BIG CORONAS… OR TINY MEN?
Starring James & Brad
Based on the seldom entered diary Cruel Intentions in Canada by James Ross-Edwards and email correspondence to and from james_rossedwards@hotmail.com between 25/11/04 and 1/3/05. During this period the author primarily spent time in Whistler in Canada’s British Columbia, but also documents time in Vancouver, BC., a brief road trip to New York, Ireland and many hours in transit on aircrafts and of course Greyhound buses.
INTRODUCTION:
When deciding to write this document I had a lot of trouble deciding how to present the information and stories I had amassed throughout my travels. Having recently read Scar Tissue: The Anthony Kiedis Story I thought that perhaps I could do something along those lines as in many ways I compare myself to Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. Unfortunately after several hours of typing away it dawned on me that this was not going to work, as not only was I raised by a chartered accountant and a nurse rather than a Hollywood-celebrity-drug-dealer-to-the-stars but the last time I saw a syringe was the tetanus booster my GP gave me before year 10 camp. Alternatively, I had noticed a lot of people all over the place reading The Da Vince Code by Dan Brown. To me this seemed a perfect way to reach my audience – everybody’s favourite Professor Robert Langdon braving a season in Whistler living in a share house with 14 Australian uni students all while… At this point I was cut off by someone who happened to be on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon who said that not only was it a ‘stupid idea’ but in fact I was being ‘a sarcastic cockhead’. Well I seemed to have expended the last of my genre options with the exception of the ‘Steve Waugh tour diary’ mould, failing that I have opted for the more streamlined and time efficient ‘Microsoft Word cut and paste job’ padded out with photos and plagiarism. I hope you enjoy this tale of discovery, joy, sorrow, indifference and exaggeration.
CHAPTER 1:
25/11/04 – Leaving Sydney International Airport for YVR Vancouver
From when myself and Brad decided to travel months earlier I had built up anticipation of leaving which had transformed into me becoming weary of Sydney and home life. Despite my excitement over leaving the maze of tennis courts and leafy surroundings that was Sydney’s upper North Shore there was unquestionably an element of doubt in the dark side of my brain that did not trust me to not fail in the relatively safe mission I was about to embark on. After farewells to the family and an inevitable duty free stop in departures I was sitting on the plane. Disgusted at the poor in-flight entertainment on offer I turned to my 192 page Artrite exercise book to which I had already assigned the duty of ‘journal’ (later to be renamed ‘Cruel Intentions’ in an attempt to make people want to read it). Here is an excerpt from said journal, recorded in airspace between Sydney and Los Angeles on 25/11/04:
entry 1: thurs 25th of November 2004 - on plane- quite exciting, mixed emotions- am surrounded by large group of friends of which fit on an easily definable sterotype: late 20s males, polo shirts and cargo pants, one of their nicknames would most definitely have been pubes.- all without fail are reading either the da vinci code of a book by one of the waugh twins - don't they know they all end up the same?- one of the music channels is playing a feature on missy Higgins, am finding myself truly believing that me and her are actually ‘the special two’ she sings about… Who would’ve thought?
Have been quite bored during this plane trip so I created a new world for myself where I am my own version of Evan from the Secret Life of Us except instead of inner-city Melbourne the setting would be around my house in Pymble.
It works perfectly with the exception of a few adjustments:
- Pymble pub would have to be a lot cooler and change its name to something like Foobar.
- Add in a rocking live music scene.
- Make all my friends better looking and become quirkily alternative, no more sensible polo shirts!
- At least two people I know would have to turn gay, again in a way tha8t’s cool and funky so we can all be accepting in the stern knowledge that Channel 10 wouldn’t actually let us see two naked men, and would probably cut the show in favour of ‘Queer Eye’ anyway.
- Loudspeakers would be set up around all of Sydney so my self reflexive monologues can be for everyone to hear at least daily….no wait, bi-daily - end
The rest of my journal during my time on the plane is quite disturbing to read back now. Most of it contains detailed notes about Brad, and me amusing myself by picturing and attempting to draw pictures of Brad in the cold weather wearing a skivvy. Haha… Brad in a skivvy. I also couldn’t help but notice the extent to which my journal was written in the stream-of-conscience form ala David Malouf. It was around this point that the voice in my head, this time in the resonant form of the real Evan (Samuel Johnson for those who have not had the privilege) spoke to me. He mentioned something about a rooftop party later that evening before adding that I was not at all funny and was in fact 'a sarcastic cockhead'. It was at this point that I decided to give Lantana a go on the in-flight entertainment, the journal was rested and I had never been more proud of independent Australian cinema.
