Toes-ly Clyde

The only problem with Butterfli Lodge is that the walls are thin and the beds hard. Next door, a man I presume to be large snored robustly and juicily from before I went to bed until after I gave up and got up. Thus, there was a 6:30 a.m. shower for me, when all was dark and still. (I dreamed last night Tim McGovern said I smelled bad; this was after I’d broken into his house by climbing in a second-story window, which bothered him far less than my odor.) Now I’m killing time till the rest of the world wakes up. Washed some underwear, you’ll be happy to know.

I made reservations yesterday for a variety of activities, in exchange for which I got free Internet at our lodging. Sunday night it’s a tour of the glowworm caves at Te Anau, a boat trip in Doubtful Sound on Monday when it’s supposed to be raining, and tonight: I get to see a live haka at last, in the building atop the Queenstown gondola.

During breakfast and again later in the day, I entertained myself by going into the bathroom, filling up the sink, and trying to see which way the water goes down the drain. It was a little hard to tell, so I had to do it about a dozen times, finally tossing a tiny pill of toilet paper in to watch the direction. It goes counterclockwise. I am so sad. You see, I’d heard that in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, water drains in opposite directions from each other. So before I came here, I watched American toilets flush. They go counterclockwise too. My world is shattered.

We went into town to a very crowded cafe where I had spelt toast, and you-know-what to drink, as usual. Then I got behind the wheel and drove us to Glenorchy, a tiny town about an hour from here.

It sits in a bowl rimmed in all directions by snowy mountains, at the head of Lake Wakatipu (same lake as Queenstown: huge, and deeper than Loch Ness).

Farming, gold- and scheelite- (a tungsten ore, whatever that means) mining and saw-milling have been its economic mainstays during the last 100 years. The water there is a glacial blue, but you can’t see the color in the broad shots…

… but you can in a close-up.

After a hot chocolate and a visit to the possum-fur store, we walked around the entire town (one block). Mabbie was having a bit of trouble with her mouth, and came up with some great spoonerisms: Toes-ly Clyde for closely tied, and poi toodles for toy poodles.

Then we came back to Queenstown where Mabbie thrashed me in backgammon.

Then it was off to the gondola up the mountain where we took a little hike into patchy snow.

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We had reservations for the Kiwi Haka, a tourist version of a traditional Maori war dance. They used to do it when they encountered an enemy before battle. The fierce eye bulging, tongue wagging, slapping of flat hand against bare skin and stomping of powerful legs used to make it clear that “We’re going to eat you.” I don’t know why, but it kept bringing tears to my eyes: the power and emotion of the movements, and their history. At one point the performers dragged some of the women onto the stage to teach them how to swing these little balls on strings that they use in the dances. As they approached me I looked away to try to be invisible, but it didn’t work. I was soon joined on stage by Syd. We wiggled our hips and swung our balls as instructed.

At dinner, I asked Mabbie why she had come to see me, when we’d never been friends when we knew each other. “It’s because of those stories in ninth grade.” As I mentioned, we were assigned seats next to each other in homeroom, arranged as we were neatly by alphabet, Allison and Buck, and we started passing notes back and forth to each other. That’s the one thing I remember about her and it’s the one thing she remembers about me. The stories were febrile, each building on the one before, about crazy people doing insane things. Tonight, before we knew it, we launched into the same realm, with the same fluidity of forty years ago. Toesly Clyde became a character who likes women with pointy bras and tortoiseshell cigarette holders, and who is heir to a potato chip fortune. Syd listened in mute and amused attention as we spun the story further and further into absurdity. We were certainly the noisiest people in the restaurant with our laughter. By evening’s end, Toesly had become my intended.

I asked Mabbie what she remembered about me from those days. “You were wistful, dreamy and loopy,” she said.

After buying late-night chocolate and ice cream we came back to our hostel and hung in my room for a while, listening to the hideous strains of the snorer on the other side of my wall. At one point he woke up and pounded for us to be quiet, and then subsided into horrific snoring once again. We moved into the living room where we played a few rounds of charades, the three of us and a young man from New York. Now I’m back in my room with the snorer grunting louder than ever. It may be a sleeping pill night tonight. This is disgusting. I am losing my mind listening to this obese piece of shite gurgling like a giant sea lion.