At one in the morning I was on a Greyhound bus going to Sydney, and sitting next to me, drawing weird shapes in her journal with a green colored pencil, was Casey.  I come from Newport, R.I.  Casey couldn't believe people actually lived there.

"I thought it was just like one enormous sight-seeing affair," she said, mocking me with her smile.  In Oregon, she was surrounded by trees and birds, rivers and plains.  Natural beauty, apparently, had been lost on me my entire life.  I rolled my eyes.

We met at a youth hostel in Melbourne.  I was in the kitchen area, minding my business, eating a bowl of soup and a piece of black toast with vegemite spread on it.  She came over to me and said, "I see you've burned it a bit," and helped herself to a bite.  She then made a disgusted face.  I don't think she liked the vegemite.  Or maybe it was the sight of dead pieces of chicken floating in my soup.

I must have been crazy to travel with her, because we weren't alike at all.  She called my brown loafers "pretentiously northeastern," and I reminded her that the peace symbol dangling from her neck belonged to the 1960s.  And the same applied to her sarong, her brown Cream t-shirt, her hemp bracelet, and her dreadlock hair.  "I'll be the first one to admit that," she said.

I wondered why she wasn't going to Alice Springs, or Uluru, places at the dry, red center of the country, or what people like to call the "Outback." So I asked her.

"It's where the 'natural beauty' is," I said.  "How would you know that?"   she asked.

I told her that I had read about these places in travel guides, heard about them from other backpackers.  "Well if you don't see it with your own eyes." she began, but didn't continue.  I had a feeling of what she was getting at, though.

She must live in fantasy world, I thought, smoking hash and laying on the grass all day reading poetry, so I asked her if this was the case.  "It's not good to categorize people," she answered.  "But yes, I would say that you're right." Then she added, "The real world's just too mean."

I wanted to ask her what she meant by this, but instead I watched her draw, something that looked like a boy sitting on top of a blue lion, in a lifeboat, on the water, both boy and lion smiling.  "See?"   she said, looking up, gesturing to the drawing.  "Peaceful."

The necklace, the drawing.  She was a smart girl, that Casey.  She worked on more than one level at a time.

I had the window seat, but it was dark outside, so I wasn't looking out of it.  "Do you see any kangaroos?"   she asked, leaning over my lap, pointing a finger to the window.  I told her I hadn't been looking, to which she responded, "Then we'll have to look together."

So we watched for kangaroos, but the road wasn't lighted, and I could barely see a thing.  "Then I guess you'll have to use.," she said, pausing for effect, "your imagination."

She pointed to a large rock, which was next to a bush, and asked if I saw the dingo and the platypus.  "Which one's the dingo?"   I asked her.  She pointed again.  "I see a rock and a bush," I said.

The bus finally came to a stop, causing Casey to stand and shout, "Sydney!"   I didn't know what time it was, except that it was late, and I was tired, and all I wanted was to get some rest.  Where to now?  "Jolly Swagman," she said, "backpacker hostel."

We took a cab there, checked in at the front desk, where a man with a shirt that read GEORGE was playing what sounded like "American Pie" on an acoustic guitar.  "Name's Owen," he said.  I was too tired to even bother, but I couldn't resist.  "I'm Jonathan," I said, sticking out my hand for a shake, "people just call me Jonathan."

I carried myself and my bag up three flights of stairs to our room.  Casey stayed behind, flirting with George.  Owen, I mean.

I opened up a window in the room, to air it out, and the breeze felt nice for a change.  Then I opened the mini-refrigerator, and inside were four stubbies of Victoria Bitter.  I popped the top off of one, not thinking of who it might belong to or how old it might be.  It was cold, so it tasted good.  It woke me up.

Casey came in, smile on her face.  She saw that I was drinking a beer, helped herself to a sip, and then I told her where I got it from.  "You sure you didn't bottle-up your own piss or something?"   she said.  Then she sat on her bed and began to roll a joint, and I sat on mine and sipped some piss.

It was getting close to four in the morning, but we both understood that we were in Sydney, so we agreed that we should do something, that someplace had to be open.  We could agree on that, that someplace would be open for us.

So we walked, not having to go very far before we saw bright lights, and heard loud, unintelligible music.  We were in the red-light district of Sydney, Kings Cross it is called, and everything was open late.  "This is kind of like New York," I remarked to Casey.  "Never been," she said.

We found this pub called O'Malley's and went inside.  It was very crowded with young people, and I wanted to stay and have a pint.  By the look on her face I figured it would take some convincing to get Casey to stay.  "I'll buy you a beer," I said.  She told me she'd have a water instead.

I got our drinks and Casey insisted that we sit at the far corner of the bar.  "Too many drunks stumbling around," she said.  "Spilling beer all over you."

I wanted to stand up, walk around, meet some people, but I didn't.  I figured it wouldn't be too gentlemanly of me to have left Casey sitting there in the corner by herself.  So I kind of began to watch her, not in a creepy way or anything, just very subtle and all.

I started to wonder if there were any bugs living inside her hair.  She had very nice hair, if she would comb it and wash it once in a while, you could tell.  The color, I mean, was real nice.  It reminded me of the brown leather of my wallet.  I lifted my chin off the bar to tell her this, about her hair, and to ask her what color she would call it, but she was staring into her water glass, so I just ordered another beer.

The barmaid was a pretty girl, long hair painted yellow, green eyes.  I told myself that I would try to strike up a little conversation with her, to see if I could make Casey a bit jealous, just for fun.  So I asked for a Victoria Bitter, and then, as she was serving it, I told the barmaid that in America, we don't like it bitter.

She said, "That's not what I hear." I told her that I meant the beer.

I finished my drink, and Casey chewed on a red stirring straw without saying much, and then we headed out the door, and saw that it had begun to rain.

"Why are you so pissed off?  I asked her as we were walking back.

She asked me how I could even bear being inside places like O'Malley's.  She told me even if I had met some interesting people, they wouldn't remember my name the next day.  They probably wouldn't even remember my face, she said.

"Those places are just so impersonal."

We got back to the hostel and our mate Owen wasn't at the desk.  "Maybe he ran out of American songs to rip-off," I said with a chuckle.  Casey didn't respond, wasn't in the mood, or it was too late, I guess.

I saw that the window was still open in our room, and the edge of my bed was a bit wet with rain.  I undressed to boxers and a T-shirt and got in it anyway, under my sheets, and stared at the ceiling.  I was so tired, and I was feeling the beer a little bit, and I started to see shapes up there, on the white ceiling, faint in my mind, a blue lion, maybe even a platypus.

Casey lighted a joint on her bed and found some Floyd on the radio.  "Do you mind?"   she said.  The song was "Us and Them," and I told her that I didn't mind, that I actually liked Floyd.  She seemed surprised at this, but happy.  "I meant the pot, silly," she said.

She finished getting high and got out of bed to kill the light.  She was still wearing what she'd had on all day, the hippie outfit, and she was going to bed in it now.  Comfortable all the time.  "Get some rest," she told me, getting under her sheets.  I told her I'd see her in the morning.

Author Bio

Mike Futia lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches full time.