30hours of travelling later, no shower, no sleep, yet somehow the same date as when I left home:
After a solid 30hours of travelling I arrived in YVR, Vancouver International Airport CANADA. I thought I would be slightly more excited than I was, but all I felt was discomfort and sinusy. As is apparently standard form of Alaskan Airlines my luggage got left in LA and would have to be tracked down and delivered to me later – but that was a minor glitch, I had made it! After spending about an hour waiting in lines, sorting out work visas and things I was directed out the front to where a shuttle could take me to downtown Vancouver to the hostel that the travel agent had booked for our first two nights. By this stage it was about 9pm, as the shuttle took about an hour to arrive I had plenty of time to chat with the other people I was waiting with. The group of about eight of us exchanged pleasantries which was quite easy as (surprise surprise) they were all Australian, uni students and (you’re joking) they were all heading to the ski fields for the season and with exception of one particularly earnest lad from Melbourne (who wouldn’t stop talking about the fucking Da Vinci Code) they were all off to Whistler. Nb I was beginning to feel less adventurous and original by the minute, especially as the neutral-seat-hog next to me on the plane was going to build a primary school in Bolivia. Feelings of comparative selfishness welled inside me (almost to the same scale as someone who writes at length about nothing really but themselves). Anyway, enough about the aid-worker – what about your story James? (The loving masses scream).
Now I have never been deluded to the fact that Brad and I had never been the two most organised and prepared people. It wasn’t until I got on a shuttle bus with these mustard-keen travellers the extent to how disorganised and unprepared I was. These people were talking excitedly about how they had organised a place to live and jobs, and how ‘impossible’ it was to find jobs and accommodation in Whistler, and that ‘it was OK’ because there mum gave them a credit card for emergencies and if they weren’t having fun would chopper them directly back to Toorak. Exaggeration is being used by I could definitely sense a pattern forming.
After staring out the window of the shuttle staring at the Vancouver night, mouth open exchanging observations like ‘they have Starbucks here’ and ‘I wonder if they have Boost Juice places…Oh yeah there’s one’. We arrived at Vancouver’s Hostelling International location. It was here I realised that our lovely travel agent Juni’s weaknesses stretched much further than a basic lack of knowledge of international airlines and work visa conditions. She also struggled slightly at telling her clients which hostel they should be staying at. When I got to the front desk to ask where I would be staying I was told that I wasn’t booked in there, it was eventually confirmed that I was meant to be at their other location on the other side of the city about a kilometre away. Armed with a map, I set out on walking to the hostel with all my stuff straight through Vancouver’s gay district – at least I had my pink shoes on, otherwise I might have stood out. As I emerged from the gay district unscathed I reached the light at the end of the rainbow painted tunnel, Cracktown! This was precisely where my hostel was, always easy to find: down Granville St past the pantless man playing the recorder, three sex shops, two 79c pizza venues on the right.
After checking into room 217 in the hostel, and making small talk with some blokes from some exotic place (Brisbane I think), Brad was not due to arrive and meet me for another few hours so I decided to go for a walk around the town. So I away I went with the Kings of Leon, Youth and Young Manhood coming through my headphones and my tightest pair of jeans strapped on. I was quite pleased with myself, feeling very rock’n’roll in the city that probably still hasn’t got the mail that the Guns’n’Roses have split up and that the mullets that I saw have outlived the entire last two decades and their owners who wander Granville St in packs are now ironically cool again. It wasn’t long though before Vancouver put me in my place… Distracted by the bright lights and excitement of a new city I was not paying close attention to my line of walking and accidentally bumped right into a large smelly man in a Pantera t-shirt. Of course I was quick with ‘sorry mate’ and a smile the man stared at me through his angry black fringe and said ‘what the fuck are you looking at faggot?’. As I quickly walked away I still kind of felt like a rockstar although slightly emasculated – I had gone from tough and cool like Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age to a complete softcock ala Ben Lee from…Ben Lee.
Being called a ‘faggot’ by the angry lover of heavy metal brings me to an interesting point. At that stage I brushed it off as an isolated incident and thought nothing more, although this was not the case. By the time I left Canada over three months later I had been called a ‘faggot’, an ‘indie-fag’, asked several times politely if I was a homosexual, been approached on a dance floor by a European gentleman and I am paraphrasing. The thing that interested me the most out of this (I’m not gay by the way) was that in my hometown of Pymble, north of Sydney I cannot recall my sexuality ever being questioned. My only hypothesis thus far lies in the assumption that from the parts of Canada I saw tended to be slightly more conservative than Sydney – particularly in dress sense (my pink shoes I think were seen as a universal litmus test of homosexuality in Vancouver). This was the first time I had taken into account that different places have completely different social structure. For example where I come from the traditional male bonding involves firstly complimenting matching polo shirts, a degree of chat, followed by the tipping of Von Dutch hats and wishing each other a very Merry Christmas and an even better Field Day.
…What was my point? I think I have fitted all the arbitrary jokes I wanted to in this paragraph. In case you got lost, lots of people in Canada thought I was gay… I’m not.
So eventually that night I met up with Brad. We exchanged brief stories of our efforts in making it to the point we were at before deciding to get drunk and discussing our plan to take over Whistler. The next three days in Vancouver were spent doing much the same amongst continually being the tourist suckers that gave all the homeless people money. I cannot remember with any vivid detail but my first email home was entitled ‘me and Brad are actually pretty good looking in Canada’… sarcasm perhaps? Although on our last night there a girl told the two of us that we looked ‘just like Heath Ledger and Russel Crove’ but then again I think I had seen her once before in a year10 PDHPE video entitled: ‘Ecstacy: the long term effects’.
