Fear and Loathing from the Top Bunk - The Awful Truth About Te Puke

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Fear and Loathing from the Top Bunk - The Awful Truth About Te Puke

13/04 - 25/04/08

4.30am. I lie awake in the top bunk in my six bed dorm, listening to the sounds of heavy snoring. The door slowly creaks open, and in walks Trevor, back from the night shift in the packing house. The air hangs low, buckled, thick with the sweaty smells of unwashed men. Trevor climbs into the bottom bunk below me.
A few seconds later, and the whole world comes crashing down and my blood runs cold. The bed moves, rocking to a sick, twisted and unmistakable rhythm. My soul screams out into the darkness. The mouth of madness opens up and pulls me in. This shit cannot be happening. As Trevor masturbates, increasing the pace, my bed violently shakes and shudders, and I feel every horrible blow.

I feel nauseous. There is no doubt that things have slid downhill and I have arrived at the lowest point of my trip - maybe even my life. I try to make him stop. I move about, let out a few coughs and sighs, trying to make it clear I’m awake. What kind of fucking animal does this sort of shit anyway? Just lie there, in a room full of other guys, and pull yourself off like a maniac. What sort of filthy, grubby little cunt would even attempt to get away with it, shameless and unrepentant?

Trevor is the answer. Ever since I met him two days ago, I’ve known he was a red-necked, uncouth son of a bitch. Even so, I didn’t expect this. At last, he stops. I feel bile rising up from my stomach. I feel as though I’ve been raped. I just wanna turn over and cry into my pillow until I’m choking on my tears and my throat is stiff and aching.

I’m thinking about all my things - my bags and shoes, lying on the floor, not more than a couple of feet away from him. Hell, he’d better have kept it under the sheets. If he poked his dirty little Johnson out in the open for even a second - shit, it doesn’t bear thinking about. I hope he enjoyed himself, because if I find a single drop of semen on my stuff tomorrow, that will have been the last time in his miserable life that Trevor will ever get to lay his hands on himself - I’ll put an end to him, and he’ll be doing the permanent night shift in some dark corner of hell.

My mood has come crashing down in flames. Things had begun to improve a little. I’d taken stock of my situation and found ways to look on the bright side. Now, it has all gone wrong. One mucky little wank, and I’m more depressed than ever, wishing I was anywhere but here. Te Puke. Pronounced “Pookie”, but puke is more appropriate. How did I come to end up here? How the hell did it get to the point where I reduced myself to this - a sad, innocent victim of bottom-bunk wanking? Where on the winding road did we veer so wildly off track.....?

Monday, 14th of April. I spent the day back at my aunt’s, and in the evening meet an old school friend, Liz, for drinks and dinner. Her boyfriend has just walked out on her, leaving her alone in her flat in a strange city, and Liz feels pretty low. We’ve known each other since we were six, but I haven’t seen in her years, and always remembered her as a lively, half-crazy, happy person - someone you can always rely on to make you smile. Seeing her so confused and upset is really sad.

Tuesday. I turn up at a labour exchange at 6.30am in the morning, hoping to get work on a construction site of some kind. However, having sat through a safety video and signed a lot of papers, we’re told there’s no work today, and to come back tomorrow. I give it one more go on Wednesday, with the same result. I’m not getting up at 5am again to have my fucking time wasted. I go into the hostel to see my Job Search agent. She suggests I go to Te Puke to pick kiwi fruit. She makes a phone call, and I’m told that there will definitely be work for me there - maybe even something in a care home just across the street from their hostel.

I pack up my shit, and prepare to leave on Monday. The weekend is spent at my aunt’s, and on Saturday I go surfing with Liz, and her friend Emma, who is visiting from Australia. We drive out in Liz’s 4x4 to Murawi beach. We get a lesson from an aussie guy called Gus (only Emma has surfed before) and then get gnarly on the waves. The weather is pretty rough - rain coming down, wind swirling, creating rips and harsh tides. One wave takes me about 300 yards diagonally, all the way into the beach.

Surfing. I loved every minute, crashing about in the ocean, feeling its power, trying to find ways to understand it and make it work for me. Out there in the wind and rain, up to my neck in warm water, hearing the whoops and cheers from Gus as I make it up onto the board - a far cry from my situation right now.

Things have definitely gotten weird. Last night, I dreamt I was living in an apartment shared with President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabee. That kind of hellish shit is hard to explain without several rounds of heavily-medicated psychotherapy. I’m sure it was a bad omen of things to come or maybe just a reflection of my frazzled state of mind.

How the fuck do you get into a situation like that? It’s like one of those bad 70’s sitcoms, like the one about the white couple struggling to come to terms with the black neighbour who has just moved in. Hilarity ensues as they fight to get their head around this dark, foreign devil, blundering through awkward social interactions, trying to avoid using phrases such as “nig-nog”.

Whoever came up with that shit will no doubt be turning on a slow spit in the deepest bowels of hell, and not without good cause. My show would be a ratings winner - a hit with all the girls and boys. What’s not to like? Just imagine the marathon of comedy mileage with an odd couple like that. Me, a handsome, young, socially responsible, mildly dangerous lunatic, and Mugabee, a brutal, butt ugly, murderous and savage despot.

We’d be sat around the dinner table - I’d be eating something Oriental, whilst Mugabee would be chewing on raw human flesh. We’d discuss the socio-economic situation in Zimbabwe, and when we couldn’t come to an agreement, things would descend into slapstick and we’d beat each other around the head with frying pans.

