“I’d kick my own ass if I ended up like that,” he says to me between pulls from a plastic cup of beer.
I’d been trying not to stare, but now I’m looking at the guy across the bar. This place is only a coat of paint away from being a literal hole in the wall, on the corner of a busy street and an alley. Everyone is here to get sloppy, not fancy. As far as I could tell, this very spot was the epicenter of Old Quarter in Hanoi, its major tourist neighborhood, catering to whatever western visitors needed. This little drinking hole felt like its nexus, or maybe its drain. But where everyone else is sweaty, drunk, and reeking of cigarettes in a temporary, on-my-holiday way, there is someone who stands out very slightly.
I don’t want to use the word bum; no one sitting on this corner is clean or proper. He looked like he might have some crustpunk credential, traveling Vietnam by coal train. Let’s just say that if someone were to throw out the word hobo, a lot of people at the bar would single him out. Long, dark bangs, a thick beard, and a dirty coat too thick for the weather hid his other features. That’s not odd within a crowd of people going on motorcycle tours for months at a time. But tourists often can’t sit still, can’t be quiet, can’t stop smiling or can’t stop complaining. No, this guy has a subtle slowness of movement, one that betrays having nowhere else to go. A patience that vacationers often don’t have.
Being homeless in a country far from my own seemed daunting. Maybe he needs a shower, maybe he needs to update his visa, but even if he was just like the other backpackers, he seemed to have a reputation I didn’t understand. Quiet, polite, blending in. Ravenous for cigarettes. Constantly losing the lighter. Staring right through the table, straight through the street, into the crust of the Earth itself. I look away before I, too, am pulled in. He says something that I don’t hear, that no one around him hears.
“What a disaster,” says the English guy sitting next to me, gripping his little plastic cup like someone might steal it. “I really doubt he arrived in Hanoi like that, y’know? You’d have to sober up in the morning and wonder, What have I done with my life?”
“Maybe that’s why he’s never sober,” an Australian woman quips. Everyone chuckles and takes a synchronized drink.
“To sobriety,” I say, and we clink all our plastic cups together.
“I’m not sober,” the Australian girl replies. “Not here. And the ciggies, fuck. So cheap!”
The English guy next to me picks up the mostly empty pitcher and holds it up. “Anh oy, mot bia!”
I try not to laugh. It seems so rude to me. So much for the American method, with eye contact and signaling to come closer. In Hanoi, you just yell out for whatever you need, whenever you need it. It seems barbaric and hilarious.
I stay quiet, polite, blending in. I know how to do it, too. I’ve never been homeless, never been a hobo, though I relish calling myself a vagabond these days. I just don’t like being a burden. I’m happy to let people talk around me. I just got to Hanoi and have a lot to learn about motorcycles and land routes in northern Vietnam. When the next pitcher arrives, I fill my plastic cup and continue to listen to strangers talk to each other about these things.
It’s the first week of 2017. After spending New Year’s Eve in downtown Seoul, I flew into Vietnam to start a six-month backpacking trip and see Southeast Asia. At the time, I planned to move to Europe afterwards and start a new career. First, I wanted to buy a motorcycle.
If people aren’t here to drive bikes across Vietnam, they are doing something similar. We did Thailand, we’re doing India, we did the whole Mekong. Are you doing the Ha Giang Loop? Doing Ha Long Bay? Did you know you can do the Ho Chi Minh trail on a dirt bike?Oh, we did this really awesome homestay in Sapa. But for people who are really doing Vietnam, starting in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City and road-tripping to the other on a cheap motorcycle is how to do it. Both cities are full of young foreigners starting or finishing this unforgettable trip, trading these beat-up bikes between each other. Young, bandaged-up white kids on crutches are a pretty common sight.
You don’t need a license for a Southeast Asian road-trip. It’s easy to fly, or take a train, or bear a night bus. It’s not easy to drive on Vietnamese roads. A young Polish girl at my table has never been on a bike and doesn’t know how a clutch works, but she is nothing but optimistic about this trip.
