Letters

"Why don't you still live in Australia?"

I really liked it there. Sydney and it's suburbs are like Florida without the Cubans, et al, and I had a terrific apartment overlooking Rose Bay. The Golden Sheave was my favorite pub/quick food hangout and lots of interesting folks would stop on by to enliven the evening. Hell, I never even saw a fat chick the entire time I lived there, but Australian men, well, they're weird.

Truth be told, they talk at the urinal. Not that they have our sort of urinals, mind you. 5 or 6 guys at a time stand on a ledge and do the deed against a stainless steel wall of cascading water , and they...they chat like chicks comparing shoes. It didn't happen just at the Sheave, mind you, but virtually every mens room in the entire country. One time the Prime Minister of New Guinea was in town and wanted to try Mexican food. Since no Australian man had ever consumed such fare, a quick and frantic call was placed to me asking if I'd find the time to help. I detest Mexican food as well, but what the hell, the Yank that saved Sydney, international relations and all that jazz so I accompanyed the entourage. The PM enjoyed himself to no end, and the Aussie dudes were aghast to no end, but the real flubbdubbery went on in the john. He, two of his bodyguards, myself and several Aussies were ledging-it while the 'Strines gabbed away like magpies. Everywhere in the can, too, not just on the ledge. Waiting in line, in the stalls, they just can't shut up. The translator fellow asked me if this went on all the time, but I couldn't answer him of course until we left the room, and all sorts of miscommunications soon followed.

So I was forced to leave. I vividly recall my first stop at an American rest room in the states, standing there, closing my eyes, and sighing how there was no place like home.

Heaven. I'm often invited back, but enough was enough. Several years of watercloset chitchat had left an indelible mark upon my psyche and I can't bring myself to making the long flight just to be spoken to at the urination station.