Clareified

I stepped off the bus in Melbourne, grabbed my ninety-two pieces of luggage off the bus and stepped out into the street. There were cars zipping by, buildings lining the block, a train station behind us, even an internet café right there on the corner.
A city.
A real city!
My eyes filled with tears and I wanted to kiss the ground…but after seeing Mary’s face when I licked the pancakes…I decided against it.
We waited in the taxicab queue and remarked on happy we were to be free of Mansfield.
A cab finally pulled up to the curb. The driver stuck our bags in the trunk and we got in.
“We’re going to the Vibe.”
“Okay,” he said, putting the car in reverse, pulling out and making a U-turn to the opposite side of the street.
“Here you are.”
Embarrassed that we had just gotten in a cab to cross the street, we paid the man his $4 and slunk away.
It was too early for checkin, so we checked our bags and went for lunch. Mary, evidently likes to climb uphill. First, we walked to the corner, climbed like nineteen flights of stairs before realizing we went the wrong way. We went back down the stairs, walked to the end of the block and again headed in the same wrong direction, this time huffing up Batman Hill instead of stairs.
(Yes, Batman Hill…that’s what it’s called…I kept looking for Superman lane, but no such luck.)
Finally, we figured out where we were going and walked into a little Italian restaurant near the Crown casino.
Everything was fine and dandy until a pigeon or some other kind of killer bird flapped into the restaurant and landed at the feet of our table.
I screamed.
Mary laughed.
The pigeon stared.
“Dude! Did the cockatoos send out word from Mansfield that we were en route to Melbourne and the city birds should finish the job of pecking my eyes out and eating my face?”
No one else seemed at all disturbed by the presence of the filthy diseased bird of prey strutting around the restaurant.
I, on the other hand, could not eat any more.
“Can I get this go?”
“No, sorry we don’t have a take-away license.”
“What?”
“We can only serve food that you eat here.”
“Hmm…” I didn’t ask any more questions…but boy, did I have a few.
I left my mostly uneaten carbonara at the table and walked into the casino.
There were shops on the ground floor, craps tables, blackjack tables…the works. Mary and I kept walking and before long we found the poker room.
We asked around for Pauly, but he wasn’t at the pokernews table, so we just walked around. We saw Phil Laak (Jennifer Tilly’s boyfriend) sitting at a table, so we drooled over watched him play for a little while.
We ran into Pauly, said hello…he pointed us to the Phil Laak table and said “Shannon Elizabeth’s playing there!” Mary and I were both like…”we spit on Shannon Elizabeth…that’s Phil Laak’s table!”
We went back to our hotel, got keys to the room and settled in. We would only be there for one night before switching to another hotel down the street, but we had traveled a looong way from Mansfield. I was exhausted and getting a little homesick, which is weird cause when I’m home I don’t really like anyone here.
Well, sure enough I called home, realized everyone I know is an assface, which was a comfort in a way since I remembered why I was so keen to hop on a plane and leave them behind. But I was still sort of feeling alone and stranger in a strangelandish. But this would be my last city in Australia. My last week down under and due to the length of the flight, it would be a long time before I returned…umm…unless Full Tilt has free flights out next year…in which case, hook mee up!
I was going to make the most of it.
“Let’s go do something fun!”
We looked through the guidebook and decided to walk to the visitor center.
As we were leaving, I realized that I lost my keycard. We searched the whole room and even though I had used it to open the door a mere half an hour before, I couldn’t find it anywhere. This became known as the Dawn Summers hotel keycard blackhole effect, as I proceeded to lose every keycard from then forward during our stay in Melbourne.
After hitting the visitor center, where I took every pamphlet on air balloon rides, hoping to entice Mary into coming with, we walked over to the TKTS of Open tickets and stood on the line.
The following day was Mary’s birthday, she decided that she wanted to go to the U.S. Open…er…I forget what they call it in Australia, but there’s tennis.
“Hey, are you sure this is the right line to buy tickets or is this the information line?” Mary shrugged.
