40 is the new 30

Auckland, New Zealand

I can't help feeling my time to do this backpacker thing has come and gone. I am aware this is a feeling more than a fact; or to use my current pet parlance: a feeling truth or poetic truth more than a thinking truth or literal truth (more on this topic in a future entry).

And this in turn gives me pause, to instead be patient, to stay present as I do this backpacker thing, and see it as it takes its shape and know it by knowing it; rather referring to an identity card, scribbled long ago and half finished, a mugshot or dubious police sketch assembled from glamourised half heard hearsay, holding it up against the horizon, facing in that particular direction, waiting for the shape emblazoned on my document to appear. But I also know this feeling is part of it. And so there it is. I am feeling a little too old to be a proper backpacker.

Well, I could always hang with the few odd veterans haunting the shared kitchen, eating beans on the cheapest white bread money can buy, recounting tales of hitchhiking across India, swapping toilet paper for cocaine with convicts in Santiago, getting caught in the middle of some ethnic riot on their third or was it their fifth trip through some chronically unstable territory I'm too embarrassed to admit I couldn't locate on a map. But I digress. I'm not ready to concede, to relegate myself to this uppermost demographic, also known as 'everyone too old to shag in the toilets.' Despite my current mood, I hang on to the hope I've still got it.

After spending my first 24 hours largely silent, save the minimum utterances needed to acquire food and shelter; it was my sociable roommates that finally brought my head out of my arse and into Auckland.

I entered the room just after my evening meal and stumbled into a makeshift storyteller's circle. The tale being told, I imagine, is an oft-told and well-loved classic: a pair of stunning free-spirited Swedish girls, which one to choose? Our narrator was agonising over the probability he made out with the wrong one.

At this point, I digress again to wonder what the etiquette is for a travel diary; whether, especially given the (potentially) public nature of the blog format, I am obliged to change the names of the people I meet in the brotherhood of what happens in the dorm stays in the dorm. I think I'll go with character names; but not so much for reasons of anonymity as for the opportunity for fun.

Let me introduce my narrator, a Jewish Canadian in his early twenties, a tall talkative likable goof, an aspiring filmmaker and recent graduate of York University in Toronto (much to his delight we discovered we have an alma mater in common). I'll call him Rick Moranischewitz. To his left, an unfairly dashing Oxford-educated Brit also in his early twenties, returning to the western world after six months on the subcontinent working for Greenpeace, applying his environmental engineering related education in what one can only assume was some posh young Ralph Fiennes plus Brad Pitt equals love child role in some stiff upper lip Merchant Ivory film in real life. I'd hate him if he wasn't so damned dashing. Let's name him Alistair Worthingtonshireford. And finally, to his left, another Canadian lad in his early twenties, far too nice, it pains me to say a little forgettable, one of those people who are more at ease living life as a supporting character, an expat living in Auckland for the past two months, with a punk haircut for a dash of mystery. We'll call him Mohawk McWhatsisname. Okay, so that makes four people, which might be more of a square than a circle, but I can live with that. Right?

Rick seemed to be trying to get drunk as quickly as possible. Unbeknownst to him but unmissable to everyone else, he was going about it in the gayest manner possible. I'm not sure I ever actually saw him stop talking long enough to drink, but somehow he worked his way through half a bottle of green apple vodka and a four-pack of Vodka mudshakes. His tale was loud, rambling, full adolescent angst, trying to decode the inexplicable behaviour of the females, one using him against the other, confusion, alcohol, annoyance but not enough to keep him his tongue to himself, and so on. All promise, then no consummation. In the end, it was revealed these girls must have been just crazy. There was a plan to possibly maybe meet up in Auckland in a few days; perhaps Rick would get a second chance. But that was days away, there was another pair of girls he had met that were going to meet him in the hostel bar. And so, off we went to the bar.

A less charming club, more devoid of ambience I have never beheld. It was like a cavernous black box, scattered with furniture possibly assembled from the lounge rooms of several first year uni students. There was a dance floor, lit almost exclusively by a disco ball scattering an unchanging white beam from a single stage light, empty save for a single oddly-dressed girl dancing away next to a four foot tall hands in his pockets Asian guy. Elsewhere, there must have been six or seven guys to every girl, all of them in their early twenties. I felt like a chaperone. Thankfully, there was plenty of cheap decent beer on tap and a pool table.

As the evening rolled on, Rick's duo turned up, you guessed it in their early twenties, two aspiring advertising professionals with an ambition to work for Saatchi & Saatchi, corn-fed American girls from Wisconsin. I'll leave that there for a moment to make its own joke, but I have to admit, when they recounted highlights of their recent visit to Australia, offering that they loved boys from Bondi for their stamina (pause, deadpan stare, apparently they really mean this), I felt something akin to pride that midwestern girl power has indeed kept pace with the man-eating rough Aussie shielas and Pommie birds.

"I think I'm a little old to be here," I said to Alistair.

He thought for a moment, and offered, "Oh, well, you know, forty is the new thirty."

Thanks.