I’m not in a rush to “do” anywhere yet. I’m actually getting pretty tired of the word, or maybe just the casual, disposable, porn-y way everyone is saying it. But I obviously don’t want to miss anything. I’m about to turn 30 next week. I have no idea where I’ll celebrate that auspicious number. I have a Vietnamese friend in Hanoi, but he won’t be in town that day. I don’t want to say goodbye to my twenties by wandering around the city by myself. My twenty-first birthday was like that. I had to do something epic, damn it! That’s why I flew from my home to the other ass-end of the planet, right?
“No, no,” a young English girl shouts as others break into peals of laughter, “listen, listen, I’m dead serious… like, the bartenders, the pub crawl, everyone… we had the WHOLE HOSTEL doing lines of ket off the bar with us. Fucking mental. Best night ever.”
I don’t know. Maybe I don’t want to be a twentysomething anymore. I had believed the opportunity to backpack around was an incredible blessing, a time for deep meaning. In six months, if I only found what Southeast Asia seemed to be for others—exotic places to get drunk—well, I’ll be pretty pickled and broke in six months. I hope I can find better for myself. I think about this while I volunteer to get the next pitcher for my table.
Before I left for my trip, I changed my occupation on Facebook to be “packer of backpacks,” indicating to everyone that I was free. I’ll be right back. Just gotta go find myself real quick. My only real responsibility was to myself, to put everything back in my backpack before it was time to go. I had six months, a plan to end up in Europe and try my luck there, but I otherwise stuck to my favorite mode of travel: plan nothing. Let yourself flow down the river. Now that I was here, I needed to learn the basics.
One of the first places I found myself was this noisy tourist bar in downtown Hanoi. “Bar” is pretty generous: just a bunch of tiny, plastic furniture on a sidewalk. You could buy beer, vodka, cigarettes, and balloons of nitrous oxide, and not much else except a cup of ice for your lukewarm beer. They didn’t play music, but the ambient noise and motorbikes sometimes meant shouting to be heard, anyway.
I look back at the guy again. I can’t hear his voice but he seems to be explaining something. No one is listening. I can’t tell if he notices no one is listening, or if he doesn’t mind. He slowly, politely, plucks another cigarette from someone else’s pack, bows his head in a long, awkward thanks. No one at this table stops their conversation to acknowledge him. He looks again for the lighter. He’s supposed to kick his own ass?
He’s not hurting anyone. The only thing he’s visibly fighting is gravity. He’s supposed to kick his own ass? How?
I’d heard stories of just how low the bar was for English teachers from white countries.
The people at his table get up and I hear his voice through the noise Slurring North American; maybe he even teaches English. That’s basically me. Maybe I’ll look like him after six months of backpacking, having done Vietnam and done every temple and every beach and every well-rated place on Hostel World, still looking for myself, still looking for that lighter. People telling me to kick my own ass. But other than the odd looks, I guess I’d blend in well enough. I could practically vanish.
The sun is down and the music is loud all over Old Quarter. Cigarette smoke and laughter fills the air. The valve on the nitrous tank opens with an ear-splitting crack-hsssss.
I don’t know if this bar even has an official name. Some variation of Corner, Beer Corner, Corner Bar. There’s no signage, that’s just what people seem to call it. Nothing except a single wall and a slim roof over it, a refrigerator, a lot of little plastic stools, a sketchy staircase, and the most neglected bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life. A middle-aged Vietnamese man fills another large cluster of balloons while grabbing wads of damp currency from European tourists, who pinch the end of the balloons like fine cigars and laugh like idiots. A motorcycle with a bundle of chickens waits for the waiter to collect money before taking a shortcut straight through the rows of tables.
An embarrassing parade of shit-faced pub-crawlers walk by in bucket hats, some of them with the three-piece banana-print outfit that might as well have TOURIST written on the back. A roving balloon vendor tries to sell them balloons but to no interest, wrapped up in singing a football tune as they were. That collection of balloons later explodes into a large fire ball when a prankster holds a lighter under one. It scares the shit out of me but barely makes a dent in the chaos of the loud street. It doesn’t take long for a police wagon to come by, its megaphone just barely louder than the street.