CHAPTER 2 – Hostels and Husky’s
Two hours on the Greyhound and we had arrived in Whistler Village, the place that was going to be our home for the next three months. We checked into the Shoestring Lodge dumped our bags and went for a cruise into the village. We soon found a pub to drink in, it had pictures of naked women on the walls in the toilets and a fat, obnoxious Canadian man wearing a Hockey jersey and yelling at ladies curling footage on the TV screen (the NHL was cancelled for the season). Sitting there having a drink, reflecting on what we had done so far and what was ahead of us we were unable to get over the beauty of the place (let it be known that in this particular section no sarcasm has been used). There was excitement in the camp and a very camp excitement it was at that (we were jumping up and down, squealing).
The Shoestring Lodge:
This is where Brad and I stayed for our first ten days in Whistler. During this period our opinion of the place somewhat plummeted from the initial ‘this place is cool’. When we initially checked in coming straight off our Vancouver accommodation we were impressed that the 4-bed dorm rooms had there own TV. I was particular impressed as we walked through the door that they were playing a Ben Kweller CD in the lobby, he must be pretty big over here! I later discovered that I was the only one hearing the music, my discman had been left on in my backpack and was playing my Ben Kweller CD through the headphones… I never found one other person while I was overseas that had heard of, or could appreciate the whimsical loveliness of Kweller.
Our first night of the Shoestring Lodge was particularly interesting. After we returned to our room from cooking and eating some dicey pasta in the communal kitchen that smelt like the bottom of the inside of a drain, we discovered that we were not in fact alone but were blessed with roommates. The two guys were Canadians (quite rare for the Shoestring) and introduced themselves as ‘Kurt’ and ‘Wayne Gretsky’ (I can’t remember the other guys name so I will call him that instead). Dynamics in the room slightly awkward as it was 9:00pm at night, all the lights were out and Kurt and Wayne Gretsky were in bed. The only light in fact in the room was from Wayne Gretsky’s head, who was reading a book about avalanches by the aid of a small light, strapped to his head.
A bit of small talk pursued and we confirmed that Chesty was as we suspected doing an avalanche course (I never learnt what that actually meant). Kurt on the other hand would not tell us where he was from ‘I’ve been around places’ and was here ‘for a while’. On that note we left the room and flicked cards at each other in the lobby until the horrible strangers were asleep.
During out time at the Shoestring our days were filled with wandering the village looking for jobs and wasting time expensively in the internet café. Nighttimes on the other hand usually entailed sitting in the second floor hallway around the Coke machine and getting drunk with the rest of the people (mostly Aussies) there. Chat in the hallways was generally dominated by the lack of work in Whistler, Australian Big Brother and how the world was small enough that everyone there had common friends from home. After this we would either go to bed or head downstairs to ‘The Boot’, the pub attached to the hostel which featured ‘The Boot Ballet’ Tuesday to Friday nights every week. This ‘ballet’ entailed female strippers aged between 35 and 43 years old ‘exotically’ dancing around a pole often implementing beer bottles and whatever was in closest reach much to the delight of regulars: Whistler’s redneck clique , balding middle-aged men in hockey jerseys and the local drug dealer – an English guy with grey teeth named Pickle. During this time I was sending a huge amount of emails for lack of anything better to do as we were unemployed and ski passless, this period thus is quite well documented through email and also journal entries. This entry from the 28th of November exemplifies the niggling tension in the Team Ross-Edwards/Simon camp (this tension further exacerbated on my insistence to call it that and not the Simon/Ross-Edwards camp). The background to the entry involves us sitting in the smelly kitchen at the Shoestring trying to find a place to live in the local newspaper (called the ‘Pique’) late at night because our strange roommates were whispering sweet nothings into each others ears of or whatever Canadian’s do (at this stage we didn’t know).
-‘ … So now to look up accommodation we have to sit in the kitchen, eating our only food source (nutella and bread) as to not disturb Kurt and that other guy in our room. I’ve said it before but Brad has never looked healthier: long, unwashed hair, 5-day growth and the same devil-may-care attitude that we all know and love.
-
Brad also continually mocks me for wearing too much clothing outside, implying that I’m soft… Before leaving the warmth of the hostel with nowt but a t-shirt and jumper on – in the snow! He finally admitted it was cold half and hour later. The joke was on him as I chuckled while wearing two layers of thermals a vest a jumper and a scarf – calling him a wanker under my breath…’
By this point Brad had become bored of the long-term rental listings and had begun reading my journal over my shoulder. Worried about potential legal ramifications I quickly amended my journal by defaming myself to make it appear that I had not written it, and its content was objective:.
- ‘…so. James is a fuckwit, I can’t believe how funny he thinks he is with his warm clothes and his rock-star chic sex appeal that I would die for… He probably doesn’t even have a date to the prom. Additionally he laughs at his own shit journal, out loud and indulgently’
Another potential conflict avoided… Excellent work.
