just happened to be sitting opposite me. She seemed disappointed with this. I corrected myself and said I was guilty of staring, but who could blame me she was pretty. ‘You drank like three beers in half an hour, you must be feeling drunk no?’ She inquired. ‘Yes, very, and actually it was four beers and a Long Island Ice Tea’. I corrected her ‘…and to be honest I got drunk because I’m shit scared of flying’.
‘Why are you scared?’ She asked.
I rambled on about uncertainties, devil pilots and weak plastic windows. The Vietnamese worker outside my window bashing the delicate engine with his damp broom. I told her planes were once reliable machines but now Airline company’s tried their hardest to reduce the costs of building them because they wanted to offer cheap flights. She laughed at my conspiracies and took hold of my hand. ‘I know you were staring at me, I notice these things, and besides didn’t you notice I was staring at you too?’. I blushed and dodged the question. I didn’t quite know how to react.
Never before had a girl been so forward with me. She asked me why I was flying to Singapore. I told her I had run out of money, I was on my way to Cairns in Australia to find some work. By this point the plane had backed up onto the runway and the engines began to roar. My face turned from a flushed red instantly to a pale vile green, my hands started to tremble. I tried to take my hand back to hold onto the seat but she held it tighter, and even tighter and began massaging my palm with her thumb, still she was smiling and still torturing my soul with her deep ocean blue eyes. I just stared back into them as the plane took to the air, carefully examining the marble blue patterns, her dilated pupils the centre of the my world and everything else was just blurry and irrelevant.
Before I had time to worry I heard the reassuring ding-dong caused by the Captain switching off the seatbelt sign. I took a deep breathe. ‘Not so bad was it?’ She asked. I shook my head sheepishly.
Her name was Louise Erikson Plym. She was 28 years old. Born and raised in Malmo, Sweden. She worked for IKEA, I told her I thought all Swedish people worked for IKEA and they all wore clogs to work. She said I was silly. I told her this was my first flight in 3 years. I’d just travelled from Scotland to Vietnam by land, straight through Europe, Russia, Mongolia and China and then Vietnam all because I hated flying. She was most impressed with my feat. She said her job was the best, she had to fly out to major cities and help with the opening of new IKEA stores. Her next job was in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and after that she was unsure of her exact plans. For now she was just enjoying the tourism and the sunshine.
The plane flew without a single hiccup over the South China Sea and landed safely in Singapore.
I walked Louise off the plane to collect our luggage. The boys came bundling over and started making jokes, asking if I’d passed out, or cried for that matter. She blanked their questions like a boss and introduced herself as my new girlfriend. Her friend came rushing over and insisted they leave. She wrote her number on the palm of my hand with a black permanent marker and told me to call her if I was still here tomorrow; and just like that off she went lost to me in the muggy Asian air.
We met up the next evening, and took long walks around the sleeping city streets. We bought a bottle of red from a bar and sat around on the grass getting drunk. We lay back and watched the stars in their infinite melancholy move through the night sky. She gave me the stare again, that deep marble ocean blue hypnotic stare of hers that takes my breathe away. My hands were trembling again, she told me to relax and asked if she could kiss me. I said ‘yes’. It was so gentle, and sweet, she kissed only my top lip and nibbled for a moment on the bottom lip.
She said it was the Scandinavian Christmas tomorrow, the 24th she and her friend Cecilia were going to have dinner on the roof of their hotel. She wanted me to join her and the boys could come too if they wanted. I said I’d be there.
The boys thought the dinner was a good idea, we would be flying on Christmas day anyways, why not celebrate early for a change. We headed over in our best clothes, whatever wasn’t torn or oil stained from our motorbikes. The dinner was delicious they had done well, we all got absolutely steaming and decided to hit the clubs immediately. Louise organised a couple of cabs and we were suddenly rushed off to the main nightlife district of Singapore on a busy Saturday night.
The boys went off in search of their own girls whilst me and Louise sat around at the bar drinking cocktails, getting more drunk, more mad and merry every minute. It was all so perfect, the perfect meal, the perfect girl, and perfect celebration, and how did I get myself into this crazy downfall of a backpacking love affair. I remember grabbing her at one point and saying ‘Louise Erikson Plym. I might be a…little…bit tipsy, drunk even, but do you know what, I like you, I…like…you…a…lot.
We got more drunk and somehow fell into dispute, neither of us had any clue to what the argument resolved around but we both had the rage, and never wanted to see each other again. We stormed off in opposite directions without looking back, wandering through the empty festive streets of capitalist Asia in all its brutality and crooked ways.