Thankfully, nitrous balloons don’t combust when a cigarette taps against them, or Beer Corner would explode every hour. Greasy foods wrapped in newspaper, Chinese Marlboros and lighters shaped like bullets, and pitcher after pitcher of ridiculously cheap beer. Strangers making promises about tomorrow. Everything is cheap here and flows carefree until the sun rises and the streets bake under a cloud of motorbike exhaust. With all the beer and balloons and tiny plastic stools, customers topple backwards as inevitably as coconuts fall from their trees.
Friendly strangers are curious about what you’ve seen, wanting your thoughts about this strange new place you both chose to visit. The physical world seems to expand every time you hear about a new destination and you quickly bond with these strangers over what you don’t yet know, marveling at the mystery and adventure before you, like the first day at a new school. I had thought that feeling was gone for good after college. Now my 30’s are imminent and I feel more like a teenager than I did as a teenager. I feel grateful, happy to be alive, with so much still to learn and so many cool things still to see. I learn a “Hanoi Kiss” is when you burn your calf on a bike’s exhaust pipe. I get my first kiss from my rental bike while leaving the Corner, a small singe on my calf. I wonder what kind of motorcycle I’ll buy and what her kiss will be like.
A couple who “did” Thailand for two months seem extremely happy for someone other than each other to talk to. Another couple are nearing 40 and recommend a good techno club for my upcoming birthday, then tell me something of the lucrative world of English education here in Vietnam. They turn down an offer of a nitrous balloon. They seem to know a lot about Hanoi and tell me which large-scale English school franchises are hiring scams. They live in another neighborhood and complain about how awful Old Quarter is, yet clearly happy to seem smart in front of all the baboons with balloons, shouting at each over the noise of another motorbike driving between them.
I finally discover his name is Blaine. “Meth,” someone tells me, winding a finger at their temple and making a cuckoo-clock whistle, though I didn’t ask. I turn around to see Blaine has stood up. He’s much taller than expected, though straw-thin. He has picked up his plastic stool, swinging it around his head for unexpressed reasons. Those around him chuckle and quietly tolerate it. I really am trying to stop staring, as I feel it’s not funny anymore, but I also sense being at the edge of something dramatic. Thankfully, Blaine tires out quickly and doesn’t ultimately hit anyone.
Every night, on my way back to my hostel, I’ve been hounded by moto-taxi guys with the same pitch: Hey man… want weed? Want coke? Want lady boom-boom? If Blaine wanted meth, he could find it as easily as hailing a taxi, but I sense that’s not his real problem. I don’t know much about psychology, but I’ve seen how drug use and mental illness can twine tightly together. I’ve never been homeless, never struggled to cope with my mental state, and that probably has something to do with my addictions being the socially-acceptable kind.
Blaine carries his little stool over to the refrigerator, where the Corner usually allows self-service. This time, the guy running drinks comes over and slams the refrigerator door shut, yelling something at Blaine I can’t hear. I am stunned to see anyone get refused at this place. So is Blaine. He shrugs his shoulders and wanders in a circle, coming back a minute later with the same result.
“Oh my god,” a peppy Canadian guy says to me. I know he is an ex-pat teacher type based on his clothes and how he uses the Vietnamese name for westerners. “Okay, you want to hear a crazy story?”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s kind of why I hang out here.”
“So, you see that bar over there? There was this tay there the other night… He’s alone over there, and he’s just slamming back three balloons: four, five, six, seven, like one after another. He tried to stand up and he just wobbled and, like, quickly went back down, like HEAD-first, right into the shrine. You know the shrines? Where they put the incense and fake money and stuff for their ancestors? WHAM. So, he’s like, got his head still in the shrine, and he starts fishing out, like knocking everything around with his face…”
The Canadian guy stiffens and flops around. I explain that I’ve been to enough music festivals to know what fish out means.