Over the next week, niggling conflict with Brad continued. I even wrote a personal correspondence note to him in a group email to ask him politely to stop continually referring to himself in the third person.
Things must have made a turn for the best though, in an email sent only several weeks later I referred to him as ‘my north and south poles’ – I’m not sure why but he again took offence.
About 4-5 days into our stay at the Shoestring:
After about 4-5 days into our time at the Shoestring, a time filled with sleeping in until midday, walking around largely aimlessly before going out each night and repeating the cycle. We eventually decided that it was time to firstly stop drinking coke for breakfast, secondly to find a job and thirdly to find somewhere to live as we only had several days left before we were homeless.
So off we went, disorganised and shabby to find somewhere to live and work (the first bit of the epiphany was quickly abandoned as there was a coke machine right outside our room). The living situation sorted itself out quite quickly, as most people were more organised than us we were able to quickly fill in spare bed spaces that our new mates had kindly offered. The working situation however was no small battle, as not only were we without resumes or references, but quite frankly we were male, we had bad hair and we were in Whistler during the job opportunity equivalent of the Great Depression. Every man and his massive husky had flocked on Whistler Village and raped it for all the employment and benefits her fertile soils could provide… two weeks before we got there. There was only one way to get a job and that was to lie and give as much proverbial fellatio as possible. Brad and I headed out for one long day of resume dropping, gentleman’s hours of course: start 11-3 with a lunch break. This featured the following incidents/rejections
- Me getting told by the manager of the supermarket that he did not think I was suitable for a shelf packing position.
- Myself and Brad both getting interviews at a fancy wine bar, but me getting told that my ‘personal grooming’ was not up to scratch.
- Brad applying for a job at a small childrens clothing store. Surprisingly he did not get the job. Which was astonishing: why wouldn’t a shop like that want a 20 year old, long haired, bearded South African male?
- Myself getting an interview at ‘Zog’s’, a hot dog stand at the bottom of the gondola. Going into the interview smelling like alcohol and smoke in the same clothes I had worn the night before and accidentally admitting that I had no money and no place to stay… I didn’t get the job… politics.
- The following day we met an eccentric old man shovelling snow in Creekside, who came up to us and asked us if we were looking to work. After chatting to him for a few minutes he suggested that we start working shovelling snow the following day… at 6am. Eager to take anything we agreed, had an early night, set an alarm for 5:45am only to wake up and never hear from him again.
Walking around with a bunch of resume’s feeling like a bit of a dick that arrived too late got slightly old after a while. Eventually I decided to be proactive and get up early and go snow shovelling in the market place, who hired people based on turning up on the day. A guy I’d met had told me that they pay $10.50 an hour and you could just rock up at any time. Brad made no effort to get up, despite being almost completely broke resolving that ‘I’ll get a job soon’. So I took myself down to the market place, signed up, got a shovel and an ice pick and started shovelling pathways at a set of townhouses in the market place called Glacier’s Reach. Well I’ve never claimed to be the toughest guy or the hardest worker but after four hours of this and I was ready to die. The worst part came just before my lunch break when I hit myself in the foot with my own shovel and limped around… for the following month. I was all of a sudden eternally grateful that I was not born into a society that still revolved around the Darwinist idea of the Alpha male, and that our world has room for the spoilt, weak and lazy. As luck had it however, just after I smashed my own foot with a shovel my phone rang, to which I got offered a job interview as ‘houseman’ at a hotel in the village - which I later ended up getting. That was to be my first and last day of snow shovelling. The pathetic end to that story is that I never ended up going to pick up my paycheck for that days work, so my efforts in the end were futile.
As I have already mentioned, during this jobless period I spent a lot of time sitting around in the ‘Internet Daisy’ café talking shit and sending emails. While having received many group emails in my time from people overseas and of course never replying, I found myself somewhat angry at the lack of feedback to mine. This makes perfect sense, noone sitting at home bored wants to reply to peoples self indulgent life updates. I started to wonder if my world at home was the same or even still existed. My mind was set to ease soon, when I received an insightful email from my younger brother Peach who let me know that devastating tsunami or not, the world was still in order:
hello j-man its peach here
i have been in contact with ‘kevin sell nike’* and i am recieving my shoes asap. they are very wicked to see a picture of them go to www.tubgirl.com or www.trannyhouse.com but there is this really good picture at www.ratemypenis.com any way im on the last island in gta** and i had to kill ryder. is canada bitchin?
ps brians getting his goolies choped off***
pps your gay
ppps im typing this email naked****
( ' )
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
( )( )*****
8======o
_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______
I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I
I____ I------------I I ____ I I I I
I I I I I I I I I
I I I I______ I I______I I I
* My brother buys shoes on the internet from a Chinese man named ‘Kevin Sell Nike’ – they turned up last week, approximately four months after this email was sent.
