Dawn. Somewhere in Atlas Mountains, Morocco. Jim stares out at the mist-soaked valleys, which lie like the fallen limbs of sleeping giants, tangled in a duvet of fog after some Brobdingnagian orgy. I honestly think if I hadn’t been there, Jim would have just walked and walked, till he landed in the giants’ arms or…
I’m an atheist. It’s never normally hard for me to admit that. But last time I settled myself in a city overseas, while looking for community, I found myself in a circle of Christian men that made me their prey.
Personally, I’ve always found church a bit hard to swallow. Perhaps it is the remnants…
I was splayed between gravestones, with multiple jackets strewn across the grass. Like most men I've encountered, Galway Guy was bending my body in ways that it simply does not bend – not everyone has gotten into the yoga phenomenon. I was shivering as dew seeped through one of his many jackets and onto the…
“Where are you from?”
This is a typical way of breaking the ice among solo travellers. I get asked the question up to 10 times a day.
“From Norway.”
“From Norway? No way.”
Norwegians do ask too, but not nearly as often. Although everyone sees in colour, asking a stranger about their heritage is considered…
It’s 9pm on a Saturday. Joel and I sit on the couch in the shared common room of a North Queensland hostel. I tilt my head back and close my eyes, remembering a night four years ago when I was just 18 years old, drunk in one of my hometown nightclubs.
“After that it all…
“Wow, there’s no way I could do that!”
“It’s been a whole year since you’ve seen each other?”
“Do you really have a boyfriend if he’s not even here?”
“Wait, how do you…” *looks around* “…like, get off?”
Folk, welcome to Real Things I’ve Heard When I Mention My Long-Distance Relationship. Often over a coffee,…
Ten years ago, I lived on an island off the coast of Honduras. It was summer when I was there. It was summer almost all the year. The air was hot and buttery; day lasted long into the night. Through the afternoons, men played dominoes in the shade beneath the mango trees. In the evenings,…
Here I am, on my knees for a white man.
Throwback to 50 years ago, and the context of this statement would have meant I was about to be beheaded, or shot, or whatever else occurred during the Vietnam war. But it’s 2020, and as the world slowly comes to terms with the breadth of its…
“You’d be more attractive if you smoked and were less of a feminist,” he slurs, sloppily, arm slung like a dead weight over my shoulder as I walk him home after yet another drunken escapade.
These words were not those of a nemesis nay, not even an acquaintance. No, instead these words came from someone…
It was approaching midnight on a cold Tuesday. My boyfriend and I were drunkenly trawling the backstreets of Shibuya, leading us to the street of dôgenzaka in search of a Love Hotel (rabu hoteru).
The hotels towered over the street, drawing in cliental with grandiose light displays that looked like they had been plucked out…
Like many young women who’ve watched the Abba-inspired Mamma Mia! films, I was recently struck by the urge to relocate to Europe and have unprotected sex with three strapping lads before settling down on a Grecian island to raise a daughter with questionable patrilineage.
As I mark two notches in my Spanish belt, the correlations between…
Jayden came stomping through the door to our shared hotel room. He was completely oblivious to the fact that it was 2:32AM on a Wednesday night, and his roommate was trying to sleep.
In the quick 10 seconds it took him to reach the side of my bed, I decided that I was asleep. I…