Although I enjoy a vigorous and varied relationship with Onan’s sundry joys, it’s not often I find myself in a mid-river island village at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning with my hands down my pants slapping my own arse. In my cosmopolitan Downunder home town you wouldn’t bat an eyelid at someone having a quick public fiddle because in my hipster ‘hood just about everything counts as performance art. There, God’s Holiday starts just after 11, when post-archery-class manbuns in toe socks descend on the local cafeteria for a Fernet infused fair-trade truffle muffin and bourbon chaser. Red-lipsticked jades languidly pluck their ukuleles and sip hand-milked flamingo wee. None of them would be caught dead pre- or post-elevenses in fluoro pink Russian Market sports bra and Target leggings and sweating like two rats fucking in a sock. At least, not outside the CBD. Certainly not beyond arm’s reach of a spinning wheel, anyway. I would, though, and I was – this time on yet another ill-conceived tramp to discover more of CharmingVille’s, er, charms, and to trim a few inches off the dewlaps at the same time. I also thought a bipedal zip round an unsung landmark might see off the stubborn melancholia left lingering after Bunster hobbled off life’s slippery twig. These were the noble brass rings dangling from my Sunday morning horizon. A cheeky outdoor spank wasn’t on the radar.
Unbeknownst to me, and easily missed this past predawn black Sabbath as I donned my ragtag sports kit, tiny red ants had already stowed themselves in the seams of my stretchy trews and underthings. I don’t know what it’s like over at your place right now but thanks to El Nino, Monsanto and of course the Vietnamese we have hordes of at least 5 kinds of ants swarming over our stuff here at Marital HQ. Little back ones, big black ones, and three sizes of red have invaded our nooks and got all up in our crannies. Just the other midnight, with the mercury zooming, I awoke to the smallest of our cohabitant formicadae thrusting their hot stings into the only place in this whole damn overcooked city where the sun don’t shine. Unable to suffer properly unless someone is watching, I woke the Hubster from his post pub torpor and made him help me look for the bug spray. He was tits on a bull, stumbling round the apartment and scaring our Bunster replacement pet, Ah Dop Dollar, a microscopic rabbit purchased for a furry ten smackers down 63. More on that next time. Eventually I made do with stick-on mosquito patches I found in that kitchen drawer that everyone has (used phone scratchies, keys for something, rubberbands, a lighter) and a can of imported salon-quality lacquer. They probably died in agony, but on the plus-side I have hair-sprayed ants in various poses, like a tiny Tuilleries sculpture garden, all along the headboard as we speak. Neat.
Anyway. A group of total strangers – all women except for one hungover bloke chastised by someone other than his wife for checking his phone when “we should all be looking at the view” – set out in a white mini van to Koh Anlong Chen. It’s south of town, and apparently 6 kilometres round. Six kilometres, 600 kilometres. It’s all the same to me when it’s hotter than Satan’s filthy maw and I’m dawdling behind the pack at the halfway mark with 10 kilos of camera strung round my neck like a sack of expensive Japanese potatoes. Ahead of me a younger, lither, barely damp NGO person and her intense older she-mate traded burpees and tips on capacity building for rural thrivelihoods. I’d given up politely saying “arun suorsdey” to every man and his dog and stumbled, sweat blind to the bucolic, riverine hamlet around me, with each jagged breath cursing those smug bitches in their Lulu goddamn Lemons. As I lent on a pole and gagged on my lungs, I felt all eyes in the village glued to my expiring physique. Local tykes gambolled at my feet, in awe of my vast, heaving discomfort. “Hello Lady, why are you?.” I had no idea, and frankly I didn’t fucking care.
Maybe it was the stench of deep fried plumpster wafting through the weft of my lycra-rich sportswear – or maybe it was instant karma for dissing the dogooders – but suddenly my pants were alive with my trapped ant cargo. They jabbed my arse with fiery stings and not in the way I usually like. I bitch-smacked myself up until there was nothing for it but to plunge my sweaty palms down into me nethers and grab those little fuckers one by one.
A young deaf lad with a wonky eye took pity on me and dinked me all the way back to the ferry on what looked to be an original 1976 Malvern Star Dragster. It had a Winnie the Pooh squeaky toy wired to the handlebars and we coasted all the way to the ferry landing. If I’d Sharpie’d on a Hitler moustache and donned a floral muumuu on my own CTN variety show the village people couldn’t have been more thrilled.