** Here he was referring to Grand Theft Auto – the Playstation game
***Brian is a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel
**** I later found out that he actually was, and keeps the habit to this day.
CHAPTER 3: ’8 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours sharing a loft with a young liberal’
A work in progress
Starring James & Brad
Based on the seldom entered diary Cruel Intentions in Canada by James Ross-Edwards and email correspondence to and from james_rossedwards@hotmail.com between 25/11/04 and 1/3/05. During this period the author primarily spent time in Whistler in Canada’s British Columbia, but also documents time in Vancouver, BC., a brief road trip to New York, Ireland and many hours in transit on aircrafts and of course Greyhound buses.
INTRODUCTION:
When deciding to write this document I had a lot of trouble deciding how to present the information and stories I had amassed throughout my travels. Having recently read Scar Tissue: The Anthony Kiedis Story I thought that perhaps I could do something along those lines as in many ways I compare myself to Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers fame. Unfortunately after several hours of typing away it dawned on me that this was not going to work, as not only was I raised by a chartered accountant and a nurse rather than a Hollywood-celebrity-drug-dealer-to-the-stars but the last time I saw a syringe was the tetanus booster my GP gave me before year 10 camp. Alternatively, I had noticed a lot of people all over the place reading The Da Vince Code by Dan Brown. To me this seemed a perfect way to reach my audience – everybody’s favourite Professor Robert Langdon braving a season in Whistler living in a share house with 14 Australian uni students all while… At this point I was cut off by someone who happened to be on the Da Vinci Code bandwagon who said that not only was it a ‘stupid idea’ but in fact I was being ‘a sarcastic cockhead’. Well I seemed to have expended the last of my genre options with the exception of the ‘Steve Waugh tour diary’ mould, failing that I have opted for the more streamlined and time efficient ‘Microsoft Word cut and paste job’ padded out with photos and plagiarism. I hope you enjoy this tale of discovery, joy, sorrow, indifference and exaggeration.
CHAPTER 1:
25/11/04 – Leaving Sydney International Airport for YVR Vancouver
From when myself and Brad decided to travel months earlier I had built up anticipation of leaving which had transformed into me becoming weary of Sydney and home life. Despite my excitement over leaving the maze of tennis courts and leafy surroundings that was Sydney’s upper North Shore there was unquestionably an element of doubt in the dark side of my brain that did not trust me to not fail in the relatively safe mission I was about to embark on. After farewells to the family and an inevitable duty free stop in departures I was sitting on the plane. Disgusted at the poor in-flight entertainment on offer I turned to my 192 page Artrite exercise book to which I had already assigned the duty of ‘journal’ (later to be renamed ‘Cruel Intentions’ in an attempt to make people want to read it). Here is an excerpt from said journal, recorded in airspace between Sydney and Los Angeles on 25/11/04:
entry 1: thurs 25th of November 2004 - on plane- quite exciting, mixed emotions- am surrounded by large group of friends of which fit on an easily definable sterotype: late 20s males, polo shirts and cargo pants, one of their nicknames would most definitely have been pubes.- all without fail are reading either the da vinci code of a book by one of the waugh twins - don't they know they all end up the same?- one of the music channels is playing a feature on missy Higgins, am finding myself truly believing that me and her are actually ‘the special two’ she sings about… Who would’ve thought?
Have been quite bored during this plane trip so I created a new world for myself where I am my own version of Evan from the Secret Life of Us except instead of inner-city Melbourne the setting would be around my house in Pymble.
It works perfectly with the exception of a few adjustments:
- Pymble pub would have to be a lot cooler and change its name to something like Foobar.
- Add in a rocking live music scene.
- Make all my friends better looking and become quirkily alternative, no more sensible polo shirts!
- At least two people I know would have to turn gay, again in a way tha8t’s cool and funky so we can all be accepting in the stern knowledge that Channel 10 wouldn’t actually let us see two naked men, and would probably cut the show in favour of ‘Queer Eye’ anyway.
- Loudspeakers would be set up around all of Sydney so my self reflexive monologues can be for everyone to hear at least daily….no wait, bi-daily - end
The rest of my journal during my time on the plane is quite disturbing to read back now. Most of it contains detailed notes about Brad, and me amusing myself by picturing and attempting to draw pictures of Brad in the cold weather wearing a skivvy. Haha… Brad in a skivvy. I also couldn’t help but notice the extent to which my journal was written in the stream-of-conscience form ala David Malouf. It was around this point that the voice in my head, this time in the resonant form of the real Evan (Samuel Johnson for those who have not had the privilege) spoke to me. He mentioned something about a rooftop party later that evening before adding that I was not at all funny and was in fact 'a sarcastic cockhead'. It was at this point that I decided to give Lantana a go on the in-flight entertainment, the journal was rested and I had never been more proud of independent Australian cinema.
