This half of Trail Talks has been fucking around in New Zealand for three months now. I’m on the road again after three weeks working at the disastrous Penguin Bar and Cafe, run by a perpetually stoned Canadian and her alcoholic yet kind Kiwi husband. On the way down the scantily inhabited west coast, I’ve done a couple magnificent “tramps,” climbed a little, and listened to now three Harry Potter audiobooks while driving down narrow, winding roads with jaw-dropping views and absurdly high speed limits. I presently find myself in the touristy, adventure hub of Queenstown.
If you’ve traveled internationally before like the white middle class privileged little shit that I am, you know being so far away from home is challenging, exhilarating, and tends to show endless examples of humanity at its finest. There was the kind man running a food truck (serving pancakes, of all things) who gave me and my traveling companions clandestine directions to a cave that has been shut off to tourists for decades; the Colombian traveler who enthusiastically helped push the White Whip back to safety when it went into the ditch (entirely of its own volition!); the banker who, after I broke down crying in frustration, did some mild forgery so that I could set up an account without proof of address (“Oh, you poor wee thing.”); and of course the many wonderful people from around the world who were strangers just weeks ago but have since become dear friends. Yes, there have been so many times when I’ve thought to myself, “Maybe humanity won’t die a brutal, fiery death after all.”
Yet through it all, one must sometimes step back and concede that some people are just jackasses with no redeeming qualities. So intensely loathsome that I can only seethe and imagine the worst possible fate befalling them: going about their business barefoot and carefree only to trod directly upon hundreds of intractable cactus spines.
Below I’ve compiled a list of such figures. If you find yourself amongst these goons, keep in mind that my opinion doesn’t matter whatsoever and you could just as easily counter with a lengthier list of, “reasons Monica Nigon deserves to have cactus spines between her toes.” I anxiously await its publication, and in the meantime will only wear close-toed shoes.
But I digress. Here is an abridged version of people who, in my never-sought-after opinion, should go step on this quintessential desert flora.
1. People who leave lengthy Trip Advisor reviews, particularly if it’s about a certain female server who “put the plates down on the table loudly and without smiling.”
2. People who snore in the Grannity Hut on Mount Owen in Kahurangi National Park and don’t even have the decency to sleep in the mud outside so the rest of us can get some shut eye
3. Those who use the term, “literally,” when in fact they mean, “I’m trying to stress an important point to you, but I am in fact speaking purely in a figurative sense when I say ‘it was so loud my ears were literally bleeding.’”
4. People who shout, “Freebird!” at every concert they attend, even in small island nations in the Commonwealth. That was funny only one time, and it was at a cozy venue where Jack Johnson was playing early in his career.
5. Those who take their time in public restrooms, particularly when a young woman pacing outside mi is about to shit her shorts and keeps testing the doorknob not because she thinks it will be miraculously unlocked of its own accord but because she’s trying to tell you to for God’s sake hurry up.
6. Food judges (if I want to have peanut butter for breakfast and lunch and beer and cigarettes for dinner, I will!)
7. People who, upon meeting you, give you a hug and say, “I’m a hugger!” without considering that you are absolutely not a hugger unless it’s family or close friends and you will involuntarily strike said hugger in the kneecaps if hugged without warning
8. Secular white people with dreadlocks and culturally appropriated tattoos who walk barefoot in grocery stores
9. People in rented camper vans who drive 30 km/hr under the speed limit and pass no less than 10 pull off opportunities where they could easily let the girl behind them pass who also happens to be late to work (“fucking tourists!”)
10. Old, greasy drunk men who call me, “sweet” and make lewd comments and are then surprised when I smash a glass over their toupees.
11. Bloggers. Wait....what was that? Oh...fuck.
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