“Okay, so, like—the incense, the tangerines, the tea, the fake 100-dollar bills… man, it’s all going everywhere. And he’s a big guy, so these tiny Vietnamese bartenders are, like, trying to drag him away by his legs, and one of them is putting the shrine back together and stuff. So, eventually, they put him back in his seat… and guess what?”
“What?”
“He orders another balloon. And what did they do? They sold him another! Because of course they did.” He laughed. “He, like, destroyed their shrine and disrespected the spirits of their ancestors, but they’ll still take his money. Gotta love the Vietnamese, man. I think that tells you everything you need to know about this place.”
“Was it, uh…” I say. “Was it a guy with, uh, a big beard, and…”
“No, he was like a big, bald, Scandi guy.” He goes on to say more along the lines of Vietnamese people love money, but I think the real point was this: there are a lot of ways to “do Vietnam,” and not many people around to tell you no.
Later, I hear a thud. My stomach tells me it’s the sound of someone hitting the street. Another one’s toppled off their tiny plastic stool. This time, it’s Blaine’s turn to go down.
I watch for a while and no one moves to help him up. I get up and walk over to him. His eyes are open, moving slightly.
“Hey, Blaine,” I say, gently coaxing him back to Earth, trying to get a look at his pupils. His dark beard makes his face look even more pale. I ask if he’s okay, and he doesn’t speak, but he gives my arm a squeeze that says, Yeah, just give me a minute.
A tall, muscular American guy walks past and shakes his head at us. “Don’t help him,” he says.
“What?” I say back, kneeling next to Blaine.
“Don’t bother.” He walks to an open table and sits down with a pitcher of beer.
I’m already holding Blaine’s arm, so I don’t want to just drop him again. After a moment, he seems to be able to see straight again. He doesn’t say anything, but looks at me, looks at my arm, and nods, using my arm to get back onto his tiny stool.
The next night, someone tells me, “Blaine’s a really brilliant guy. Just a little messed up in the head.” Blaine is in the same seat with a different group of tourists around. He has clearly showered, trimmed his beard down, combed his matted hair, and traded the dirty overcoat for a clean sweater. Now he just looks like another twentysomething hipster on a motorcycle trip. He nods politely at what people say around him but stays quiet, bumming cigarettes from a pack that costs less than a dollar so everyone just lets him. No beer. He seems determined to behave tonight.
Of course, I am also at the Corner. I’ve taken a serious liking to bia hoi, a local beer infused with spices, even cheaper than the macro brews. A middle-aged Vietnamese lady is squatting across the street with a keg of bia hoi and the Corner gives me some ice.
Blaine must be staying somewhere close by. He’s far too mild for the rowdy hostels on this street. Old Quarter, in general, is so chaotic that I can’t begin to imagine where one would sleep except a hostel. I want to ask him, though it’s none of my business, if he has a family supporting him from afar? Is he—like any good bohemian—just looking for a quiet place to disregard responsibility and just be himself for a stretch? Maybe he just had enough money to get here and is figuring things out? Or is he, for lack of a better term, an international hobo?
“Did you hear that girl last night?” someone asks Blaine, who was off in space. He is definitely not on any stimulants tonight; mouth hanging low as his beltless pants, he shakes his head. “Did you hear her description of you? No? Dude… She legit said, He looks like a former professor, and now he’s a beautiful, tragic poet.”
Blaine turns his head and hoists the slack from his jaw. I hear him speak for the first time. He says, “Beautiful?”
After two weeks, I’ve run out of questions to ask about motorcycles and narrowed my choice down to two. One of them was built, in part, by a young Scottish mechanic named Declan, the one who had said earlier Blaine was brilliant, just “messed up in the head.” One night, I pass by The Corner and see Declan waving at me from one of the tables. Blaine is there, holding a cigarette, lost in thought. I take an empty seat and say hi, and he nods back and gestures to sit, looking like he’s formulating a thought.