30hours of travelling later, no shower, no sleep, yet somehow the same date as when I left home:
After a solid 30hours of travelling I arrived in YVR, Vancouver International Airport CANADA. I thought I would be slightly more excited than I was, but all I felt was discomfort and sinusy. As is apparently standard form of Alaskan Airlines my luggage got left in LA and would have to be tracked down and delivered to me later – but that was a minor glitch, I had made it! After spending about an hour waiting in lines, sorting out work visas and things I was directed out the front to where a shuttle could take me to downtown Vancouver to the hostel that the travel agent had booked for our first two nights. By this stage it was about 9pm, as the shuttle took about an hour to arrive I had plenty of time to chat with the other people I was waiting with. The group of about eight of us exchanged pleasantries which was quite easy as (surprise surprise) they were all Australian, uni students and (you’re joking) they were all heading to the ski fields for the season and with exception of one particularly earnest lad from Melbourne (who wouldn’t stop talking about the fucking Da Vinci Code) they were all off to Whistler. Nb I was beginning to feel less adventurous and original by the minute, especially as the neutral-seat-hog next to me on the plane was going to build a primary school in Bolivia. Feelings of comparative selfishness welled inside me (almost to the same scale as someone who writes at length about nothing really but themselves). Anyway, enough about the aid-worker – what about your story James? (The loving masses scream).
Now I have never been deluded to the fact that Brad and I had never been the two most organised and prepared people. It wasn’t until I got on a shuttle bus with these mustard-keen travellers the extent to how disorganised and unprepared I was. These people were talking excitedly about how they had organised a place to live and jobs, and how ‘impossible’ it was to find jobs and accommodation in Whistler, and that ‘it was OK’ because there mum gave them a credit card for emergencies and if they weren’t having fun would chopper them directly back to Toorak. Exaggeration is being used by I could definitely sense a pattern forming.
After staring out the window of the shuttle staring at the Vancouver night, mouth open exchanging observations like ‘they have Starbucks here’ and ‘I wonder if they have Boost Juice places…Oh yeah there’s one’. We arrived at Vancouver’s Hostelling International location. It was here I realised that our lovely travel agent Juni’s weaknesses stretched much further than a basic lack of knowledge of international airlines and work visa conditions. She also struggled slightly at telling her clients which hostel they should be staying at. When I got to the front desk to ask where I would be staying I was told that I wasn’t booked in there, it was eventually confirmed that I was meant to be at their other location on the other side of the city about a kilometre away. Armed with a map, I set out on walking to the hostel with all my stuff straight through Vancouver’s gay district – at least I had my pink shoes on, otherwise I might have stood out. As I emerged from the gay district unscathed I reached the light at the end of the rainbow painted tunnel, Cracktown! This was precisely where my hostel was, always easy to find: down Granville St past the pantless man playing the recorder, three sex shops, two 79c pizza venues on the right.
After checking into room 217 in the hostel, and making small talk with some blokes from some exotic place (Brisbane I think), Brad was not due to arrive and meet me for another few hours so I decided to go for a walk around the town. So I away I went with the Kings of Leon, Youth and Young Manhood coming through my headphones and my tightest pair of jeans strapped on. I was quite pleased with myself, feeling very rock’n’roll in the city that probably still hasn’t got the mail that the Guns’n’Roses have split up and that the mullets that I saw have outlived the entire last two decades and their owners who wander Granville St in packs are now ironically cool again. It wasn’t long though before Vancouver put me in my place… Distracted by the bright lights and excitement of a new city I was not paying close attention to my line of walking and accidentally bumped right into a large smelly man in a Pantera t-shirt. Of course I was quick with ‘sorry mate’ and a smile the man stared at me through his angry black fringe and said ‘what the fuck are you looking at faggot?’. As I quickly walked away I still kind of felt like a rockstar although slightly emasculated – I had gone from tough and cool like Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age to a complete softcock ala Ben Lee from…Ben Lee.
Being called a ‘faggot’ by the angry lover of heavy metal brings me to an interesting point. At that stage I brushed it off as an isolated incident and thought nothing more, although this was not the case. By the time I left Canada over three months later I had been called a ‘faggot’, an ‘indie-fag’, asked several times politely if I was a homosexual, been approached on a dance floor by a European gentleman and I am paraphrasing. The thing that interested me the most out of this (I’m not gay by the way) was that in my hometown of Pymble, north of Sydney I cannot recall my sexuality ever being questioned. My only hypothesis thus far lies in the assumption that from the parts of Canada I saw tended to be slightly more conservative than Sydney – particularly in dress sense (my pink shoes I think were seen as a universal litmus test of homosexuality in Vancouver). This was the first time I had taken into account that different places have completely different social structure. For example where I come from the traditional male bonding involves firstly complimenting matching polo shirts, a degree of chat, followed by the tipping of Von Dutch hats and wishing each other a very Merry Christmas and an even better Field Day.
…What was my point? I think I have fitted all the arbitrary jokes I wanted to in this paragraph. In case you got lost, lots of people in Canada thought I was gay… I’m not.
So eventually that night I met up with Brad. We exchanged brief stories of our efforts in making it to the point we were at before deciding to get drunk and discussing our plan to take over Whistler. The next three days in Vancouver were spent doing much the same amongst continually being the tourist suckers that gave all the homeless people money. I cannot remember with any vivid detail but my first email home was entitled ‘me and Brad are actually pretty good looking in Canada’… sarcasm perhaps? Although on our last night there a girl told the two of us that we looked ‘just like Heath Ledger and Russel Crove’ but then again I think I had seen her once before in a year10 PDHPE video entitled: ‘Ecstacy: the long term effects’.
