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February 12, 2007

Interview Questions

Did some written interview answers today for a sydney publication. They never use all of them though, and sometimes none of them. So I thought, dagnabbit, at the least I can put my answers up in my diary, so I can remember later what I think about stuff. So here you go diary! Questions and answers!

QUESTIONS

1. Why don’t you get a real job?

I don’t like standardised rejection letters. That said, I don’t think I’d like overly specific and personal rejection letters either. I guess it’s easier just to leave the whole thing to the pros.

2. The Australian sense of humour: good, bad or non-existent?

Great, and worth preserving.

3. What can you offer the average punter that a night in front of the telly couldn’t?

The TV doesn’t accidentally spit on you when it gets worked up.

4. Have you ever had a partner laugh during a, well, an intimate moment?

Sure, but only because of my material.

5. Most glamorous “Look, Mum, I’m a celebrity!” moment?

My mother died when I was very young, but thanks for bringing it up. However if she was alive, I’m sure it would have been when I officially opened the Third Annual Pensington Stoat Race (sponsored by Dobb’s Hotdog Stands Inc.). I don’t know much about her, but she did like stoats, I remember that much. And fast ones were her favourite.

6. Least glamorous “Oh, God, who threw up in the tour bus?” moment?

Actually that was it, except there wasn’t a bus. Or a tour. Or a God.

7. Comedians: failed rock stars or intellectual giants?

Does it have to be one or the other? And does my question in effect answer yours? Rock out!

8. Insider trading time! What comedian (other than your lovely self) should punters check out at the Cracker Comedy Festival?

Kent Valentine – his energy and verve makes me feel unfit, so that kind of makes watching him like a workout. And Dave Jory - he’s amusingly bald and, as a bonus, an excellent gag man.

9. Beverage of choice?

Free.

10. Favourite album?

The Lilo and Stitch soundtrack.

11. Favourite book?

Sir Joshua and the Unprofessional Dragon.

12. Favourite film?

Labyrinth.

13. History’s most under-appreciated superhero?

The working class man. And we’re gonna keep it that way!

14. How do you fill the lonely hours travelling and waiting for gigs?

By savouring the chance to be away from all my friends and loved ones.

15. Any advice for wannabe comedians?

Be prepared for the rest of your life to turn a shade paler.

16. Complete: Two comedians walk into a bar…

... to get to the other side.

Posted by Sam Bowring at 06:36 PM | Comments (0)

February 06, 2007

Odi

I went to thailand in december, and there’s quite a lot I want to write about it. This is not to suggest, at all, that quite a lot happened. It didn’t. Quite the opposite, in fact, whatever that is.

Choice 1) Quite a lot didn’t happen.
Choice 2) Quite a lot failed to occur?
Choice 3) Quite a lot of potential went unrealised, as it’s amazing how unmotivated you get when you spend all day smoking pot in paradise, and there are ACTUALLY flying lizards there.

However, it was this failure of anything major to eventuate that gave rise to many many days of sitting around noticing small things and having deep thoughts, as deep as the deep blue sea, which is to say, you don’t even know what the fuck is down there (aka, a lot of bullshit).

Previously I have put off writing anything about it because it seemed too much at once, but I’ve given myself permission, diary, not to write it all at once, but rather, at the very least, to start.

This entry therefore will be about one thing only, and that, diary, is what I remember about a man I met - a ladyboy waiter and volleyball extraordinaire, called Odi.

In 2003, I went to Thailand for the first time with some friends. I can’t exactly remember when Odi took a shine to us, but it must have been fairly quickly after our arrival to the quiet island bungalows on Koh Jum. It became known to the Thai staff that we were staying for some time, longer than other guests, who would breeze in and out over a couple of days, a night, or even those who amped it up to a week. I don’t quite know how this affected our behaviour towards the staff, or them to us – at the least I think each of us was aware that these were people we’d be seeing around for a while, and so neither treated the other as they would under briefer circumstances.

Odi liked us. It took us a while to realise he was shooing away other staff who tried to take our orders at the bar. Odi, it seemed from the start, was OUR waiter.

He was around five foot tall, with short hair (I assume it’s easier short when you need to put on a wig sometimes), dark flashing eyes, and a face that could turn quickly from a widely grinning display of teeth to a serious frown of concentration. More than that, well, I can’t recall ... I always wish later that I liked taking photos.

He started teaching us Thai. Our Thai when we arrived was virtually non-existent, and my friend Jake and I especially would routinely announce to staff that we were women, when we were trying to thank them.

When we pointed out things on the menu, Odi would tell us how to say it in Thai. We would repeat it back until we got it ‘right’, and then food was allowed.

