An Ugly Australian



    I sat having a quiet pint yesterday, my mind preoccupied with some very pressing matters. All of a sudden an Australian voice called out to me,
    "Oi, mate! Smile, why don'tcha? Why so serious?" (All through my life, I have been plagued by this inane question from people for whom quiet reflection is anathema).  I looked up to see a skinny, horse-faced young man with bloodshot eyes. A Balinese tattoo was emblazoned on his forearm. He was evidently far gone in drink. We clocked each other as gay straight away, although he was very far from my ideal of that blessed state.
    "Snap out of it, mate. Cheer up, why don'tcha?" he went on. I groaned  inwardly as he gestured me over to his table. Foolishly, and against my better judgement I acceded to his beckoning and went over to sit opposite him.
    "I'm Carl", he said, holding out a skinny, flaccid hand for me to shake. I told him my name. Believing me to be English, he continued,
    "Why aren't English people friendly?" I replied that I thought that they were, in fact, very friendly, and that I never have any  hesitation starting up conversations with strangers in London, which I never felt I could do in Melbourne.
     “No, mate, you’re wrong!” he yelled, “When were you in Australia?” I told him that I had lived there for forty-seven years.
     “But you sound just like a Brit!” he exclaimed, “How come you don’t speak like an Aussie? You should talk with an Aussie accent! What’s wrong with ya?” I mumbled something or other. Then I asked him how long he’d been in London. He replied that he had arrived a mere four hours ago. He said it was his first visit to London. He told me that he didn’t like it, which I thought a bold statement, given the short amount of time he’d actually been here. He asked why there were so many foreigners in London. I told him it was the place to be, so who could blame them?
     “Everywhere you look, bloody Italians, bloody Polish, bloody Russians.” I felt like adding, ‘Bloody Australians’, but held my tongue. A South American boy walked past the table.
    “And bloody Colombians, or whatever they are”, he added. I looked into my almost empty glass, suddenly very depressed at the lowest-common-denominator situation I now found myself in.
     “I heard this is a good area for us?” He meant the gay district around Vauxhall, and, most depressingly, he was including me in his purview. I told him there were a few gay venues in the near vicinity, but that, at 5.00pm, it was too early for them be open. As I spoke he stared into my face, which I found quite unnerving.
     “You have amazing blue eyes!” he exclaimed, “Are they real?” I assured him that, yes, my eyes were, in fact, my own. Gollum-like, he reached over and gripped my face between his clammy claws and stared into my eyes. I pulled away.
     “You can buy me another beer if you like, mate” he said, “And then maybe you and me can go to one of those gay pubs later. You can show me which ones are good.”
 He was drinking Fosters (of course). I got up as if to go to the bar, leaving the racist oaf swaying on his stool in the other room. But I walked straight to the front door and out onto the street for home, breathing a sigh of relief.

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