CHAPTER 2 – Hostels and Husky’s
Two hours on the Greyhound and we had arrived in Whistler Village, the place that was going to be our home for the next three months. We checked into the Shoestring Lodge dumped our bags and went for a cruise into the village. We soon found a pub to drink in, it had pictures of naked women on the walls in the toilets and a fat, obnoxious Canadian man wearing a Hockey jersey and yelling at ladies curling footage on the TV screen (the NHL was cancelled for the season). Sitting there having a drink, reflecting on what we had done so far and what was ahead of us we were unable to get over the beauty of the place (let it be known that in this particular section no sarcasm has been used). There was excitement in the camp and a very camp excitement it was at that (we were jumping up and down, squealing).
The Shoestring Lodge:
This is where Brad and I stayed for our first ten days in Whistler. During this period our opinion of the place somewhat plummeted from the initial ‘this place is cool’. When we initially checked in coming straight off our Vancouver accommodation we were impressed that the 4-bed dorm rooms had there own TV. I was particular impressed as we walked through the door that they were playing a Ben Kweller CD in the lobby, he must be pretty big over here! I later discovered that I was the only one hearing the music, my discman had been left on in my backpack and was playing my Ben Kweller CD through the headphones… I never found one other person while I was overseas that had heard of, or could appreciate the whimsical loveliness of Kweller.
Our first night of the Shoestring Lodge was particularly interesting. After we returned to our room from cooking and eating some dicey pasta in the communal kitchen that smelt like the bottom of the inside of a drain, we discovered that we were not in fact alone but were blessed with roommates. The two guys were Canadians (quite rare for the Shoestring) and introduced themselves as ‘Kurt’ and ‘Wayne Gretsky’ (I can’t remember the other guys name so I will call him that instead). Dynamics in the room slightly awkward as it was 9:00pm at night, all the lights were out and Kurt and Wayne Gretsky were in bed. The only light in fact in the room was from Wayne Gretsky’s head, who was reading a book about avalanches by the aid of a small light, strapped to his head.
A bit of small talk pursued and we confirmed that Chesty was as we suspected doing an avalanche course (I never learnt what that actually meant). Kurt on the other hand would not tell us where he was from ‘I’ve been around places’ and was here ‘for a while’. On that note we left the room and flicked cards at each other in the lobby until the horrible strangers were asleep.
During out time at the Shoestring our days were filled with wandering the village looking for jobs and wasting time expensively in the internet café. Nighttimes on the other hand usually entailed sitting in the second floor hallway around the Coke machine and getting drunk with the rest of the people (mostly Aussies) there. Chat in the hallways was generally dominated by the lack of work in Whistler, Australian Big Brother and how the world was small enough that everyone there had common friends from home. After this we would either go to bed or head downstairs to ‘The Boot’, the pub attached to the hostel which featured ‘The Boot Ballet’ Tuesday to Friday nights every week. This ‘ballet’ entailed female strippers aged between 35 and 43 years old ‘exotically’ dancing around a pole often implementing beer bottles and whatever was in closest reach much to the delight of regulars: Whistler’s redneck clique , balding middle-aged men in hockey jerseys and the local drug dealer – an English guy with grey teeth named Pickle. During this time I was sending a huge amount of emails for lack of anything better to do as we were unemployed and ski passless, this period thus is quite well documented through email and also journal entries. This entry from the 28th of November exemplifies the niggling tension in the Team Ross-Edwards/Simon camp (this tension further exacerbated on my insistence to call it that and not the Simon/Ross-Edwards camp). The background to the entry involves us sitting in the smelly kitchen at the Shoestring trying to find a place to live in the local newspaper (called the ‘Pique’) late at night because our strange roommates were whispering sweet nothings into each others ears of or whatever Canadian’s do (at this stage we didn’t know).
-‘ … So now to look up accommodation we have to sit in the kitchen, eating our only food source (nutella and bread) as to not disturb Kurt and that other guy in our room. I’ve said it before but Brad has never looked healthier: long, unwashed hair, 5-day growth and the same devil-may-care attitude that we all know and love.
-
Brad also continually mocks me for wearing too much clothing outside, implying that I’m soft… Before leaving the warmth of the hostel with nowt but a t-shirt and jumper on – in the snow! He finally admitted it was cold half and hour later. The joke was on him as I chuckled while wearing two layers of thermals a vest a jumper and a scarf – calling him a wanker under my breath…’
By this point Brad had become bored of the long-term rental listings and had begun reading my journal over my shoulder. Worried about potential legal ramifications I quickly amended my journal by defaming myself to make it appear that I had not written it, and its content was objective:.
- ‘…so. James is a fuckwit, I can’t believe how funny he thinks he is with his warm clothes and his rock-star chic sex appeal that I would die for… He probably doesn’t even have a date to the prom. Additionally he laughs at his own shit journal, out loud and indulgently’
Another potential conflict avoided… Excellent work.
Over the next week, niggling conflict with Brad continued. I even wrote a personal correspondence note to him in a group email to ask him politely to stop continually referring to himself in the third person.