I saw all the tennis champions gear and I remembered that Karol and I were having a tournament of past winners of our poker game, but we didn’t have any prizes. I made a mental note to get something…this would later be advertised by Karol as “crap Dawn bought in Australia.” Well, nuts to her because the finalists were literally fighting over what I got.
Sure they were saying “no, I don’t want that…you keep it…no I insist, you take it.” But there was fighting.
Anyway, after we got the Open tickets and it was decided that Mary should hold onto them in case the blackhole effect also applied to tickets, we went to the casino to play poker.
Since we had walked an insane amount already, that being Mary’s way, I suggested we take the free tram to the casino – sitting on my arse and letting something with wheels carry me around being “Dawn’s way.” She agreed and we waited for the free tram.
Now, while the not free trams came approximately every two seconds, the free tram took twenty minutes.
I pushed an old lady out of the way and took a seat.
The tram circumnavigates Melbourne.
So, we basically got a free tour of the city, while getting a free ride to our destination…or so the theory of it goes.
Instead, due to some track fire, which, now that I think on it, I’m sure Mary had something to do with, the tram only went halfway. So we had to get out and … yes, that’s right…Mary it the rest of the way. I have to say I was very happy when I sat down at the poker table, but mostly because of the sitting.
I had a very good night setting Aussies on idiot American girl tilt with numerous Le Dawns and went to bed very happy to be in Melbourne.
We switched hotels the next day without much fanfare. Our new hotel even let us check-in early. Of course, I hit a snag when it was discovered that the “in room” internet required a cable modem cord. Wondering whether the people that travel with their internet modem cords are the same gamely fellows who walk around with international dial up numbers just in case, I decided that I should be spending more time outside than online anyways.
Lining, silver.
We set out that morning for an early breakfast (you could order an “Aussie breakfast” or “American breakfast” – the only discernable difference being that the American one cost about 50 percent more.) Mary had brought her bag of groceries from Mansfield, so she was already stuffed with bread and peanut butter. I got some toast and a flat, white…which is how you order your coffees in Australia via color and height.
We took a tram over to the Open and got line with the hordes waiting to get in.
It was a beautiful day, Mary scoped us out seats about four rows up from the court. So we had very good seats to see Tsongas play…some other guy. I only remember Tsongas’ name because he ended up going pretty far in the tournament. And he was French and I decided to root against the French at every possible opportunity.
Of course, in keeping with my tradition of backing losers…the guy I rooted for lost.
We then went to watch a women’s singles match. I don’t remember any of their names, I think one girl was Spanish and one was from Estonia or something. Without a Frenchman to root against, I decided based on looks who to root for.
“Okay, I’m rooting for that one.”
“Why,” Mary asked.
“Who wants to root for the pretty blond girl…and I bet she’s a bitch.”
Mary laughed.
Of course, again, in keeping with my tradition the blond bitch won. In straight sets and I don’t even think the brunette scored a single point.
Oh, I should probably take this opportunity to apologize to Mary for the incessant “wait…what’s a game?” “Huh, why did that not count?” “Was that an ace?” “Why doesn’t he hit an ace?” type questions throughout the day. My exposure to tennis as a kid was limited to my decision in the ninth grade to become the new black tennis phenom. I begged my mom for a racket and had my best friend, who was on the Varsity tennis team, teach me how to play. I was doing swimmingly and then the stupid Williams sisters came on the scene and ruined it all. So, I quit. What a week.
Oh yeah, and I had the Game Boy tennis game.
It was a great day, it ended with us seeing a night game involving the men’s eighth seed. He was French, so I rooted against him. And he won. Oh, and during the match, one of the balls went out into the stadium and a little boy caught it. Can you believe the referee guy would not resume play on the court until the kid returned the ball? It’s like…dude, you’re the Australian frickin Open, why don’t you buy a few extra packs of balls? At one point, out of frustration, the guy playing the eighth seed hit a ball out of the park with his racket…I wonder if they sent someone with a flashlight to scour the bushes to get it back.
After tennis, we, of course, went off to play more poker.