3.
Fresh off the boat in tropical Australia I earned myself some treacherous labouring work on a Banana paddock which at the time sounded brilliant, I had it all planned out, savings, living expenses and leisure etc. The whole elaborate idea that I would work a few months in the agricultural system was great; apart from the fact my body was in its worst state in years. The owners of the farm were complete dickheads. Six days a week a bus picked me up alongside 40 other strangling vagabonds at 5am. The journey took about 45 minutes and the bus was so rundown and cold it made Vietnamese buses feel like first-class travel.
The work was hideous. It consisted of long-drawn out 10 hour days humping 60 kilo bunches of banana’s back and forth through thick jungle bush infested with deadly spiders, ants and worst of all the feared Australian Brown Snake, which packed a punch of venom that would kill a human within half an hour. On day two my neck gave in under the weight of a banana bunch and I was demoted to a soul-less job stacking large plastic bags in the farm warehouse.
I did however spend an enjoyable day swimming in a river pool called ‘Alligators Nest’ but the small reward was blackened when my ear started to ache a week later from an infection I picked up in the river.
Another week later the dickhead farmers sent me out to a paddock to help plant some tree’s. With no hat or working sun cream I collapsed in a heap on the dirt and fell asleep. To my dismay the dickheads found me in my misery and with no sympathy or evidence of any empathy at all towards my exhaustion or imposing ear infection; they fired me on the spot. I walked for 4 hours back to town where I was staying and thought of my future prospects. The women who organised my job in the first place talked briefly about possible positions on other farms, but I acted uninterested and she gave up.
I sat around for a few days moping, I tried to climb a mountain to clear my head but gave up about half-way when I came across a colourful spider and a great thick web spun across the track. So I wandered downhill defeated and back to my dirty shack. My situation got worse when I woke up in the middle of the night with bedbug bites all over me, head to toe. I complained to the housekeepers and they bought me some medical cream. By this point I was sick with fevers, and sweating uncontrollably at night and not eating during the day. I was completely deaf in my left ear because of the infection and my muscles ached with great stabbing jolts whenever I did anything.
4.
The next day I flew to Cairns dejected and lonely. She flew to Kuala Lumpur on business. I was alone again. On New Year’s Eve in Cairns just before I went to the farm, we spoke on the phone and made up, she told me she was being stationed in Sydney as part of her job. I said ‘shout me when your there and maybe I’ll come visit. Then we can finish what we started’. We never made it together in Singapore, our fallout left a burning desire in me for sex, and the sex had to be with Louise, my inhibitions wouldn’t have it any other way.
A few days after the bedbug incident I received a message from Louise. It read - ‘In Sydney’ xxx -. I read her message with delight and impulsively booked a flight south to Sydney (Australia’s Big Apple) with my remaining $200. An hour later I packed my bags and started walking back up the road towards Cairns.
When I arrived at the airport, check-in stopped me and asked me to bin a Tupperware box full of cooked pasta and pesto in the bin, I couldn’t take it on the plane. I argued with the officer and gave him the hungry Africans and anti-consumerist chat but the bugger was stubborn, he gave me the boring post 9/11 excuse, so I binned my dinner angrily and boarded.
The plane circled Sydney twice before landing, this gave me the opportunity to gaze helplessly out the small oval window at my forth-coming home. She was massive, stretched across green suburban hills of lush vegetation and inland bays of salt water teeming with water cars and water homes, sailboats and surfers. In the centre a majestic tower pierced the atmosphere and hung in the clouds silently, it all looked incredibly big and gentle and motionless. A completely overwhelming landscape of urban jungle. I was excited, the idea of laying Louise down on a mattress and going wild had my heart racing.
5.
Louise was bunking in the Kingscross district, so after landing I hopped on a local bus destined for Kingscross, and sat back leaning on my torn backpack and relaxed with my thoughts.
When the bus reached the depot I jumped off with a vibrant hop and headed straight into the blood flow of Downtown, Sydney. It didn’t look quite right. The dreadlocked surfers and young suburban professionals I saw from the plane had been replaced by vacant looking shadows. Thin pale faces, cheekbones bursting through their skin, caved in eye sockets that housed dehydrated eyes. Straight cut denim jeans and smoky leather jackets. My eyes met with a huge black transvestite, her face caped in thick white make-up and purple eye shadow. Her Adams apple rumbled as she looked at me and said ‘Damnnnnn you is fine’. I moved on horrified weaving my way through Bandit phone shops, Mini casinos, Strip clubs and colourless hostels and guesthouses looking for a place called ‘Bradys’. The sun was collapsing behind the dilapidated buildings fast when I accidentally stumbled across Bradys, a vibrant red door on the corner of desperate and bleakness avenue.
