Goodbye November

Well, Movember has come and gone, and I'm now clean-shaven again, but I did manage to capture a few pictures before it all got the chop.



Hm... now that I look at it, it looks like a bad piece of art.

And since snapshots of my erratically-grown facial hair can hardly fill up an entire post, I also have this for you. I was involved in a fight last night. I'm not going to say that I was IN one. I don't think there's ever been a single fight in my young adult life that I was in on my own accord, even though I've been INVOLVED in many. That's why I saw everything coming.

But long before I even got down here to Byron, I'd heard from a lot of different sources that the locals are a bunch of tossers, but once I got down here, there was so many people from everywhere, I didn't even think that there were any real locals. Last night, being the end of the school week, we went out to the bars. Everywhere was packed, mostly because this is Schoolies week: as I understand it, it's the week right after high schoolers graduate, which doesn't mean much for me, except there's just A LOT more girls walking around a town where the guys were already outnumbered 3:1. So Play had a $15 cover charge, and Cocomangas was giving away free drinks of some sort, so the line was backed up halfway down the street. So we decided to start out at the Hotel Great Northern; a place that has it all: live bands, pool tables, slot machines, even a breathalizer in the lobby. That's all class.

We sat at the Northern, watching the band (a trio of guys, most likely a couple years younger than myself) do their thing. I thought they were pretty good, but my neighbor Harry was sitting next to me and telling me about how much they sucked, all while he was sipping on his drinks and getting louder and louder. But that's Harry. When the set ended, we gathered everyone up and were going to try Play again, to see if our SAE IDs would get a discount. We walked down the main street, past a group of people standing out in front of our favorite bakery. I was in the middle of the group, and when I looked back I saw my friend Lang talking to someone. Things looked like they were getting heated, but then he started walking away to catch up to us again.

When he catches up he starts saying "If that little **** comes up here, I'm gonna...", so I look down into the street, and this little man is following us. He's not more than 5 foot 3, so I thought he was a little Schoolie that Lang had started up with, but when the light hit his face, I saw that he was a short, lanky black man. Nothing against them, but more on that later. So the little guy gets up onto the sidewalk behind us and starts yelling at Lang, trying to lead him into the small town park that we were walking past. The park isn't well lit, so it'd be absolutely ridiculous for us to go over there. So Lang is yelling back at this guy, and then Harry starts up with him too, the three of them yelling at each other across this park.

Then, like a freaking magic trick, all these people start coming out of the woodwork in the park, popping out from behind trees and bathrooms, including this 6 foot 5, shirtless bald guy. He comes running out and jumps over some bushes to get up in Harry's face. Harry sizes up to the guy (but not even close) and when he tries to walk away, the guy spins him around and punches him in the face. Harry could hardly stand to begin with, but the force knocks him to the ground, and he hits the back of his head on a metal rail. He sits there and curls up on the ground, holding his face in his hands when the little guy that started it all runs up and kicks him square in the right eye while he's totally defenseless.

When all this started, I was staying back, just letting them work things out, but when they started throwing punches, I started running back to where they were. The big guy was still standing over Harry, saying all kinds of shit, so (being a little out of my mind myself) I run up and push the big guy out of the way and tell him to "F*** off" then bend down to try and help Harry up. From behind me, an arm swings around my face and catches me across my eyes with a forearm. I push Harry out of the way, back up the street towards our friends, and try to get out of there myself. The guy grabs on to my shirt collar, and for a split second, all I can think is "Damn, this is a good shirt, he better not rip it." So I punch his arm and he pushes me away and starts yelling at all of us not to come back around. Don't worry about that.

The night was a rush, us trying to get Harry back home in a cab, trying to tell a security officer what had happened only to hear him say "That's not my job", and still trying to have a good night, it being no later than 10 o'clock and all. So we finally get back to Play, and as we're standing in line, the guys are loving getting the chance to tell all the little high school girls about the fight that they'd just been in.

So back to the comment about the little man being black. As you all know, just like Native Americans in the States, down in Australia, before the land was ever settled by the Europeans, there were Aboriginies around here, and just like Native Americans, most Aboriginies were forced off their land or killed. And Australia is an even younger country than America, so all this is still fresh in their minds, and most of them are pretty violent towards foreigners because of it. And as opposed to America where most Native Americans are given land by the government, and given posh jobs in casinos, most Aboriginies were left with nothing, and a lot of them feel that they don't need to get jobs or blend back into the new society. But I don't think it means that they (in all their 5 foot glory) should provoke people into fights, and then when people start up, they grab their UFC fighter of a friend to kick ass either.

So the night ended when we were walking out of the Beach Hotel around 1 o'clock and here comes our little friend walking up the street, and he starts to talk to Lang. "Hey buddy, you got a cigarette?" Lang looks at the man in disbelief. "Do you not remember 2 hours ago when you kicked the shit out of my friend?" "Hey man, you got me wrong, I'm a good guy." He obviously didn't remember. "Man, you got 2 seconds to f*** off out of my face." The little guy looked insulted, but he slinked off down the street.