Tricks of the Trade

When we started managing the Kancerous Kiwi, Peter and I took a stroll around town, visiting the other youth hostels to introduce ourselves and chat. Our fellow innkeepers were glad to offer a few tips.

“Watch out for Israelis,” they warned us. “Israelis are the worst. They ask so many questions.”

“That’s terrible,” we agreed, nodding in sympathy.

“And the Asians,” people warned us. “Watch out for the Asians. They travel in packs.”

“They do?” I asked anxiously, glancing over my shoulder for the Mongolian hordes.

“And the Kiwis,” they continued, lowering their voices a notch or two. “We don’t even let them stay with us, they’re so bad.”

“Wait,” I asked, perplexed. “The New Zealanders? You won’t let people stay in their own country? Is that even legal?”

“If you do it, get a driver’s license,” they told us. “And don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

It was only the last point that proved useful in the end. The Israelis did ask a lot of questions, but then again if it weren’t for annoying Jews with inquiring minds, we wouldn’t have Christianity, quantum physics, or Broadway. Besides, most of the young Israeli men had just finished their military service, and were so outrageously handsome that I would have let them grill me all night about rental cars and bus schedules, if they’d only take off their shirts and let me bounce quarters off their abs.

As to the travelers who visited us from Taiwan and Japan, I found their numbers less disturbing than their creepy fetish for corporate America. At 46 degrees south latitude, Invercargill boasts the southernmost McDonalds in the world. And what these kids wanted more than anything, after traveling thousands of miles to the heart of New Zealand, was to snap a picture of themselves in front of an American burger joint.

Then, there were the locals.

The trouble here was two-fold. For one thing, normal Kiwis usually don’t stay at backpacker hostels. They stay in motels, or holiday parks, or with their Auntie Minnie in Whakatane. If a Kiwi checks in at a backpackers, then the chances are pretty good that he’s down on his luck. And the other problem, which I freely admit is my own fault, is that I have a soft spot for people with missing teeth.

There was Kate, the advanced bulimic, who would sneak into the kitchen at night and steal everyone’s food, then throw it all up again before slinking back to bed. This wouldn’t have been a problem if she’d had better aim, but eventually the housekeeper threatened to quit and we had to ask the poor girl to move on.

Then there was Chris, who consumed an entire canister of sugar each day as he sat on the patio, nursing his alcohol withdrawal by chain smoking and drinking cup after cup of syrupy tea. Chris had a wide, gummy smile, and we enjoyed his company well enough. But when he started screaming obscenities at the backpackers, I had to concede that perhaps he didn’t exactly fit in.

And we’ll never forget Nathan. Nor, for that matter, will the young German girl whose bed he stumbled into, before staggering over to his own bunk and pissing himself in a drunken stupor.

I must admit that each of these guests was Kiwi, and each was missing a few teeth. The coincidence is chilling. Because here’s the thing: I’m missing some teeth, too. My gaps are inherited, and not the result of hard living or a steel-tipped boot in my mouth. And I have lots of bridgework, so you can’t really tell. But still.

In just four years, when we get our New Zealand passports, I'll start scarfing Mars bars and running to the toilet. I might scream at you when you interrupt the voices chattering in my head. And if we go out for drinks, there's a slight possibility that at the end of the night I might crawl into your bed and pee on you.

Because by then, I'll be a toothless Kiwi. So don't say I didn't warn you.

No Land Like It

There is a formidable work of public art at the end of our street, a monument created to impress and intimidate. It’s an enormous seal, balancing a rotating can of beer on his head. He is the Liquorland seal, a beacon of hope for Invercargill. And we love him.

The Liquorland seal always wears a smile, spinning that beer can night and day, despite the fact that the can has got to be fifteen feet high and weighs at least a ton. When the arctic wind screams and the hailstones rain down like frozen kitty litter, the Liquorland seal spins on. When the coal fires fill our skies with toxic smoke, so that just the tip of his can can be glimpsed above the haze, the Liquorland seal continues to spin. And as one, our hearts swell with pride.

I have loved the Liquorland Seal since our first night in Invercargill, when I took one look at the youth hostel we were about to manage and said to Peter, “I need a drink.” It wasn’t just the paint job, so painfully reminiscent of a child’s first poo. I’ve lived in plenty of rough places before, so when I noticed the holes punched in the walls, and the dead rat wedged in the back of the oven, I took these things largely in my stride.