I asked the attendant about Louise, he said he could recall two blonde girls checking-in but was unsure if they were still bunking. I checked into their cheapest room, an 8 bed mixed dorm on the noisy first floor. The place was a shithole. When I opened my room door; the hall light encapsulated the skittering of cockroaches; they scrambled nauseatingly underneath some dirty bags and clothes. I paid the guy upfront for two nights and was now well and truly broke. I sat in the television room patentitly with my book and waited hopelessly for Louise to show up and save the day.
The night dragged on, soulless American comedy and comedy after comedy. Still no beautiful girl with golden hair. Stranger after stranger passing through to the kitchen, saying there bit, asking the same questions backpackers always ask in the commies of hostels worldwide. Where you’ve been? Where you’re going? And where’d you come from? I always reply with the same compulsive lie every time. ’I’m going to Jamaica mon, because Jamaica where I come from bro’. Most askers understood my sarcasm others seemed to go on endlessly, asking questions about weed, reggae, are you Rastafarian then? Too a point where I’d put on a sick Scottish accent and say ‘Day ah look fucking Jamaican tae ya pal?’. Sometimes they laughed, but equally they scarpered like those cockroaches back into their holes. I was bitter, a bitter old man (23) waiting for his love in a whirlwind of despair and teenage gap year sensations, maxing their rich parents credit-cards on sky-diving and surf lessons, or drugs, rock and roll. My ear was especially sore tonight, I wondered if Louise did show up, could I even enjoy her limbs the same way I often dreamed of. With this bad ear, the bedbug bites and scabs from my bike crash I looked hideous. Savage, all cooped up in my portable bed sheet, slumped across the sofa, mumbling at the television set lazy insults and plot flaws. Who would shag this carcass I thought. I laughed to myself a little bit, then cried a little bit, ‘I’ll give her an hour and then fuck this, bed’. I thought. Two hours passed and I eventually hit the sack. I lay awake most of the night sweating with my bad ear in the direction of two kids having it off next to me. Fair play I thought, if I had Louise here right now that might have been me, displaying my instinctual behaviour like a mannequin in a department store window. Beautiful.
I woke up the next morning to a note that read ‘Found you. Busy today, but will meet you in the television room at 10pm xXx’. This is good I thought, she knows I’m here, waiting. I wanted to surprise her but I think I can relax now, I was playing the optimist. I drank some free coffee, ate some free cereal and spent the day busking with my guitar in the Subway, I found a quiet stairwell away from the trains, put out my hat and cotton mascot turtle Larry and jammed to myself whilst lying flat on my back without a care. I did this for about 4 hours and made $12, enough to feed me for sure but certainly not enough to pay for my infested room at Bradys. I bought a hamburger and a coke and spent the rest of my hard earned cash on Internet. The $4 p/h service cleaned me out completely leaving me desperate for work. I emailed countless ad’ a CV. I got one reply from a male masseuse, he gave some spiel about how he was working in an office but really wanted to be a Masseuse, he wanted a specimen to work on to help keep his hand in the trade. I back tracked to the site I found his ad on and decided it looked shady, probably just some old pervert looking for young blood, I was desperate but not so desperate as to prostitute myself.
I retreated to the television room and watched another lame film, I considered the possibility of being stood up as the clock neared 10pm. I shouted insults at Louise in my head, fits of rage, angry to be kept waiting and the distance I travelled to see her, and she can’t even keep a small time promise she wrote on a dirty receipt. Still cooling a raging burn inside me I glanced at the clock, tick-tock, 9:59pm, and then out of nowhere she just walked right in sat next to me and said ‘Hej!’.
It was just like old times, she curled up next to me and opened a bottle of red. I told her about the farm, the flight down and the pasta I had to throw away. I complained about bedbugs, my sunburn. We reminisced about our only days together and laughed about the fight. It was nice, it felt right. After midnight we went to my room, and quietly fondled and teased each other under the covers, trying not to shake the bunk and wake up my neighbour. It was utterly delicious, her skin so soft against my rugged burnt leather. Her lips soothing and warm against my pale cracked dry ones, she fixed me for a split-second, the aches disappeared, the worry left my head and the happiness seeped in, and at the end of it I lay back and slept hard, without a wink.