Another older gentleman is there, clutching a small backpack, who immediately offers me a glass of vodka. He’s wearing slightly soiled sweatpants but speaks like old money. His bright-white hair and beard are both well-trimmed, and his smile is infectious. He has the unmistakable glimmer of booze in his eyes. He is a fast and charming talker. I imagine he has several ex-wives.
“Lord Humptergood,” he says, shaking my hand.
“Humped her good?”
“Lord,’ he corrects me. “Thank you very much. From Oxford. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” He has a good handshake.
He could be a pensioner, but the burn holes in his sweater and the alcoholic energy tell a more chaotic story. He also has a backpack. When he sees me looking at it, he tells me it’s all he has. He winks and hands me a Sprite. “Go on, then, have your drink, and tell us your name, if you will. Where’s it you’re from?”
I’ve recently learned the term begpacker. They often appear in airports, cardboard signs in multiple languages, maybe playing an instrument, always looking for travel fare. It denotes laziness and poor planning, two things that capitalism hates, and westerners are quick to criticize these young adults who set out into the world unprepared.
The idea of a western tourist asking the locals for money to travel their country is as crass as it gets. Begpacking! Shameful whiteness, begging in a “third-world” country. I wonder what the Vietnamese think of these things. I wonder what they think of Lord Humptergood. His small backpack is at his feet, stuffed full.
I thought a solo motorcycle trip sounded brave, but Humptergood tells me about hitchhiking in Vietnam, with commercial drivers sometimes willing to let you ride. “There’s a tradition of Buddhism here, mate. If you need help, they’ll help you. Ask anyone who’s been out there, they’ll tell you the same. Absolutely lovely people here, mate.”
You can get away with a lot here, I think.
Blaine is apparently renting the room above The Corner. I’m relieved to hear he has somewhere to crash, but it couldn’t be nice to live above that derelict, reeking bathroom. That’s some crustpunk cred, if Blaine didn’t have any before. Still, I’m happy to hear it, though I keep this to myself.
Lord Humptergood freely talks about sleeping safely on the Old Quarter streets, generous with info about his favorite spots. He spikes a beer with vodka while he talks about them. There’s a nearby alley where one can’t be seen from the street, a stoop outside an apartment where residents don’t rise too early, and a small green space near a church that sometimes offers food.
I didn’t ask for a spiked beer but he makes me one, anyway. “So, I met this lady, right?” he says, drawing out the delivery of the story’s beats. “And she really likes me, lads. Byu-i-ful Italian bird. And she feels inclined, to take me… to a hotel! A very posh one, mind you! Wants to put me up for a whole week, if you can believe that.” He draws a Winston down to the filter while everyone at the table nods.
“But… I’ve got a problem, you see,” he says into a cloud of smoke. “Because, lads… I’m also waiting for another friend. A very good friend! One who has promised to deliver… a blanket! He promises to be back after an hour. If I leave with the Italian bird, he won’t find me again. Now… what do you think I chose to do?”
Humptergood plucks a Winston from Blaine’s pack. When he looks at me, it’s clear he’s waiting for me to answer. Everyone else seems to know it’s a rhetorical question and waits for him in kind. “I chose the blanket,” Lord Humptergood said, “Yes. I think it was the proper decision. Long-term reward, s’what it is.”
Lighting his cigarette, Humptergood senses my confusion and asks me, “What would you have done?”
I say, “Maybe, uh…” Is this a trick question? “Maybe… Stay in the hotel, then leave with one of their nice, fluffy blankets?” I wouldn’t do this myself, but I feel like the answer still has merit.
But Lord Humptergood cackles. “No way, lad.” He cackles some more, hyarg hyarg. I thought he’d find it clever, but now he’s overcome with laughter and a cough is starting to build. “They’d find me the next day… sleeping out in the alley, hyarg hyarg… rolled up… hyarg… in a big, byu’iful duvet… hyarg hyarg… with their fuckin’ emblem on it!” He finds this hysterical. He pantomimes an irate hotel employee poking him through his pilfered duvet and cackles some more, hyarg hyarg hyarg, until a coughing fit seizes him up completely.