The next day we wanted to hit all the tourist sites, so we got up early again…Mary for peanut butter sandwiches and me for toast and juice. Now, whenever I ordered juice in Australia, I invariably ended up having this conversation.
“And a glass of ice.”
“Sorry, we don’t have ice.”
We were dining with Pauly and Change 100 at a place that Pauly frequents regularly, so whenever I jokingly suggested doing anything at all out of the ordinary to get some water in a freezer…he would shoot me this look that said “please don’t…I’ll be back here tomorrow and don’t want spit in my food.” Or did he actually say that?
Seriously, how an entire nation in the midst of the hottest summer ever could not have ice for their beverages…baffling.
I did concoct a scheme for making a billion dollars bringing ice to Australia. I figure I hire a couple of crews, we head North, chop blocks off the polar ice caps, package them and have them in Aussie restaurants by next summer. Easy breezy.
Our first tourist attraction that day was the Melbourne museum. (Our first stop was supposed to be a manicure shop to get our nails did, but Mary had me walk four hundred blocks through town, only to discover the manicure place was really an overpriced spa.) It was pretty cool as far as museums go. There were some interesting science experiments…including a weird Alice in Wonderland type house. There was a moving exhibit on the plight of the aboriginies – whose children were deemed property of the Australian government and so could be taken away from their families at any time until they turned eighteen…when they were dropped back off in the aboriginie ghetto again.
So sad.
It got me all riled up at whitey.
Next we went to the old Melbourne jail…spelled gaol. They told us that we should really come back the next day to get the full experience.
Okay…more poker it is.
That night I played Scrabble at a local bar and afterward hung out with the bartender Chris. He was a transplant from New Zealand, and out of work actor type, paying the bills with bartending. He kept me giggling my head off with his various American accents and a dead on George W. Bush. At the end of the night, it was decided that I would move to Melbourne and we would open a theater together…oh, I might or might not have said I was a playwright. “No, nothing you’ve ever heard of, just some small off Broadway shows.”
Grin.
He called a cab for me and I headed over to the casino.
I played a little, but my head was really elsewhere. I loved Melbourne. The pace of the city, the weather, the people.
Hell, I really could move here.
The next day, we headed out to the beach. We really wanted to hit Bondi beach when we were in Sydney, but our time was too short and it was pretty hot. So, it makes sense that we went in Melbourne on a cold, rainy morning. We ended up taking the tram too far into town and had to walk back to St. Kilda’s beach.
It was cold.
And rainy.
I was wearing my adorably adorable Down Under floppy hat and my even more adorably adorable “Pass the Sugar” T-shirt. So, basically, I was freezing my ass off.

We walked along the boardwalk until we found a restaurant. The service was just awful, we waited on line to order, but when we got to the front and told the hostess that we wanted to sit outside, she said:
“Oh, then you have to go outside and get a number off the table and then come back inside.”
Of course, it was pouring and all the tables were drenched, so we went back and sat inside.
Where we were promptly ignored for a good twenty minutes.
“Ah, I thought you were sitting outside,” she said by way of an apology as she finally brought our menus.
(One would think the sitting of us inside would have been the tip off. One would be wrong.)
We ordered and then waited another forty-two hours before she brought our food. I had forgotten to order some juice and was afraid if I placed the order for it just then, it would have to be mailed to me in the U.S.
Mary ordered bacon, for her Al Can’t Hang collection…I ordered a cinnamon roll, but they call it something weird in Australia like a snails shell or something. Of course, they were out of that and I had to settle for toast again.
There was another Luna Park near St. Kilda’s and this one had a rollercoaster…but since I had to bribe Mary to go to Luna Park in Sydney, I didn’t suggest this one.
We left St. Kilda’s pretty soon after that. We had a day pass for the trolley, so we went back to the gaol…had the “full experience,” which was a lot like the day before’s experience except with much more walking. As part of the tour, you can take your mugshot and wear Ned Kelly’s armor and sit in a judge’s chair.