The next few days we’re easy going, Louise understood my situation and perhaps my vagabond and vague perception of life is what attracted her to me, and besides she has money, lots of it. I can tell by the clothes she wears, her shoes, her smell. But it was never mentioned. The guy at the reception turned blue on us, one night we came home from a night of dancing and drinking, from some beat underground, bass rumbling hole in Kingscross and he was in Louise’s bed half naked. He was roaring drunk and began spewing vulgar idea’s at her he mumbled something like ‘I’m gonna fuck you tonight, you little Swedish whore’ Louise got the rage, the heat, she lashed out and skelped him across his bald bollocks and he crept off into the night whimpering.
The next morning she complained to the owner, he relieved her of rent for the next week, apologised and then fired the receptionist cunt whose name was also Michael, like me, right in front of us. Louise winked at him, he looked miserable, completely hung and embarrassed, ashamed almost. I sniggered and thanked the owner. Louise told me she had to go to a meeting in Melbourne, she said which was good because Cecilia was there with some guy and she could spend the weekend with her. She said she could speak to the owner about transferring his weekly rent offer on to me, which she succeeded in doing, by using her fluttering eye lashes. And just like that she was off again, but she left me another note the following morning. Which read ‘Hej Sot Grot (Swedish word meaning –sweet oatmeal) See you on Sunday, TV room at 10pm xXx’ (3days time).
I checked my mail and found a reply, a job offer to work a touring carnival that was passing through Sydney. It seemed legit, I called up the guy and he gave me a destination and time for Monday morning. I had a job, I had a bed, paid up for 7 days, things were looking positive. But still I had but a penny to my name, no real food of substance and nowhere to go. I busked near the main Kingscross clubs and pubs on the Friday night, it was good, way better than the quiet subway steps. Partyers threw $5 notes into my box, I played some cheesy requests, danced a little, drank some wine with other hobo type characters. Some big lads approached me whilst I burst into a folk number. One of them looked me in eye and said ‘Do you want me to break you fag?’ I said ‘No, not really’ or something like that, he looked generally angry? He kicked my bucket of change across the road, laughed with his big dickhead mates and moved on. I gathered up what I could find in the dark and walked on home, losing a little more of what little hope I had for humanity.
I stopped at a bottle shop and bought a 4l box of red wine for ten bucks. Boxed wine is an Aussie bums holy grail, their Dead Sea Scrolls, their Koran. It’s nicked named ‘Goon’ an Aboriginal word for pillow I came to learn. Apparently a favourite beverage between the Aboriginal people of Australia, they get pissed on the boxes of wine, and not being genetically prepared through generations of alcohol abuse it evidently hits harder, much harder, creating out bursts of incredible rage amongst themselves, they then settle down remove the inner bag and blow it up like a pillow, and sleep on street corners or some sort nonsense like that. It was all quite racist to be honest but plausible I guess, the only Aboriginals I’d encountered so far were a group of bums in Cairns who tried to mug me when I was pissed.
I spent the rest of the weekend going on long walks through the city parks, so vast it felt like mini national parks in the middle of concrete mass. I carried my wine in my bag pack and got drunk slowly but surely, awaiting Monday morning, preparing, relapsing.
6.
In every hostel around the world there is a free food shelf, a place for departing travellers to leave behind excess food or drink, most of the time there is little but packs of salt, spices, stock ect. But on Sunday morning there was a cup-o-soup, sweet corn and chicken flavour too. I grabbed it quick , cleaned up a dirty mug and boiled the kettle. I sat down in the television room with my soup, curled up in a blanket, box of wine at my side and my book, settled relatively happy considering the circumstances, and began watching another film.
At noon the TV room door opened and two girls walked in. Instantly it was obvious that they were not backpackers, their clothes were of a business like style, big collared white shirts with a cardigan pulled over the top, hair pinned back in a neat bunch. They wore serious expressions on their made faces and bore strange fake smiles, like the smile worn by a bearer of good news. One of the girls had greasy looking blonde hair, poker straight and looked particularly Irish, almost like she was hiding another face beneath the one she was wearing. It looked like it could fall off any second. ‘Anyone looking for work? If so come outside for a quick chat’ she said in a thick Irish accent. I was intrigued, technically I was sorted and very happy but I fought no harm could be done by listening to the pair.
