Joel and I both have smelly feet. My feet may be, as Joel claims, the smellier of the two, but the smell they produce is my own smell, and it will come as no surprise that I am more comfortable with it than the distinct odor Joel and his gross fucking feet claim as his own.
Much of our first few days traveling together have been spent out-grossing each other. Joel has grown a beard. I had completely trashed my rental car. I had not done laundry for the past couple of months since we had seen each other, and due to the fact that every time I went on a tramp a small ruler width stretch of skin on my side was worn away by my backpack, all of my shirts had a similar bloody spot on their side. Joel, as I may have mentioned, had grown a ridiculous beard. For a few days we entertained the possibility that our out-grossing contest could be made conscious, be made into something within our control, that we could be proud of instead of responsible for. Joel would try to get me to eat something – say, a packet of sugar, or a plum he had stepped on. I would try to get him to fart on a nun. Eventually we gave up; we had grown, perhaps just over the past couple of months, too mature for such games. Joel farted on a “religious looking chick,” but I think you’ll agree with me: it’s not the same.
The first day Joel and I traveled together was an eventful one. I did laundry. We cleaned out my car – this took a while - and repacked it, adding Joel’s possessions; a chilly bin, a few packs, and the ghost of a heavy, too-easily-felt memory of a lamb named Tanto, who had done nothing wrong, ever, to anyone, but had still proven unfit for this world; more on that later, when the events are more remote. Then we met up with two girls and a guy – Brits in the middle of a year of world travel – that Joel had met a month earlier on the North Island. They were doing a winery tour by bike – best idea ever? In a nunless country, I think maybe yes - and were staying in the area, so we arranged to stop at their hostel and to drink with them that night. Here are the things we drank: two pints of beer a piece and our share of 22 beers and two bottles of wine. When we had arrived at the hostel, Pat, the owner, had advised us not to grow alarmed if we heard an alarm in the night, as it was the fire department across the street calling for volunteers. The alarm may go off for a while, she warned us, as the volunteer lived some way out of town, and was the only one who could turn off the alarm once it got going. From the way she said this, I gathered our services might be needed should a fire of any consequence be started in the region, so I tried to pace myself, and, when that attempt failed, practiced my fireman’s carry on a number of disgruntled hostel guests, so as to be limber and prepared. Some of the beers we wound up finishing up in record time were Stella, more potent than most beer and certainly more potent than Kiwi offerings. We drank those last, which may – may – have been a mistake.
The night was warm, but not uncomfortably so, and the light from the table lamp pleasantly dim, as were we; things that should not have been funny were, and things that should not have been stepped on in socks, mostly plums, in this case, were. Why would you leave a ladder up a plum tree after dark, if not to invite disaster? We ate sausage and cheese and crackers and pate. Earlier in a tavern down the road we had had nachos, which the Brits were raving about. When Joel mentioned that I would probably, being a Texan, have trouble with the authenticity of the dish, they asked me very politely what, exactly, separated New Zealand nachos from Texas nachos. They looked at me in plain disbelief when I started by mentioning that most nachos you’d find in Texas weren’t made entirely out of fried cod and potato wedges. Eventually I was forced to stab them in the face and make a quick getaway.
We were the only people in the hostel awake after 10pm, which was weird, and we made much of the lack of company, carousing until 2am or so. I say carousing because the particulars of the evening remain something of a mystery to me. At some point, I told the Timmy Loved Clowns joke, which was predictably appreciated for the first few minutes, resented for the last 25 minutes, and dealt with somewhat coolly in its aftermath. I like making new friends.
We were both badly hungover the next day, which was spent a) being hungover and b) driving to Greymouth. At one point we stopped - in Westport, I think - and purchased some really great bread and cupcakes, and ate them. I want to make this perfectly clear: the cupcakes were chocolate cupcakes with chocolate icing and had a couple of Hershey’s chocolate wedges on top. They were really good. Anyway, that was fun, and is the only thing I remember about the day, besides the lambchops we barbecued for dinner that night, lambchops purchased bitterly, with our tears if not with our very souls.
Let me tell you about Tango and Cash – Tango and Cash is not a flawless movie. It will never make any critic’s top-100 list of “not horrible” films, and probably there will come a point when all of the copies remaining of the film will be destroyed so as to protect a younger generation from the screenwriting, which was clearly handled by a non-English speaker. That said, I love Tango and Cash. I appreciate and salute the many, many wisecracks, the sex appeal I can recognize but not be threatened by coming from leads Stallone and Russell. I continue to be delighted by the explosions. Teri Hatcher’s presence is, I think you’ll agree with me, always welcome.
My point here is not to defend a controversial film, however. At one point, before electrocuting the lantern-jawed inmate who has somehow freed himself and some of his roughneck friends from general population and has appeared on the roof to stop the rogue cops’ escape, to kill them, Tango addresses what I think is a central point in any friendship. He and Cash are about to jump from a high building, grab hold of an electrical cord some ten feet distant, and then slide down on their belts over the barbed-wire fence and drop down to freedom in the woods beyond. It is raining, and both men are bloody and exhausted after an action packed escape from the prison they’ve been unjustly trapped in up to this point. Stakes are high, and prospects are slim. Cash has agreed to go first, and he wants to make sure Tango will try this last stunt if for some reason Cash fails, if he misses the cable and breaks his spine into pieces on the concrete several stories below or is electrocuted upon grabbing onto the line. Tango looks at Cash coolly: “Depends on how close you get.”
In two weeks, Joel and I fly to Southeast Asia. Joel is deathly allergic to shellfish, which may pose a problem in the seafood rich but everything else poor region of the world we have decided to go to. I, for my part am terribly attractive to disease carrying insects. Which one of us is Tango? Which one Cash? Will we, as they did, eventually persevere, shooting Jack Palance in the forehead before he has a chance to murder Tango’s sister and Cash’s romantic interest (the redoubtable Teri Hatcher)? Only time will tell.