Things must have made a turn for the best though, in an email sent only several weeks later I referred to him as ‘my north and south poles’ – I’m not sure why but he again took offence.
About 4-5 days into our stay at the Shoestring:
After about 4-5 days into our time at the Shoestring, a time filled with sleeping in until midday, walking around largely aimlessly before going out each night and repeating the cycle. We eventually decided that it was time to firstly stop drinking coke for breakfast, secondly to find a job and thirdly to find somewhere to live as we only had several days left before we were homeless.
So off we went, disorganised and shabby to find somewhere to live and work (the first bit of the epiphany was quickly abandoned as there was a coke machine right outside our room). The living situation sorted itself out quite quickly, as most people were more organised than us we were able to quickly fill in spare bed spaces that our new mates had kindly offered. The working situation however was no small battle, as not only were we without resumes or references, but quite frankly we were male, we had bad hair and we were in Whistler during the job opportunity equivalent of the Great Depression. Every man and his massive husky had flocked on Whistler Village and raped it for all the employment and benefits her fertile soils could provide… two weeks before we got there. There was only one way to get a job and that was to lie and give as much proverbial fellatio as possible. Brad and I headed out for one long day of resume dropping, gentleman’s hours of course: start 11-3 with a lunch break. This featured the following incidents/rejections
- Me getting told by the manager of the supermarket that he did not think I was suitable for a shelf packing position.
- Myself and Brad both getting interviews at a fancy wine bar, but me getting told that my ‘personal grooming’ was not up to scratch.
- Brad applying for a job at a small childrens clothing store. Surprisingly he did not get the job. Which was astonishing: why wouldn’t a shop like that want a 20 year old, long haired, bearded South African male?
- Myself getting an interview at ‘Zog’s’, a hot dog stand at the bottom of the gondola. Going into the interview smelling like alcohol and smoke in the same clothes I had worn the night before and accidentally admitting that I had no money and no place to stay… I didn’t get the job… politics.
- The following day we met an eccentric old man shovelling snow in Creekside, who came up to us and asked us if we were looking to work. After chatting to him for a few minutes he suggested that we start working shovelling snow the following day… at 6am. Eager to take anything we agreed, had an early night, set an alarm for 5:45am only to wake up and never hear from him again.
Walking around with a bunch of resume’s feeling like a bit of a dick that arrived too late got slightly old after a while. Eventually I decided to be proactive and get up early and go snow shovelling in the market place, who hired people based on turning up on the day. A guy I’d met had told me that they pay $10.50 an hour and you could just rock up at any time. Brad made no effort to get up, despite being almost completely broke resolving that ‘I’ll get a job soon’. So I took myself down to the market place, signed up, got a shovel and an ice pick and started shovelling pathways at a set of townhouses in the market place called Glacier’s Reach. Well I’ve never claimed to be the toughest guy or the hardest worker but after four hours of this and I was ready to die. The worst part came just before my lunch break when I hit myself in the foot with my own shovel and limped around… for the following month. I was all of a sudden eternally grateful that I was not born into a society that still revolved around the Darwinist idea of the Alpha male, and that our world has room for the spoilt, weak and lazy. As luck had it however, just after I smashed my own foot with a shovel my phone rang, to which I got offered a job interview as ‘houseman’ at a hotel in the village - which I later ended up getting. That was to be my first and last day of snow shovelling. The pathetic end to that story is that I never ended up going to pick up my paycheck for that days work, so my efforts in the end were futile.
As I have already mentioned, during this jobless period I spent a lot of time sitting around in the ‘Internet Daisy’ café talking shit and sending emails. While having received many group emails in my time from people overseas and of course never replying, I found myself somewhat angry at the lack of feedback to mine. This makes perfect sense, noone sitting at home bored wants to reply to peoples self indulgent life updates. I started to wonder if my world at home was the same or even still existed. My mind was set to ease soon, when I received an insightful email from my younger brother Peach who let me know that devastating tsunami or not, the world was still in order:
hello j-man its peach here
i have been in contact with ‘kevin sell nike’* and i am recieving my shoes asap. they are very wicked to see a picture of them go to www.tubgirl.com or www.trannyhouse.com but there is this really good picture at www.ratemypenis.com any way im on the last island in gta** and i had to kill ryder. is canada bitchin?
ps brians getting his goolies choped off***
pps your gay
ppps im typing this email naked****
( ' )
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
/ /
( )( )*****
8======o
_______ _______ _______ _______ _______ _______
I I I I I I I I
I I I I I I I I
I____ I------------I I ____ I I I I
I I I I I I I I I
I I I I______ I I______I I I
* My brother buys shoes on the internet from a Chinese man named ‘Kevin Sell Nike’ – they turned up last week, approximately four months after this email was sent.
** Here he was referring to Grand Theft Auto – the Playstation game
***Brian is a King Charles Cavalier Spaniel
**** I later found out that he actually was, and keeps the habit to this day.
CHAPTER 3: ’8 hours work, 8 hours sleep and 8 hours sharing a loft with a young liberal’
A work in progress