Blaine is looking deep into the nearby wall, thinking, with one hand holding his chin. He hasn’t said anything yet. I ask him, “What do you think, Blaine? Hotel, or blanket?”
He nods as he thinks, then flatly and conclusively says, “Blanket.”
There is no trace of doubt. It was such an easy choice for them both.
Out on the street, a young backpacker couple passes by The Corner. Their brand-new 100-liter backpacks standing taller than their heads. They look up from their iPhones for a moment to glance at us before looking back down, probably looking for their hostel. They look tired and impatient, already overwhelmed by Hanoi.
I wonder again what kind of backpack Blaine has. A large majority of young travelers are walking with large, reinforced camping backpacks, some nearly as tall as they are. Blaine probably has a normal school backpack, just like Lord Humptergood. He probably also doesn’t have much to carry. Why would he not a backpacker, then? Why was the distinction between backpacker and hobo so important to begin with? And what was that American guy’s problem with Blaine, earlier on, that he shouldn’t be helped up?
Blaine and Humptergood are actually savvy. Of course, they wouldn’t say no to an eco-homestay or a pub crawl, but they can’t afford it, so what does it matter? They know what street food makes you sick, because they’ve tried all of it and food poisoning sucks extra hard when you’re on the street. They know all about local scams because they literally can’t afford to lose the money. They talk about how to spend an afternoon without spending money and actually enjoy it, because what other choice do they have?
As long as they can scrape together a few dollars and bum a few smokes, they’ll make it. They know all about the night buses to Bangkok and how to hitch a ride on a fruit truck. They don’t own a bike of their own, but they can tell at a glance that the nearby Honda Win isn’t worth more than fifty dollars. They are the tourist equivalent of an ultra-light trail runner.
“You know how to avoid scammers?” Lord Humptergood says. “Look poor! Hyarg hyarg. Look at me. Not a pot to piss in! Hyarg hyarg.”
With two empty bottles of vodka on the table, I stand up to use Beer Corner’s nightmarish toilet. Lord Humptergood stands up quickly and steers me away from it, mumbling “Nononono, that won’t do, lad.” He walks us out to the street and turns the corner. “C’mon, then, follow me. I need a piss, myself.”
I say, “You need to piss yourself?”
“Hyarg hyarg. I like you, lad. A good egg, s’what you are.”
We pass a few bars and hostels, and then around another corner, where an upscale hotel is framed by clean, white columns. Past the glass double-doors, the marble floors gleam with creamy light from the gilded chandelier.
“Oh!” I say to him. “Hell yeah, this…”
“Shh!” he hisses, a finger pressed to his lips. “Just shut it, lad.”
Lord Humptergood goes in first, holding one of the giant double doors open for me to follow. A bellboy in a trim black suit nods to him, and he politely responds, “Hello, there.” I follow his lead, trying to look like I don’t need directions. Humptergood lightly scuffs the heels of his worn-down sneakers against the marble of wide lobby, hands partially outstretched for balance. Unlike The Corner’s sorry excuse for a piss-hole, this bathroom smells nicer as you get closer. Classical music plays lightly inside the elegant men’s room.
We saddle up to the urinals, and Humptergood groans loudly, drowning out Vivaldi with animalistic relief and shifting pitches of satisfaction. He starts talking. I have no clue what he says. He doesn’t care how drunk he appears anymore. I feel like I have more to learn about pissing and that makes me laugh, and he laughs too, hyarg hyarg.
After washing our hands, he walks over to the stall. “Mate,” he says, “come look.” He opens the door and gestures inside. It’s a nice bathroom stall.
“Want a tour of my room?” He chuckles. “I’m sleeping here tonight.”
Blaine and the others are still at The Corner, and now another bottle of vodka is on the table. Lord Humptergood has taken the reins of the conversation. Stories of basic human foibles, with the small kindnesses and the petty twists of fate that went along with it. He isn’t looking for pity, he tries to explain. It was, above all else, survival. His sweater burn, his knowledge of temple etiquette, his attention to the manners of those around him, the apparent darkness of his coping mechanisms, even his sense of humor—especially his sense of humor—are things he had not chosen for himself.
