Chapter One - The Scam

Ah, another vibrantly refreshing Minnesota summer morning, I said to myself. The birds are chirping, the air is humid and mildly tasting of last night’s barbeque. Which reminds me, what happened last night? Random memory number 1: All the anthropology club members, along with Ryan, Alex and myself, are on the porch smoking a hookah. No, that was a different party. Okay, random memory number 2… Fiesta hats, a French girl, and a gypsy? There was also a band, not playing, but there was a hot (professionally speaking) band at our party. That’s right, that’s the right memory. But as I recall, it wasn’t even the whole band. It was the lead singer and he found the oldest person at the party to talk to (who happened to be a senior citizen from the looks of it). Hmmm. But there’s something else I should mention, it was our last party in the Jefferson house together, for some of the roommates it was even our last night. Some of us were moving on to bigger places, literally and not so literally speaking. Amy was only moving down the street to a studio apartment. Hope she doesn’t light that house on fire too. It’s a long story – but despite her protests, we know that if you leave a candle burning next to highly flammable objects for almost 3 hours while you are at the bar, chances are your room will start on fire! Anyway, Rachel was moving to the northeast with her sister and Trisha was moving to the west coast with a bunch of her circus friends. Yes, she proved a significant baton twirler at the Minnesota circus; hopefully she can continue her lifelong passion in Seattle. I on the other hand was moving to Australia. Forty eight days. That is all I have left before I am scheduled to fly to Los Angeles and then on to Oz. Ah, my head hurts. I have a small hangover, nothing unusual considering I am not a profuse drinker; I could sure as hell name a couple though. Time for lunch with the guys; the guys who I have grown fond of over the last couple of months or should I say one in particular. His name is Alex. He’s a real catch you see (that was a pun, cuz he also likes to fish). Anyway, Alex and I met at a party of a friend whom with which I work. But the saying round these parts is ‘It’s a small world after all.’ It just so happens that Alex is the older brother of a friend of mine. Then of course, he is the friend of a couple current friends of mine. He even lives less than a mile away from the Jefferson house in our fair city of Minneapolis and on top of all that his family lives on the street behind my family in our hometown. I’ve never met anyone who motivates me like he does or takes care of me. Within less than a week of knowing each other, he already cooked me dinner, bought me coffee and ice cream, made me smile, built a fort with me, picked me up from work (!), has been out dancing with me, walked me to class, told me I’m pretty and the list goes on. And believe me, there are not many guys out there who have the confidence to actually dance. He could even make Belle and Sebastian concerts (hypothetically speaking of course) look more like a Britney Spears video. And then the light bulb inside my head goes off or if you prefer the cliché version, it was a match made in heaven. The rest is history, right? Five bloody days, I’m not ready. I’m just not ready to leave. I’m glad I got my open water dive out of the way. Hey, it might be Minnesota but it is the land of 10,000 lakes, all of which happen to be cold even in July. Hmmm. Anyway, I’m broke but there are worse things. Very worse things; for example going on a walk in only, very secluded, camping trip with the person you thought you loved and well, two days later finding out it was indeed he who stole your sleeping bag. And oh yeah, he decided to move to Oklahoma early, so he wouldn’t have to say goodbye to you and watch you blubber like a baby. Five months from now someone will suggest a book to you called ‘He’s just not that into you.’ Okay, so I’m crying a little bit, but that’s just because I’m so stressed out! Wouldn’t you be? But seriously, there are worse things than failed relationships, stolen sleeping bags and money problems. Well, the money thing is pretty serious I guess. I’m more pissed about my sleeping bag though. The kind of problem I was thinking of is the one where you take a blind step, into a decision you’re not even sure of. But the decision you made means you become miles (or as the Aussis would use, kilometres) away from your friends, family and all those guys you called when you were feeling like you couldn’t live by yourself and you were so lonely. Blah, blah, blah. Note to self: Kayley, you are a cheeky little dependent bastard sometimes. So, besides my current plight of self-criticism, I really am scared. I’ve been freaking myself out at night and have consequently renewed my phobia of the dark. I’ve become too scared to sleep alone at night that I’ve been sleeping in my friend Courtney’s bed, by invitation of course. He pretty much has been cheating on his girlfriend while she is in temporarily in another country (helping save small children whom have the deadly cholera epidemic nonetheless!). Four days, three hours, I can’t take it. I miss Alex. I want a proper goodbye and a chance to touch his sweet face once again. Great, now I’m still dependent on guys to make me happy, under the impression that both Alex, and now Courtney, both have strong feelings for me (once again, someone will suggest that book to you later on in life…) and I have a text message? Alex says he wants to say goodbye and he’s coming over in an hour. That was easy. Los Angeles. I haven’t met any