What sane and normal person wouldn’t watch that on a Saturday night, when the only alternative is some bimbo off the 6 O’clock news dancing on ice? Sign me up, beeb, we’ve got a winner.
So this is the way things are now. Falling foul of hideous nightmares and self-abusing lacerations of human kind.

Back to Saturday night, the 19th. After conquering the high seas, “Team Surf”, as we dub ourselves, goes out on the tiles. We meet up with some more of Liz’s friends, and end up in a 70’s club called “Boogie Wonderland”. This is my first proper night out, after the aborted attempt at the party with all the bright young things. I miss this sort of thing. For two solid months, I drank all my problems away and just bathed in a glorious glow of alcohol abuse. We charged through New Year in ‘Nam, and turned everything we touched to gold in the jungles of Borneo. Those were exceptional times, and exceptional places, and although the familiar tastes of liquor is welcome, this doesn’t quite match up.

Sunday. The promise of the weekend is washed away on a dark and deadly wave as I ride into Te Puke. I get picked up at the bus station and then taken to the Hairyberry backpackers hostel. The first thing I get told is that there is no work at the moment. I was promised something, but am told I might have to wait a few days. We told these fucks on the phone I was only around for a week, making it clear that it wouldn’t be worth making the trip if I couldn’t get a full weeks work.

I don’t see that I have any choice but to hang around and see if work turns up. I’m thrown into the arms of strangers, a mixed group of many nationalities and ages - Kiwi’s, English, American, Japanese, German, Czech. Everybody is here for the same reason - to get work fruit picking or packing. Te Puke is a small town in the Bay of Plenty region, famous for one thing alone - kiwi fruit. It claims to be the “Kiwi Fruit capital of the world”, the sort of thing you could wear on a t-shirt to parties, and have the fresh shit kicked out of you.

I go out into the town to explore. I find nothing, other than an internet cafe that I make my second home. The hostel has the internet, but it costs $6 an hour, and has fascist levels of admin’ settings - I log onto the Zoo Taiping website to try to find some information for my blog, and the fucking computer won’t even let me select the option to view it in English, blocking the function.

I hate almost everything about Hairyberrys hostel, and encourage nobody to visit it, unless to light a match and toss it through an open window. The place exists to make money out of travellers, and gives little back in return. I soon realise that everybody has been made promises that there will be work, and yet few actually seem to get any. We get excuses like weather and sugar levels, but these factors were well known when I was told to get my arse on a bus and make the trip.

The place is dirty and smelly, and everyone just sits around all day, doing puzzles, playing chess or just staring into space. In the evenings, people often go out into the shed to drink and play cards, but I’m too depressed to socialise that much, and only make it out there a few times.

On Monday, I work for two hours, helping pack up after a rug sale. We roll them up and load them onto a lorry. This earns me $25. On Tuesday I eat breakfast in town, and get talking to an old man at the table next to me. He’s 84, and maybe on the cusp of starting to lose his marbles - everything he says makes perfect sense, but he says in a way that hangs leftfield, slightly west of normal. I wish I was better at talking to people like that, and I mostly nod, smile and agree with what he says.

Thursday. I get 5 hours work picking golden kiwi fruit. I work with two German girls from the hostel, and a Czech guy called Radek. He’s my favourite of all the people at the hostel - friendly, easy going, never stressed. Five months ago, he couldn’t speak a word of English. He arrived in Australia, and, unable to read his immigration card, ticked all the wrong boxes, admitting to carrying all kinds of lethal weapons and to plotting heinous terrorist deeds. He was detained for several hours by the Australian authorities, unable to understand anything that was being said to him as he just sat in silence. Now, he’s impressively fluent, having taken classes in Oz.

Radek is one of my other room mates. I don’t know if he’s aware of what has just transpired. I doubt it. It’s not the kind of nonsense he’d stand for. I just feel like I have little choice but to lie back and take it. Who knows what might happen if Trevor is challenged and put off his stroke. I’d like nothing poor than to crack my fist into his jaw, but if a fight did break out, I’d have to risk contact with those hairy hands, and a person might never recover from an experience like that, especially if he somehow managed to catch me off guard and plant one in the face.

I turn over, curl up tight, and rock myself to sleep. My ear plugs are jammed in hard and happy thoughts of far off places sing me away from this place. Good evening, Mr. President. Is it your turn to cook, or shall I?

Today is Friday the 25th - Anzac day. There’s no work due to it being a public holiday, and a game of cricket in the park is arranged. I drink a few beers and score some runs, and our team wins by a good margin. I meet Joel, a skinny, rag-boned wino who gets involved in the cricket to make even sides. Afterwards, as we walk back into town, she asks me if I smoke crack. This is the second time I’ve been asked this in the course of an introductory conversation, the first being when I was fruit picking. So, not just the kiwi fruit capital of the world - possibly also a town full of crack heads, glue sniffers and black eyed junkie-alcoholics.

Someday, I’ll get out of this place. Someday, a rain will come that will wash all the filth away, and the rats will come running out of the drains and take their rightful place on the throne. Who the fuck eats kiwi fruit anyway? The same kind of people that live in tree houses and bath in sea salts and warm mud. Fuck Te Puke. Fuck chronic masturbators and the stink of raw sweat. Fuck fruit picking. Fuck rolling carpet. Fuck those money grabbing, right wing militant whore bastards at the Hairyberry. Someday, all this will end. If I can get away clean, disease free and remembering my name, there’s hope for Robert and I yet. Viva la president.

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