The Firing Squad-
Wanting to submerge myself into the traveling community I had my first TRUE hostel experience staying in the backpacker lodge Nomads in Byron Bay this week. I had a 6 person unisex shared dorm style room with “private”(we’ll get back to that) bathroom. Since I arrived at about 3pm I was surprised to see 2 of my roommates still passed out in bed. I tiptoed around and found my open bunk to start setting up shop. The one awake roommate was an American girl from Hawaii named Stephanie Nobley and we quickly became allies. She had been traveling around SE Asia and New Zealand for about 5 months and I was happy to start picking her brain for some tidbits of road knowledge. She informed me that this place was a little atypical regarding demographic and tended to swing towards the very young and looking to party.
Like most backpacker lodging the Nomads organises group gatherings and my first glimpse of how out of place I was came on the first night at Woody’s Surf Shack. Working in nightclubs the past 13 years I’m not a stranger to hanging out with people slightly younger, but the way people are expected to carry themselves at Tao and Marquee is far removed from the “youth” hostel takeover of Woody’s Surf Shack. It quickly became painfully apparent that I was the senior citizen of the crew and for the first time in my life I was fed a spoonful of being the old guy in the bar. It was definitely uncomfortable and downright weird. It’s not a distinction I’m comfortable with, nor do I plan on getting used to. Only a few minutes in and exactly at the time I see a shirtless young guy on his knees grinding on some poor schmucks daughter I decided to call it a night. Right at that point I pledged dedication of my time to filing up my daytime activities and leave the pub crawl and drinking games to the kids… Not saying over the next year I’ll never sit in on a game of asshole or school some youngsters in the art of beer bong, but it’s not what I’m looking for and not why I’m here.
Staying in the backpackers hostel did allow me to meet some amazing people. Aside from my American sidekick Steph there was a transient rotation that included an awesome girl from the UK named Caryn a great guy and our resident IT tech from Sydney named Matt with his girlfriend Kim and big Andy, the man on a mission, from Melbourne. Over the next few days Norway, Taiwan, Brisbane and the Gold Coast were represented. All good people that I would have never came in contact with having a traditional hotel reservation.
The most comically tragic part of the whole experience though I like to refer to as “the firing squad”. First to highlight is the fact that sharing a room with 5 other people you will inevitably be on a different schedule than someone. I’ve averaged about 5 hours of very broken sleep each night. A few of my roommates came home in middle of the night and slept in until late afternoon. The story of the firing squad goes something like this- The bathroom walls are a bit thin and you can hear any noise going on in there. Because I’ve been getting up early I’ve had inspiration to deuce while others are still passed out in the next room. In fear of waking up everyone with a toilet symphony sounding like an orchestral horn section I figured the better option would be to find a little anonymity in the public restroom. Most bathrooms we’ve all encountered have a door with a silhouette of a boy (pants) or a girl (dress). This one had a boy holding a girls hand (unisex)… The next door over was the public shower with the same hand holding silhouettes and a sign that read “please save water and only take 5 minute showers, better yet shower with someone else” (fantastic)… Anyway so I walk into the public unisex bathroom ready for my business and on the way in I run into a group of 5-6 girls at the mirror washing their faces and freshening up. I walked into 1 of 2 open stalls from a row of about 10. After I lined the seat with a toilet paper ass cocoon I take my place on the firing squad. I call it firing squad not only for the obvious reason of everyone in their respective little worlds firing away, but my reasoning goes a bit deeper: I adopted the same philosophy of since in an execution one rifleman’s gun is loaded with a blank round you can never be sure who fired the fatal shot and everyone can sleep better at night. In this bathroom, with such a long row of occupied stalls, although you can considerably narrow it down you can never be 100% sure EXACTLY which stall the squeaks, peeps and pushes are coming from. It’s that which gave me some small level of comfort that helped me through the fact that last I saw there was a group of girls at the bathroom entrance, and as far as I knew still listening in. I was somewhat anonymous, nobody knew who fired the fatal shot(s) and everyone can sleep better at night!… Of course it’s still advisable to hang back a minute or two after cease fire… You may never know who may be brushing their teeth, or in this case doing their makeup, directly outside your stall that’s got you pegged as the shooter.
Bob