angels in this city. Although I love my aunt and uncle, they are the closest things to angels, but then again I have no idea what classifies an angel. My aunt does animal rescues and my uncle fights those infamous California forest fires. Both are happy, love what they do and at the end of the day they have something to feel great about. I wish my dad was here. He’d put on that plane if he could, just to know that I was going to be okay and it’d be the last push I needed to pull myself together before I fell apart in Oz. Two more days and could you guess? I still miss Alex. I miss having someone to talk to. Communication is the great key to a relationship you know. And I think I’m a great listener. (First sign of denial). I love him and I hope that someday he’ll find time for me and want to commit. And I hope by that day I’ve learned to be completely independent and happy and just a great person. One day, less than a day. Hey, today I met Ewen McGregor. Well, I didn’t really meet him. I was at his private photo shoot with my aunt and uncle and he was getting a muffin. I wanted a muffin too. I uh, didn’t have much to say to Ewen (considering we don’t exactly have a lot in common). I was about to articulate the words… I love your work when the words I love you came out instead. Huh. Sitting on the plane now, I am laughing hysterically (on the inside, I’m too self-conscious to lol). It kind of sucks, I got the middle seat. The plane ride is about 13 hours, even longer now that some jackass didn’t want to sit next to the infamously accused ‘murderer’ Doctor Patel who was extradited to Australia. So he may have or may not have been negligent to some of his patients… the point is I don’t want to sit 14 frickin hours on a plane between a trendy girl with her dumb designer glasses, specialized ipod and university sweater and a married guy. It’d been better if he wasn’t married; he was actually kind of cute. But we’re all about to cross that threshold into another time zone, several actually, and enter the land down below. I’ve got 14 hours to think about what I’m going to do with my life in Oz. How am I going to make friends? I don’t know if dad’s jokes will work all the time. How am I going to get over Alex? I’m not exactly a confident and attention grabbing individual. And what the heck am I getting myself into is the real question. I’m sitting on a plane where half the people around me look like they are on a spring break trip to Cancun. Let me just say that, no matter what university you go to, what you have on your ipod, doesn’t matter how technical your cell phone is dammit, we are all going to be thrust together as a pool ignorant/arrogant American uni students who paid money to do some shit orientation that shows us ‘The Real Australia.’ You know the holding of a koala, the authentic Aboriginal culture show, the token surfer dude who runs the surf camp, the scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef. I probably could have saved over $1000 if I didn’t even do this program. Instead, I paid over 15,000 US Dollars this semester to live and be around other Americans? No, that doesn’t sound right. I’m rethinking this whole study abroad thing. It doesn’t sound so glamorous anymore. I knew I should have gone to Egypt. At least if I didn’t want to be around other Americans, I could have just put on my best Spanish Arab accent and made friends with the terrorist groups, definitely no Americans there. In all actuality, and what my readers will eventually learn, is that koalas are angry little buggers. They smell too. And you would never pick one up in the wild. Aboriginals have been a suppressed culture by the white Australian regime (otherwise known as it’s ignorant population) and have resorted to alcoholism and $5000 bonus rewards for having a baby (then apparently in some cases throwing them in the trash can). Even the surfer dude was a scam. I started dancing with him at a club on one of the orientation nights, he bought me a drink and I was flabbergasted. Then he ditched me for some blonde girl and left me with his odorous mate. And that was just the beginning of the scam, the scam that was life. People are always trying to pull a fast one on ya. Even if they don’t mean to, we’re programmed to be selfish and superficial. Some would call us sheep but even sheep couldn’t start the wars we do. The Great Barrier Reef was different though, the only scam on that trip was the boat and the people, but not the Ocean. Can’t blame the place we came from. That’s when I opened my eyes and started to work out a new plan; the one where I had to be independent, because I didn’t have a choice. I had problems, big problems, right? Well, it was better there at that very moment on that boat to realize that my problems were my problems. Nobody else cares. And shit happens, deal with it. The Ocean is more powerful and can wipe out any of us on any given day. Talk about somebody who really doesn’t care about your problems. But seriously, the ocean is a beautiful, relatively unexplored world that most people ironically take for granted. Which has lead me to believe that accusing the world of being selfish and superficial was like a little kid telling the bullies on the playground to stop picking on him or else he will tell his mom. And the other kids go, ‘Why don’t you go cry to your mommy, you big baby!’ But the difference is action. That’s why you need to learn karate, practice an articulate speech before you demolish the bullies and when you’re ready – stand up for yourself and for what you believe. As the Sitt Hakim would say ‘The only thing that is humiliating is helplessness.’