“I’m taking a bus to Hoi An tomorrow,” he declares. He leaves room for the others to express disappointment, but the mechanic just shakes his head.
He continues: “Going to be a beach bum! It will be… magnificent!” He exhales the last word like a divine secret.
“Mate,” the mechanic Declan says, “you gotta get your life together. Fucking off tae Hoi An won’t change anything. What are you going tae do once you get there? Sleep on a different street?”
“No, no, not at all,” Humptergood gently assures him. “I’ll have the whole beach! Hyarg hyarg.”
“Mate… just… I care about you. You know that right?”
Humptergood lowers his voice and practically whispers. “Of course, of course.” His eyes are soft like warm vaseline. “I think I probably care about you even more, if that’s fair to say.”
“Then,” the mechanic says, unable to hold the anger any longer, winding up a verbal fist, “listen to me when I say, you gotta get it to-GE-ther, man. Get your shite together! You can’t just…”
Humptergood yells, “I am trying!” Then, each word comes as an angry burst: “I. AM. TRYING!” It takes everyone off-guard. The fury in his voice has an unexpected recoil. He quickly wipes his face with his sleeve and reels away from eye contact. “I am trying!” he says again, softer. “You don’t think I know that? For fuck’s sake, mate.” He sways way back on the little plastic stool with his arms wrapped around himself.
I can almost see his crawling skin trying to escape his body. One of the endearing things about Lord Humptergood was his righteous shamelessness, but now Declan’s forced out some vulnerability that was underneath. No one speaks for a while.
He takes a moment to breathe in incrementally smaller breaths. Then he leans forward and says, “I know what’s going on, lad. I can’t stay here. I have to get out!” His voice cracks at the end, but this time he catches it before it completely breaks. “That’s why I’m leaving tomorrow! On that bus!”
“We both know you’re not leaving,” the mechanic takes no joy in saying.
Lord Humptergood’s charm suddenly returns to him. “I am!” Triumphantly, chin held high, he swings both arms into the air. “It’s decided!”
The mechanic looks at me and quietly says, “He’s not going anywhere.”
“Fuck it, mate,” Lord Humptergood pleads, “just shut it already and drink this vodka. It’s your birthday, hyarg hyarg. For fuck’s sake, mate.”
Declan looks away and quietly sighs as his glass is made wet again. Even Lord Humptergood is at a loss for words for a moment. Our attention goes toward silent, methodical drinking. I didn’t know it was anyone’s birthday. “Happy birthday,” I say. Declan nods and says, “Thanks.”
At a table closer to the street, someone loses their grip on their balloon. It lifts suddenly into the air like a toy zeppelin. A slurred Australian female voice says, “Aw, noe!”
While the balloon farts itself through the air, changing course every half-second. Conversations at The Corner come to a halt and watch it zoom overhead. It was one of the five-dollar balloons, enough nitrous to give it great comedic timing. The whole bar watches it fly in circles, swooping down on them like a bat. Then, it lifts, sputters, and dives, straight down, into a pitcher of beer with a plop.
Laughter and cheers erupt. The crack-hsss of the nitrous tank starts up again, and another five-dollar balloon is filled. Packer of backpacks, I had said I was. Miming vagrancy without having to truly live it. Trying to find meaning but with nothing at stake.
Blaine looks around for a lighter. Lord Humptergood gives him his. “Keep it, mate. I got five. These backpacker kids keep leaving them behind. Hey, mate,” he says to me, reaching into his backpack, “you want a lighter, too?”
P.J. Nutting is a graduate of the University of Colorado with degrees in journalism and music. He has written for The Boulder Weekly (Boulder, CO) and The Coloradoan (Ft. Collins, CO.) More recently, he received an MFA from the University of California-Riverside. He currently resides in Kampot, Cambodia, teaching English and writing.