We played volleyball on the beach. The staff had a break between 4 – 5, and some would stay and play volleyball with us and other guests. Odi sometimes encouraged us to play when we might otherwise not have done, and we had fun anyway.

Some nights we’d go up to a bar on the tip of the island that was open late, the Good Hope Bar, with mats on the sand and an owner who didn’t mind tabbing. Odi came with us sometimes, and we realised when he did that he was on our tab. We thought this was a bit cheeky, but we didn’t really mind, and let him get plenty drunk.

Once or twice at night’s end, as we went off to our separate bungalows, Odi would call out ‘Ladyboy for you tonight?’

‘No thanks Odi,’ was always the reply. ‘Not tonight.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘No no,’ we laughed. ‘Not tomorrow.’

It didn’t take him long to stop asking.

One evening, we were surprised by how surly we found him when we went for dinner. He wouldn’t serve us, giving us flicks of his hand and head every time we caught his eye, and eventually someone else came over. It could have been his wife, who had recently had their child, and also worked at the bar. I wondered how much fun it was being married to a flamboyant ladyboy, who had probably married her out of religious duty or something.

We found out why he was so hissy – apparently we’d missed a volleyball game we’d said we’d be at that afternoon. Odi had given up his break and waited for us at the net, watching as we lolled around in the shallows like dugong, not a hundred metres down the beach. Why hadn’t he simply called out, I said angrily. Pride?

None of us could remember having made this supposed appointment, and we were all a bit pissed off with him for being so pissed off with us. The next day, however, it seemed our punishment was over, and we were once again allowed to order banana cocktails from him.

Sometimes we would try out the words Odi had taught us on other staff. Every time they didn’t understand, and we’d go back to speaking in English so they kinda could. It seemed Odi had learnt our faulty version of his language, and as such we shared a private dialect, a language highly specific and useless anywhere else in the world apart from there, and then.

One day, I can’t remember where or when, maybe at volleyball, Odi introduced me to his cousin, Kenya. ‘Kenya’, she announced to me enthusiastically, getting right in my face. It seemed that Odi, having realised we were perhaps not into ladyboys, had sourced us an actual lady. I, apparently, was the perfect match. ‘Kenya, Kenya,’ she told me again and again. I would nod and smile and ‘Kenya’ I would agree, because what else could I say? I don’t know what my morals might have allowed for had she been attractive, but she wasn’t, so I’ll never know (or tell). Suffice to say I found her forceful attention disquieting and unwelcome, but still it was not a major thing, and we all played volleyball and had fun. One night coming back from the Good Hope Bar, she asked if she could stay with me. I was drunk enough to consider it. It is with a lasting thankfulness that I eventually said no, and after that she stopped telling me her name all the time.

Meanwhile, Odi had decided he really fancied my friend Nick. Nick’s not a homophobic guy, but neither was he comfortable with a Thai ladyboy trying to crack onto him. One night when Nick had gone off elsewhere, Odi wept whisky tears to a circle of Thai women comforting him, telling him not to get so worked up over a farang, which was what we were.

‘Where’s mister nick?’ he would ask us sometimes. Nick might have escaped off to bed and locked his door, yet two or three of us still sat up late on a bungalow balcony somewhere, a firefly floating between our faces, pausing at each for about the same time as three puffs, or so it might have coincidentally seemed from a distance. ‘Don’t know,’ we would say. ‘Maybe asleep.’

Once he burst into Jake’s bungalow, which Jake had left unlocked before going to bed. ‘Where’s nick, where’s nick?’ ‘Get out Odi!’ shouted Jake, who doesn’t like being woken by frantic ladyboys, it seems.

A couple nights Odi went to sleep outside my door. We’d share drink and fireflies with him, and he’d pass out, impossible to wake. There he would stay until we all retired, snores thundering into the floorboards until at some point he must have woken and left. The next morning he’d always be back in the bar, freshly dressed, winking and touching his finger to his lips, sharing the joke but imploring our silence (we were pretty sure it wasn’t cool for the staff to pass out on the guest’s balconies).

The third or fourth night it happened, I declared enough was enough. ‘Wake up Odi!’ I said, shaking him. ‘You can’t sleep here tonight! I want to fantasise about woman I’ll never sleep with, and having you shaking my hut to its foundations with noisy air is not setting the mood!’ I didn’t let up until he rose, and afterwards felt guilty – for he stumbled to his feet, tottered off the balcony, straddled his motorcycle, and hooned off blind drunk directly into the Thai jungle. I worried then for his safety but, the next day, winking and smiling and bringing us pancakes.

Odi was growing tiresome. He invited more and more staff members to come along and drink at the Good Hope on our tab. Everything was drama, great loves kindled like flashfire but on less substance, missed appointments and constant attention, always offending him with some little thing. We began to ignore him when he was shirty, no longer bothering to work out what we’d done to offend. I also thought I began to notice that the other staff were not exactly fans of his histrionics, and that made my intolerance bolder.