It was the deliberate misspelling that made me cringe. Our new home was called—and I am changing the name here in the interest of avoiding a future lawsuit—the Kancerous Kiwi. Deliberate misspellings in an effort to sound cute have always bothered me, ever since, as a child, I felt personally insulted that Toys R Us attempted to attract young customers by inverting the letter “R” in their logo. I once worked for a doll designer who was very excited to name her new line of dancing dolls the “Kurtain Kall Kids,” until I pointed out that this produced an unfortunate acronym that might be considered inappropriate for a children’s toy.

Not everyone at this windswept latitude has been lucky enough to know the Liquorland Seal. Take John Kelly, for instance. According to a bronze plaque in town, he and his wife were the first settlers in Invercargill, building their home “in the bush 3 chains to the north,” back in 1856. There was no Liquorland seal in those days. In fact, given the religious devotion of the early settlers, it’s very likely that John had no liquor, but just a Bible and the company of his family to sustain him. As to his wife, she would have been scrubbing everything by hand, boiling water over a smoky wood fire and berating herself for ever marrying the asshole who took her out of Dublin in the first place, so she probably wasn’t very chatty.

John Kelly lasted just over a year. He died a mere fifteen months after making Invercargill his home. The plaque doesn’t say what he died of, but hard work, disease and a chronic lack of sex are a fairly good bet.

By some amazing coincidence, we also lasted in Invercargill just fifteen months. It is a hard life here. The winters are frigid and dark, and sometimes we felt we had little more than our love to sustain us.

But we did have one thing more. We had our seal. He nurtured us with Cabernet, Syrah and Pinot Noir. He never failed to offer up good cheer.

He is the Liquorland seal, and as they say: There’s No Land Like it.

Being Nice

Our housekeeper called in sick today, so I spent the morning pulling clumps of decaying human hair out of the shower drain.

It’s the Mediterranean girls who are the worst offenders. I remember one olive-skinned French beauty, whose perfect curves and flawless bone structure left me feeling vaguely deformed. The next morning when she checked out, I cleaned the shower drain and discovered a dripping mass of chestnut-colored hair the size and heft of a drowned cat. It’s as though she was undergoing a particularly brutal course of chemotherapy, and had come to New Zealand to convalesce.

But the filthy drains are as bad as it gets. On the whole, running a youth hostel is a notoriously easy job. The cleaning is mindless, there isn’t that much money to count, and all you really have to do is be kind to the guests.

It’s that last part I have difficulty with.

I realize that my personality is not suited to this work. Basically, I am an angry, troll-like person, who will do anything to avoid making small talk. At one point last summer, I came up with a fool-proof plan, something that would allow me to live rent-free at the hostel without actually dealing with guests.

But then Peter ruined it. “You can’t throw feces at people,” he protested. “You’ll get arrested.”

And so I toiled on, wearily attempting to be friendly to the happy young holiday-makers. I asked them where they were from, feigning interest when they told me. I gave them reasonably clean beds, and showers that were largely hair-free. When they had trouble with English, I bantered with them in French, and stumbled through my broken Spanish and Italian. I baked fresh bread in the mornings, and gave them eggs from our chickens. Occasionally, I even dabbled in a little friendly political debate.

Last November, for example, on the evening of the American elections, an elderly New Zealand couple came to stay at our hostel. “This is a historic night!” I told them, raising my wine glass. “The end of the Evil Empire is nigh!”

“Do you think so?” they asked, peering at me over their cups of weak tea. “What’s wrong with the chap you have now?”

The glass nearly shattered in my hand. “WHAT’S WRONG WITH HIM?” I spluttered. “Besides ignoring habeas corpus, torturing prisoners offshore, starting a horrific war in Iraq and presiding over the collapse of the world financial system? BESIDES THAT, you mean?”

“But that other fellow, Obama…” they persisted. “Isn’t he dark? You don’t want him in there, do you?”

I nearly threw feces at them. But that would have been rude. Instead, I simply walked away.

There is an online message board that posts reviews of backpacker hostels in New Zealand. It is supposed to be a way for travellers to get an idea of what each hostel is like before they go there. But because the reviewers post anonymously, it is more of a virtual forum where people can say mean things and disappear. Occasionally, a traveller posts something nice about the bread I make in the mornings, or comments about how clean the hostel is.

But shortly after my chat with the racist kiwis, the following posting appeared online:

ABYSMAL OWNER UP HER OWN ARSE BEST THING ABOUT IT WAS THE FURNITURE MATCHED.

And they're right, of course. Our furniture is a lovely shade of green.