A few of us gathered outside in a semi-circle and the blonde thing spoke ‘Hello, my names Siobhan Donaughey and this is Issy Gilbertson, we are going on a road trip this afternoon to a wicked town in the bush called Cobar, Do you want to earn up to $1000 a week?’ Well of course I thought. ‘We are looking for open-minded, enthusiastic and hard-working individuals to join our team’. ‘What’s the catch’ I asked. ‘There’s no catch, we are representing some clients that’s all, we are a promotions team. We specialise in brand awareness, it’s easy money. Anyone interested in more information?’. I pondered, the others grunted among themselves and wandered off. ‘I might be interested, but I’m supposed to start work for a fairground in the morning, and plus I have no money for a bed or for living expenses, like food.’ She nodded like she knew where I was coming from. ‘Integral Marketing, the company we work for will give you $140 in expenses for the week, accommodation is already booked and paid for, so is the car rental.’ It all seemed a bit strange, too good to be true or catch-less. ‘Can I get back to you?’ I asked. ‘We are leaving right now, this is your only chance right now, besides I’ve worked those fairs, they pay peanuts and it’s boring as hell, I think you would fit nicely in our team’. Why does she keep saying team, who’s in this team and why would I fit, I know nothing about marketing, I don’t even know what brand awareness stands for. ‘Leaving like right now, right this minute?’ I concerned. ‘We can wait for you too pack your bag and check out, but be quick’.
So off I went to my room and stuffed my bag with my things, told the owner I needed to go, please tell Louise I’ll be in touch I begged, before parading down the steps on to the street. We walked to the car rental place and checked in, we were giving a beautiful purring white Mercedes, four doors and a huge spacious boot. It was a slick ride and I don’t even like cars. I asked some basic questions about the job, which seemed to get more and more vague the more I asked, I asked how long the drive was. They said roughly 5 or 6 hours depending on the roads and weather. They sounded like one of those pilots, and I trusted them less. About 3 hours later Siobhan climbed in the back seat whilst Issy sat up front driving. She began explaining the job, what she does, what I’ll be doing ect. She pulled out a UNICEF pamphlet and said we represent them. Oh dear I thought, Is it sales work? I inquired. I knew from back home in Edinburgh that companies employ young hipsters to stand on the street and sell monthly subscriptions to various different charities and causes. ‘Well technically yes’ she said in a deceptive manner. ‘What do you mean by technically’? ‘Well we don’t stand on the street and sell to people in a rush, we visit them at their homes, have a chat to them about what we do and sign them up’. ‘Sign them up to what, a mailing address?’ ‘Not exactly, we want them to donate on a monthly basis’. ‘Haha, I knew there was a catch, how much am I actually going to get for this may I ask?’. ‘Don’t worry it’s easy, I’m going to show you exactly how it’s done, you just need to follow some simple steps and have a good attitude’ She got Issy to go on about how much money she made last week, how easy this all was, as if to reassure me. I was fucked now anyways, so far away from Sydney and going further each second. No money except for the $140 for expenses. ‘What about this $140 you said I’d get, I’m quite hungry to be honest’ ‘I think you misunderstood, we get a $140 allowance per person per road trip to cover expenses. Me as your team leader handles this money. We use it to buy food for lunches and dinners each day and some beer at the end of the week’. Oh god I thought, I don’t want this beast playing Mum with me all week, deciding what I’m eating, what I’m doing. ‘Do I still get to use the bathroom when I want to or do you decide that?’ I asked sarcastically. She laughed and shrugged off the question. ‘We’re giving you an opportunity to make lots of money, trust me, it’ll be great fun’.
Her words echoed into the wilderness, as we just kept on driving and driving and driving, on and on and on until the sun melted into the red horizon. It was dark now, we stopped at a service station for a snack. I asked a worker how far it was to Cobar, we are driving from Sydney I said. ‘Yer ahbow haff whey air mayte’ ‘HALF WAY! WE’VE BEEN DRIVING FOR FUCKING 7 HOURS’ I yelled. I called over Siobhan and told her. ‘Yeah… it seems we made a slight calculation error there with thee old map’. ‘SLIGHT’! I buried my head between my knees and we drove on. I asked about what time we started in the morning, first thing at 8am apparently. It’s was now 10pm. ‘We won’t get to Cobar until 5am do you guys realise this? And we’re supposed to be starting at 8am, no sleep then?’ I was fuming, I thought about getting out and trying to hitch it back to Sydney. ‘Sleep in the car, you’ll be fine, tomorrow will be a really chilled day, you just wait and see’ ‘I will bloody just wait and see’ I mumbled under my breathe.
To be continued...