“I assume you want to do that,” Mary would say scornfully, as I giddily handed her my camera and placed a prisoner’s number on my chest.
I liked the gaol, I guess, but I’m not sure how much we paid for it…but it should have been free.
Next we went to the big Melbourne library; they also had a Ned Kelly exhibit. (He’s the Jesse James of Australia)
After we took photos of the armor, we decided to use the internet at the library. Now, one of us decided to just grab a seat at a computer, while the other law abiding one of us stood on line and ended up being shuffled into the annexed reading room and placed at a standing computer where she had to stand, while computing. I had decided to play in an Australia Scrabble tournament that weekend, so I spent the time printing out all the foreign two and three letter words, so I didn’t make an arse of myself.
Afterward we went off to someplace called the Victorian market. It reminded me of the area in Seattle where the original Starbucks is located…or the old Fulton Fish market, that is to say, it smelled of fish. Oh, and it was closed.
What a gyp.
Valid.
We had sushi for dinner and then…played more poker. I left early because I wanted to get some sleep before the big game. It was pouring and I didn’t have an umbrella, so I waited for the tram to go one stop back to the hotel. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
I played in the Scrabble tournament our last day there, while Mary scoped out the final day of the Aussie millions.
We were leaving at noon the next day, so we spent the night shoving all the crap we bought and brought back into the little nylon cases for travel.
We got in a cab to the airport at the height of morning rush hour traffic, so we had like forty minutes to say goodbye to Australia. Goodbye to the cricket scandal of ’08 where the calling of an Indian cricket player a “bastard” by an Australian player got him sanctioned for unsportsmanlike conduct. (Reason number 485 why cricket won’t fly here in the states.) Goodbye flat whites. Goodbye $2 coin. (A TWO DOLLAR COIN…jeebus.) Goodbye driving on the left hand side. Goodbye surly waiters. Goodbye casinos that don’t provide free drinks, charge time to play at the tables AND rake twice as much as AC. (Dawn Summers money making scheme number 5: introduce American style casino to Sydney.) Goodbye Australia Open and some guy named Roger Federer. Goodbye iceless drinks. Goodbye invariably late Qantas airlines…oh no…wait…we have one more. While I was saying my goodbyes…maybe in my head, maybe out loud, I discovered that the cab had an actual roll down window…with rollers not buttons. I was amazed and amused.
Mary…horrified.
At me. As I took pictures and then rolled down the window. And rolled it up again.

We met back up with Maura and April at the airport. They said they enjoyed their time in Sydney.
“Yeah, Maura was taking pictures of everything, so I started to call her Dawn.”
California April also told me that the Patriots had won and would be playing the Giants in the Superbowl.
I thought this was good news, although I was worried about a surging Eli versus and struggling Patriots.
I was right to worry.
I got the middle seat on the fourteen hour flight back to America. Yes, you read that right.
It was basically, my nightmare. I was awake for every “excuse me” and “coffee or tea” “the pilot would like you to fasten your seatbelt” between Melbourne and LA.
The woman next to me on my left was an Australian on her way to the US for the first time. She was a massage therapist, but was moving to Sacramento to become a theology student. “I was in a comfort zone back home, it was time to shake things up,” she said.
She said a lot of other things too, she was a bit of a talker and as much as I tried to pull Mary into the conversation, she would firmly put her novel to her hose and reposition her earphones in her ears. The woman next to me on my right was evil.
With nothing but time, I thought about everything – my trip, my past year, my life my career, my family, my friends. And I came to some firm conclusions that there were things I didn’t like and I would change. Life is too short and amazing for unhappiness and worry. I actually decided to take some time off and really give writing a shot. It’s the only thing I’ve ever loved doing whether I was getting paid or not. It’s no coincidence that while I’ve worked at three different firms since 2003, I’ve steadily posted away on this blog.
I was talking to Fisch before I left about how I hoped to find my greater purpose in Australia, especially since I’d always been inexplicably drawn to the continent.
“Ah, never mind that, just have fun,” he said.
Well, I think I managed to do both.

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.