The Backpacker by John Harris

finger. A pink flying saucer suddenly flew through the blue sky and landed in the sand next to Dave.
    â€˜Hey,’ he shouted, sitting up again, ‘you girls wanna play?’
    One of the two topless blondes we’d been watching came jogging over to collect the frisbee. ‘If you like.’
    â€˜John?’
    I tilted my head. ‘No, I’m OK at the moment. You go.’
    Dave stood up and joined in the game, his slim black body looking funny between the two bare-chested whites, like a sandwich. Every time he threw the frisbee too hard and hit a passer-by a little argument would ensue, not coming to any real shouting, just a ‘Watch it man!’ Another flick of the frisbee, accidentally-on-purpose in the wrong direction, ‘Oops.’
    As I watched them play, I began to think about Dave. He was unusual, I thought. Hard to fathom. When we had first met outside the airport in Bangkok, I had taken him for an annoying, clean-cut, middle-class American, like one of the Cosby Kids, only this one had broken away and become a little wayward. Now I had changed my mind. After what he had told me about his background it seemed that I had judged him in reverse, and that he was a poor kid trying to make good. Actually I didn’t believe that either, or rather, I believed it but thought there was more to him than that. He was out to have a good time, but unlike many of the other travellers I’d met, he wasn’t pretending to be something that he wasn’t naturally. He wasn’t trying to break away, or trying to drop out or be a hippy.
    Dave knew who he was and didn’t avoid the question of upbringing and the financial assistance that had got him out here. In short he wasn’t pretending to be poor; whether he was poor or not didn’t matter. And he wasn’t interested in getting away from the crowd, trying to be the first to discover some far-off deserted beach that only the select few travellers ‘in-the-know’ were privy to.
    If you could bottle his upbringing and sell it like medicine, you’d be a millionaire; the hoards of lost, middle-class, pseudo-hippies would make sure of that.
    Dave did a few spectacularly dismal attempts at catching the frisbee between his legs, and when he tried to do it and jump at the same time he came down on his head with a dull thud. ‘Gawd,’ he proclaimed, trying to mimic my accent, ‘landed roight on me noggin!’ The two girls lapped it up.
    He threw the frisbee to me as an obvious ploy to come over and have a word with me. ‘John, these two are real hot, man, c’mon.’
    I had regained my composure enough to stand, and joined in, thinking that the girls would help take my mind off the day’s events. ‘Aren’t you supposed to meet Suzy?’ I said, brushing the sand off my back.
    â€˜John, don’t give me that la-di-da crap now,’ he thrust the frisbee into my hands, ‘throw that mother to Julie.’
    I looked up at the two girls who were standing, hands on hips, waiting for the game to continue. They looked like they were discussing which one of us they preferred, occasionally giggling and moving from one hip stance to the other. ‘Which one’s Julie?’
    â€˜The blon– the one with the small bazookas. Your one.’
    â€˜That means you get the one with the... ’
    â€˜Big bazookas. Right! You catch on fast. Hey,’ he said turning back, ‘it’s my game so I get to choose. And none of that la-di-da British lord stuff. You know I can’t compete with that. All I’ve got is my afro, and once they’ve seen that a black guy’s dick is the same size as any other guy’s, it’s over.’
    We walked towards the two girls and Dave instructed us to fan out. That’s exactly what he said, ‘OK, now faan-out,’ and spread his arms like he was carrying out a military exercise.
    â€˜It’s not is it?’ I enquired