Sydney/Taree Australia
Part 11

For dinner on our second night in Taree, B suggested fish 'n' chips. "Chips?"

"You call them fries."

"So why don't Aussies call them fries?"

"Because they're chips, that's why." Then B looked at my bare chest. "Aren't you going to wear a...? Oh, yes, I forgot. They're in the wash."

There were a couple of teen customers in the small fish 'n' chip shop, which was run by two women, who took a more than a casual interest in my pecs. Hey, no prob. Gawkers were always welcome, no matter who they were.

The teens were ordering burgers like I'd never seen before. Awesome! Beef pattie, onion, bacon, egg, pineapple, salad, beetroot, cheese, and sauce; all crammed inside a monster toasted and buttered bun.

When one of the teens took a bite, I watched him open his mouth wide enough to swallow a train - or one helluva big boner - but he hardly made a dent in the burger. Whoa! That was some fucking feast!

The chips were a lot different to McD's fries. They were chunky: maybe twice as thick, and longer. The sign on the wall read, "We don't use frozen chips. We make our own from fresh potatoes". Cool!

"What kinda fish is it, B?"

"Probably hake."

When one of the women removed the wire basket of hot chips from the deep fryer, then tipped them onto a large piece of white butcher's paper, there was a pile high enough to feed a fucking army. But they looked totally wicked! Golden brown and crunchy. Mmmm! Then the woman sprinkled them with salt from a big metal shaker before she wrapped the chips in two sheets of paper. She did the same with the four large pieces of battered fish, but added some fresh lemon wedges before wrapping them.

"I saw you gawking at those teens," I smiled as we walked home.

"Research."

"Yeah, right. Hey, B, what do you think about when you gawk at hunks?"

"I told you... it was research."

"C'mon, B! Don't gimme that lamo crap. Jeez!"

The old dude gave me a friendly shove, which sent me stumbling sideways onto the grassy nature strip. "Sometimes I'm in awe."

"Of what?" I asked as I caught up to him.

"The beauty of youth."

"Guys don't think of themselves as beautiful, B. Sexy maybe; hot maybe; but not beautiful. That's for chicks. Hey, did you see those women checking me out?"

"So were the teens."

"They were? Those two guys? Cool! I didn't notice. Damn!"

"You were too busy gawking at how the hamburgers were being made."

"Speaking of not noticing, B," I grinned, then left it to him to discover what was hanging outa my fly.

It took a few forward paces before B's curious eyes finally drifted down to my crotch. "Daniel! Put that damn thing away!"

"It's enjoying the fresh air."

"It won't be enjoying the fresh air when you're in jail. Now do as I say, and put it away!"

"I'll hold the fish 'n' chips while you put it away for me."

"Daniel!" Then his eyes popped big time as he noticed two girls walking toward us. "Oh, my God! Quick! Put it away before those girls see it! Hurry!"

"They already have, B," I shrugged. But I followed orders anyway, and shoved my boner back inside my shorts, despite the fact that the damn thing resisted like all hell.

As the giggling girls, with their hands over their mouths, got to within about a yard or two of us, one of them said, "Nice package, boyo," then both chicks became almost hysterical. Once they'd walked past us, I heard, "And tell your grandpa he'd better use sun screen."

"She's right, Pa," I cracked, "you're as red as a fucking beet."

"Don't call me Pa! Jesus, Daniel, you're going to get yourself into deep shit one of these days... not to mention me! Have you noticed what's directly across the road?"

I looked to my right and saw the court house as well as the police station, but it didn't bother me. "Actually, you'd make a way cool grandpa. I'm being serious here, B. Honest. Lemme see, if you'd had a son at 21, and he'd had a son - namely me - at 21, that'd be 42 years. Yeah, that's about right. Y'know something, B? You're an awesome old dude. I could never do stuff like this in front of Andy my step dad. He'd freak!"

"And I'm not freaking?"

"Yours is a different kinda freaking, B. When you freak, it's cool."

B answered in silence by shaking his head as we entered the front gate of the house, then headed straight for the kitchen, where he organized the fish 'n' chips on four plates. "Two, four, six, eight, bog in, don't wait," Lindsay said as he carried his and Sue's plates to the living room. B and I ate ours in his "office".

"How come you don't eat your meals with the other guys?"

"I do sometimes, but most of the time they do their thing and I do mine. We don't get in each other's way. We share the same house, but we have our own space. It works. What do you think of the fish 'n' chips?"

"Wicked! Chips are awesome, specially with a squeeze of lemon and lots of ground pepper. So why do you bother cooking if you can buy stuff like this?"

"I enjoy cooking. Oops! What time is it?" B glanced at his watch, then turned on the TV. "Gotta catch the 7 o'clock news on ABC... that's the Australian Broadcasting Commission, not your ABC in the US."

