Rooth: Pants Down
Perhaps 30 years is long enough. It should be. Most of the people involved are dead or wrong in the head by now, and that’s just my mates. The few who can still hold a cup of weak tea in the morning without slopping it all over their hospital gown deserve an explanation.
Yes, it was my Norton in the car park and yes, it was me who was reported fast asleep on the putting green of the Armidale Golf Club with his pants around his ankles.
No matter how many times I look at that last sentence it doesn’t look good. One wonders if a bloke might have taken to riding side saddle for a change, possibly taken a lean to the bottom corner or something?
I mean, more than one man’s donned a skirt and gone to bat for the other side …
But now, safely tucked behind the bars of 17 years of marriage (to a woman, did I mention that?), with 40 years of growth on my chin and a host of big, hairy mates with whom to share plenty of back-slapping while watching the pole dancers, I reckon I should come clean.
I almost said ‘come out of the closet’ then. Phew, that was close. I meant come clean as in the telling of truths, okay? Gee, there’s so much room for confusion here I’m in danger of being politically incorrect.
Perhaps now would be a good time to state that I don’t have anything against men who like men. As long as they don’t like me, anyway. Which they don’t, but none of this has got anything to do with waking up on the golf course with my pants around my ankles.
It’d been a long day. I was a student, which back in the sex- and drug-crazed 1970s meant hanging around uni looking for sex and drugs. This usually took place in the university bistro, often with mates from the UNE motorcycle club.
For hundreds of years, a university education was something only the privileged enjoyed, something daddy bought young Barrington to keep him away from the servants’ quarters. Then Gough Whitlam made it free and the places filled up with yobbos, all out to get a drink and a root before we had to make a living in the real world.
It’s all changed again, of course. These days the students take it seriously because it has to be paid for. The only ones hanging around for a drink and a root are the academics.
As a late starter at the uni thing, I had a few bucks in my kick and a Norton 750. The latter was the reason I had to keep working a couple of jobs during that first year. Norton parts were a whole lot cheaper than bits for the new-fangled Honda Fours but you needed lots of them a lot more often.
So, after a Friday night spent chasing sex and drugs in the bistro, I’d spent the bulk of Saturday working a maintenance shift at the old Hillgrove Mine. On about two hours’ sleep, I’d dressed and gone to the Robb College Ball. That phrase alone is so typical of all things ‘university’ – very posh and gentleman-like for something that was more piss up in a urinal with a bow tie to wipe your arse.
The Robb Ball was an absolute blinder, followed by a chicken and champagne breakfast. I must have eaten enough chicken to feel sober enough to ride the Norton out to the golf club. I’ve never played golf, so I can only assume it was chosen as the venue to impress the young lady of good character I’d met at the ball. Or because the bar was open on a Sunday. Or both.
Either way, the young lady must have bailed fairly early, leaving a mindless dribbling idiot to find his own way home. That’s me, by the way. You might not recognise me as a mindless, dribbling idiot. That’s because you don’t know me as well as my wife.
So I had no chick, was half brainless already and the bar was open. What’s a bloke to do? I got so drunk I did something out of the ordinary. I played the poker machines.
It must have been a big win on the ten-cent machine because when I woke up – geographically speaking, roughly between the club house and the house we rented – my pockets were stuffed with coins. So much so that while wandering home they must have weighed down the old trousers, forced them to ankle point and dropped me in my tracks. Putting grass is incredibly soft, isn’t it?
So rather than do the difficult thing – you know, get up and pull my pants up – I’d fallen asleep right there on the seventh hole.
It wasn’t a good night for difficult tasks. When I went back to pick up the Norton, the key was in the ignition, the bike was switched on and the battery was flat. They can be a bugger to start, especially when you’re pissed and your leg’s weighed down with coins. Or so I’ve heard.
Right, well that’s enough confession for today. Now go forth and do wonderful things, safe in the knowledge that no matter how bad things look, there’s always a good reason behind them. Hopefully …
By John Rooth. Two Wheels, September 2010.
Following his time at Two Wheels, John went on to become a brand in his own right, Roothy, specialising in 4×4 adventure touring across print, digital (Facebook and You Tube) and TV.
