trips

Rachel and Mia visit the Victorian countryside.

Background: we'd been op-shopping all day, marauding through tiny op shops in almost as tiny country towns, in search of relics from earlier decades we could rip off and desecrate in the search for urban cool.

Scene: after a long day, having dropped stuff off at the caravan park and rushed out in search of a long, cold beer, Mia and Rachel walk into the Warragul pub. In the moment of turned heads and instant silence that greet their arrival, they are stripped of their identity and become merely CityChick1 and CityChick2.

CityChick1 and CityChick2 are standing near one of the prime pieces of decor in the pub (along with the mirror ball), an old beer keg, taking bets on how long before some of the fine upstanding young gentlemen will take to come over and talk to them when they are approached by two of the locals.

Local1: my mate wants to know if youse are lesbians.

CityChick1 and CityChick2: *gasp!*

[blah blah blah, conversation ensues in which the Locals won't tell the CityChicks why they think they're lesbians and the CityChicks won't admit to being lesbians].

CC1: do you think we're lesbians because of the way we're dressed?
L1 and L2 look suitably sheepish and slightly awed at her insight.
CC1, maliciously: you know, all the girls in Melbourne look like this.
L1, closing the gap and fingering the lapel of CC1's jacket: is that vinyl? Oh, it's leather? You guys are hardcore!

Local1 backs away, fear in his eyes, clutching his HSV bomber jacket to him. After some friendly homoerotic mock wrestling and shoulder punching with their mates, Local1 and Local2 approach again.

L1, to CC1: So what does your friend do?
CC1: She studies.
L1: What does she study?
CC1, foreseeing problems: Arts
CC2, in her innocence: Multimedia
L1: Multimedia? We've got that here! Lots of it! Yeah, Channel 7, 9 and 10!

After allowing a suitable pause for some wholehearted guffawing, L1 turns to CC1.

L1: So what do you do?
CC1: I'm a web designer
L1: Huh? A what?
CC1: A web designer
L1: Oh, I thought you said word designer! We've got enough bloody^[1] words in the dictionary as it is!

The Locals retreat and CC1 flees to get bigger, stronger drinks for CC1 and CC2.

When CC1 returns, L1 is trying his luck with CC2.

L1 to CC2, suavely: So, have you been to Transformers? I went to have a piss and they're all shooting up instead of having a piss.
L2, hitherto silent: Yeah, we just go and look at each other's dicks!
CC1, probably quite stupidly: And you call *us* lesbians?

Interlude, during which another Local licks an internal window while passing.

It should be noted at this point that CC2 has brown skin and black hair (also killer eyebrows and is a complete spunk), while CC1 had bleached blonde hair and is somewhat more pasty. L1 spots a conversational gambit and turns to CC2.

L1: So where are you from?
CC2: Melbourne
L1: No, where is your family from?
CC1: Camberwell
L1: No, not what suburb, what country?
CC2: Oh, Australia.
CC2, taking pity: My dad's Indian but my mother's Australian.
L1: India? Where's that?
CC1: What, India?
CC2: It's a country. With Indians, and curry and stuff.
CC1: It's a great big country, you can't really miss it.
L1, brow clearing: Oh, India! Curries! You're Indian!
L1, suddenly suspicious: Where's your dot?

L1 pokes CC2 in the forehead, as if to test the evidence of his eyes. No dot appears.

CC2 and CC1 consider explaining the concept of Indians coming in many different varieties of race, religion and culture, just as HSV release many different Holden jackets, caps and stubby holders, but realise that L1 is already on a rant about encountering a Sikh in a turban one hot day. CC1 and CC2 start to drift off into their own conversation, the last thing they hear from L1 for a while being 'someone should tell those Indians you can't wear turbans and dresses in a country where it's hot'.

Occasionally, CC1 and 2 tune into L1's monologue, and horrified by what they hear, quickly return to giggling into their beers.

L1 waxes lyrical on the advantages of small town life:

Tomorrow we'll go to Moe and go to Ice, the day after that we'll go to ? and go to Inferno. We go there when we can afford it.

The advantages of small town life, No. 2:

Here, I could kill that guy and me mates wouldn't say nothing to anyone about it.
city chick 1: What, the guy in the wheelchair?
L1: Nah, that'd be no fun, then we couldn't wheel him around and stuff.

It was around this point that chatting to the Locals became more menacing than fun, so CC1 and CC2 quickly sculled their beers and disappeared into the night. Well, into the front bar for another quickie, but they properly disappeared into the night not long after that.