B was pretty well set up in his "office". The TV and VCR stood on top of a small bookshelf beside his comp desk, and next to the comp was a 2-drawer timber filing cabinet. At one end of the room was a fancy bookcase, which housed the entire set of leather-bound Encyclopeadia Britannica. Sitting on top of the bookcase was an old bakelite mantle radio from the 1940s. Above that was a framed, 300 degree, panoramic aerial pic of Sydney Harbor in 1988, with a whole bunch of old sailing ships at anchor. "I was there that day, January 26, the day Oz celebrated 200 years of European settlement. Early that morning, I was on board a 53' ketch outside Sydney heads, and watched the re-enactment of the First Fleet of 11 tall ships as they appeared on the horizon. An unforgettable sight. Then we followed the fleet into the harbor, where there was a spectacular fireworks display that night... not to mention unbelievable partying."

"I wonder what guys like Bobby would have thought."

"Many Aborigines weren't pleased. Not by a long shot! To them we were celebrating 200 years of occupation and oppression. But things have improved a lot since then. Reconciliation is in place, and we're recognizing native title. Ayre's Rock, for example, is now known by its Aboriginal name, Uluru, and the Aborigines now control the area's tourism. They also receive royalties from various mining sites that are on traditional Aboriginal land. Things have changed quite a bit over the last decade or two."

While B was talking, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. "Jeez! Did you see that?"

"What?"

"A rat!"

"A rat?"

"It ran past the Britannica and into the spare room."

"Are you sure it was a rat?"

"Almost as big as a fucking kangaroo, B."

"Well, don't just sit there, Daniel! DO SOMETHING!"

"It's your house, B. Besides, I haven't finished my fish 'n' chips yet."

"How can you possibly think about fish 'n' chips when there's a ferocious rat in the next room?"

"Chill, B. A rat won't hurt you. Actually, they're more afraid of you than you are of them."

"Oh, really? Then how do you explain the fact that he's inside the house instead of outside?"

"Maybe the previous tenants tamed him or something." Then I walked over to the spare room door and closed it. "There, he's locked inside. No wukkers."

"No wukkers? Whaddaya mean no wukkers? What happens now? Daniel! Are you listening to me? There's a rat in my spare room!"

"Chill, B. He'll find his way out. Rats are smart little critters. If they can find their way in, they can chew... uh... find their way out. He'll be gone by morning."

"Morning! How am I supposed to sleep with THAT thing on the loose?"

"I'll protect you, B," I grinned after swallowing the last delicious chip. "I'm not a wuss like you. Hey, do you mind if I send an email to my mom? I wanna say hi to my folks and my bro, and tell them what a cool time I'm having in Oz."

"Sure," B said without taking his beady eyes off the spare room door. It was fitted with frosted glass panels, so I guessed he was checking to see if the rat was moving, or trying to hear it making a noise.

"Don't worry about Rodney, B."

"Rodney?"

"Yeah. Let's call him Rodney the rat. Cool, huh?"

"What if there's a Ralph? And a Richard? And a Robert or whatever? There could be a whole plague of rodents under the house! Oh, my God! We're being invaded!"

"Jeez, B! It's only one damn rat for fuck sake! And the fucker's probably scared out of its wits right now."

"I can identify with that."

After I'd sent the email to mom, B came back into the room. He'd been helping Lindsay with the dishes. "Lindsay cleaned up a mess of rat droppings on top of the closet in his bedroom the day we arrived, but he didn't tell me about it 'til just now. This is deadly serious, Daniel. The damn things must be all over the joint."

"You're right," I said as I pointed to his foot. "There's one there! Woohoo!"

I totally cracked as B shot upwards from his stool like he was sitting on top of a Saturn rocket, then did a crazy high-speed dance as he kept asking,"Where? Where?"

"Sorry, B," I managed to say, even though I was totally outa breath. "I was only kidding." Then I doubled up in pain from laughing so damn much.

"Kidding? Daniel, a plague of rats is not something you make jokes about. You almost gave me heart failure! Anyway, first thing in the morning - if we haven't been eaten alive by then - I'm going to the supermarket to get several tons of rat poison. And I'll phone the estate agent to let them know that this house is crawling with vermin."

"One Rodney?"

"One Rodney, and LOTS of droppings! You don't need to be Sherlock to figure that one out!"

"How come they're called droppings? Ours aren't."

"That's because we're civilized, Daniel. We sit on toilets."

"So before toilets were invented, were human turds called droppings?"

"I have no idea, Daniel. I wasn't around back then. Can we change the sub? I really don't understand how you can derive so much glee from talking about rats and droppings. Speaking of which, I wonder what Rodney is doing. It's been awfully quiet in that spare room."

"I can check."

"No, no, no, no, no, no! It might escape!"

It had been another long day, so we hit the hay about 10:30. Once again, B insisted on getting undressed in the dark. He stumbled around for a fucking age, mumbling and cussing, then finally got into bed beside me.

"What are you doing?"

"Counting my toes."

"Jeez, B! Rats aren't carnivors. They eat grain."

"Try convincing Rodney or his mates my toes aren't corn cobs or whatever. Anyway, they're all still there, thank God."

"I'm here too, B," I said, roughing up his shock of soft white hair."Nothing's gonna happen. I'll protect you."

"From what? In a minute you'll be snoring your pretty little head off."

B was right. I slept like a log, and as I found out next morning, all night long he'd been sitting bolt upright every ten minutes at hearing the slightest noise, expecting to be surrounded by a plague of starving rats at any moment.

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