Be Suspicious of What You Want

The following is an excerpt from A Fool's Folly.

PART II: Getting to Ends More Desirable

Chapter 6: Be Suspicious of What You Want

It was July 2011. A group of us needed a place to watch the Super Rugby final. We were spending the uni vacation pruning vines down near Pemberton in Western Australia. After working a half day that Saturday, we got cleaned up and headed into town. Before the hotel, we replenished our supplies at the supermarket and bottle-o. Especially the bottle-o! There is nothing worse than a hard earned thirst without the beer to quench it.

Upon entering the pub we spotted a few screens about showing AFL footy, but none showing the rugby. Not being as busy as we’d feared, we asked the barman whether he could put the rugby on one of the screens. “Does it look like anybody wants to watch rugby?” he asked. “We do. Come on mate, it’s the grand final and Queensland’s in with a chance?” Nonetheless the barman was having none of it – a common penalty for watching rugby in the west.

One of the guys then noticed a computer around the side of the bar. He paid the barman a tenner for two hours of Internet access. Whilst he looked for a live stream of the game, the others began gathering chairs to watch from. It didn’t take long before we realized that the connection could hardly produce a photo. Never mind a live stream.

“This fuckhead!”, one of the guys muttered under his breath whist shaking his head at the barman. We moved the chairs back, and sat a while finishing our pints in silence. The mood was bleak. This is what we had spent the whole week looking forward to, and kickoff was only moments away. We hadn’t even considered that we wouldn’t find a place to watch the game. Who expects trouble in watching a game Australians are likely to win, in Australia? Christ sake!

Pints done, we climbed into the car and started heading back to the vineyard. The mood growing heavier, as though a stark realization was settling in. Near the edge of town one of the guys pointed out the backpackers lodge. “C’mon, let’s just have a go in there? Lucie told me that the backpackers has Foxtel.”

We parked and piled out of the car straight into a discussion formation. “Nobody will know that we aren’t backpackers. Let’s just walk in, find the common room and act like we belong.”

“But d’you reckon they even have Foxtel?”

“Doesn’t matter…we’ll find out. Let’s go. It’s probably started already.”

We walked in all playing house, and found the common room right near the entrance. That was lucky because the place seemed rather large. We could’ve wandered around the whole place looking like lost farts. We walked into the room and it was empty. TV on, remote on the front couch.

There were squeals of delight and we all grabbed a seat and switched over to the rugby. By some sort of miracle, the game was seconds away from starting. The Reds versus the Crusaders, and in the nick of time.

A girl walked in holding a DVD just minutes into the game. Her face pure disappointment. Were we any later and that would’ve been our expression back on the road. “What are you watching?”, she asked. “We’re watching the rugby.” Not knowing that we didn’t belong, she could only ask how long we’d be.“It’ll be over in about about 90 minutes. Come back then,” we replied.

And we were damn lucky, because it was a bloody good game. The Crusaders were ahead at halftime. When a few English and Irish blokes joined us, and appeared quite happy to have stumbled upon the game. The Reds came back in the second half with a couple of brilliant tries. They had to hold the Crusaders out in the dying minutes, as a converted try would’ve been their undoing.

90 minutes later and the mood of the group was polar opposite to that which left the hotel. On a buzz, we decided to continue our game of charades, and headed toward some music. We found a bonfire and a circle of travellers and joined in. We started chatting and our Zimbabwean accents earned the usual question. “Are you South African?” It was to be our cover as there wasn’t any question about whether we’d wandered in as we had. An Aussie accent would’ve been a different story.

“Shaw! Where are the car keys?”“Why?”“I want to grab a case of beer.” Thinking the man a genius I fished out my keys and tossed them over. In no time at all, we’d finished the first slab of beer. A chance at shaping with the birds gave the guys a second wind, and the old slab was soon replaced with the second.

The evening began to lose cohesion. I can remember having an argument with a French bloke. He had decided that he needed to engage me about the evil of the white man in Africa. I did my best to explain the complexity of the situation back home. But, his sense of moral superiority was unrelenting. His accent was beginning to piss me off, so I turned my attention to the Welsh girl who wondered over and sat on his lap. I was determined to relieve him of his prize. The next day the boys laid into me for neglecting the unattended and more attractive Irish girl to my right.

Luckless, we had made it into the early hours of the morning. Most of the backpackers were back in their dorm rooms, and our game of charades wasn’t going to get us warm beds. The plan had been a few pints and a meal during the game at the hotel, before heading back to the vineyard half an hour away. That was the extent of it. We hadn’t eaten and we weren’t dressed to be outside, down south, in July. We stumbled out to the street and realized how much the fire had done to keep the cold away. We’d finished all the beer, were drunk as skunks and shivering to the bone.

It was bitterly cold. Five drunk blokes sleeping inside a 2-door Hyundai Getz wasn’t going to happen. In any case it seemed colder inside the car than it did outside. Then came the offers to drive.“I’d rather you drive, but if you don’t want to I will?”

I decided to drive, as it was my car that we’d brought to town. The speed limit outside Pemberton was 110. Going 80 in my state felt faster than 110, so I slowed further and stared out at the road with heavy eyes. The guys in the back seat were unconscious before we’d even left town. One of the blokes stayed awake out of a sense of duty. At various times he’d suggest that I’d leave the road if I didn’t get back nearer the middle.

We got back safe and sound, and headed for a heavy sleep and a Sunday under the weather. Nothing had gone to plan and yet it was everything we wanted for a Saturday night in country WA.

We spent five weeks at that vineyard, and this story is just one of dozens like it. I’d say that it remains one of the more notable months of my life – one packed full with living. When people reminisce, they usually describe such a period as serendipitous. Serendipity is spoken of as though limited to description, and not something that could possibly be initiated. To my mind, serendipity is an experience of the unwitting resolution of unintelligible desires. When I think back, we decided to work down south despite the fact that we could’ve earned higher wages and gotten more hours by staying in Perth. In fact, some of the guys already had work lined up. The reason we ended up in Pemberton? It seemed like more of an adventure. It was an decision based on unconscious influences, that nonetheless resulted in an experience of serendipity. And this is a pattern in all of my experiences of serendipity.

You’ve got to be suspicious of what you want, because it isn’t what you want at all. It’s only an interpretation – it’s only what you think you want. What you actually want is oftentimes something else altogether.