He wouldn’t let us have our food if we couldn’t recite the correct words in Thai, and we’d been stoned for what now seemed like years - too long to remember how we’d said breakfast yesterday. It was no longer lessons, it was now a test, every lunch and dinner. We had to order new things just because he couldn’t claim he’d told us how to say them already.

When we left he gave us gifts, bandanas, and we bought him things from the village, because that was where the only shops were, things he could have had anyway. At least we got him a huge bottle of whisky, which made up for the fisherman’s pants that were several sizes too big. I said I’d send something from Australia – maybe a packet of Redheads with some gumleaves stuffed inside.

We left, and he was sad to see us go, though perhaps he was also relieved in a way, as we most certainly were. He told us to let him know if we’d be back, because he’d save up his days off (one a week) for a couple of months, so that he could take us on a special boat trip to see the islands where he grew up, and meet his family. At that stage nothing appealed less, but we lied and said we would.

In the year that followed, the island was smashed by the tsunami. My friend Digby looked into how badly things had gone in the wake of the wave, and thankfully it seemed that no one had died. Phi Phi had caught the worst of it, and sent Jum warning ahead of time. There is higher ground on Jum, and the people had gone there in time.

At the end of 2006, Digby, Jake and I made our way once again to Koh Jum. We sat on the ferry that chugged towards the islands, on the deck next to a pile of bags melting in the sun. Excited by our return, we were still a little wary of seeing Odi again.

‘If Odi is there,’ someone said, ‘we’re not going to let him get away with so much bullshit.’

‘Yeah,’ said someone else. ‘A little more distance. I want to keep to ourselves more, do what we want to.’

‘I’m here for a holiday, not to entertain the whim of a ladyboy for three weeks.’

‘Yeah. And I’m not going on that fucking boat trip to meet his family either.’

‘No fucking way!’

‘Hopefully he’s dead,’ I joked, and we laughed. ‘Wouldn’t that be a relief!’

We got to the island and folk came out of the bar to meet us. We recognised a couple of them and smiles flew about. Inside the bar, under the shade of the thatched roof, was Goi, another friend we had made the last time, whose name means ‘Banana’. This, probably, was the only Thai word I remembered. She was happy to see us indeed, though she seemed older and a woman now, whereas I remembered a girl who would deliberately jump in my way and trip me up. It seemed like some of the life had gone out of her, like maybe we aren’t meant to live on islands our whole lives while the rest of the world comes to visit and goes again, a glimmer. Or maybe it was the wave. Or the heat.

She took our bookings, and didn’t worry that our passport numbers weren’t handy. As she sorted out our keys, she paused and took on a serious look.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Last time you were here, you had a friend, Odi?’

‘Yes?’ we said. We remembered Odi – he hoons into the jungle and never hits a root, or a monkey.

‘I’m sorry to tell, but - he died.’

We took a moment to collect our thoughts and find the appropriate responses. She didn’t seem to want a song and dance about it, merely to tell us. If anything she seemed worried that we would be sad, when she was not that sad herself, merely accepting. I’m not sure.

‘That’s terrible,’ someone said. ‘Can I ask how he died?’

‘Some problem inside,’ she said, and patted her stomach.

That was all we ever found out, apart from it had happened six months after the wave, and his wife had since remarried to a wealthier man, and had new children.

Once we were three westerners alone, I said ‘Well. Guess I should just have wished he’d gotten a job on another island or something. A better job, for more cash. Still alive but bothering someone else.’

We laughed quietly, though the mood was darker. We knew we’d been caught out by the universe.

‘Nick will be happy,’ someone said (Nick was going to join us later).

Jake was distressed that we were joking about it, and I said that’s what we three do, we joke. It’s just a way of covering what we feel. I was implying sorrow, perhaps even a guilty thought about how an entire bottle of whisky might contribute to a problem in the guts sixth months distant from critical. But, as for myself, the feeling I was eager to mask was relief, glowing warmly in my selfish heart. Mask it even from myself, lest I see evil staring at me in the mirror.

I know what I’ll do, I thought. The only thing I can.

I’ll write him up.

We walked up later to the Good Hope Bar, wrecked by the tsunami and never rebuilt, a half standing ruin in the sand. Here was where those stupid gifts had been given.

‘Should have sent him those fucking gumnuts.’

We had our holiday, and no one really bothered us. More than previously we kept to ourselves, made less friends, did our own thing. There was no one to make us play volleyball.

So we didn’t.

Posted by Sam Bowring at 03:10 AM | Comments (0)