A Celebrity Encounter

"What's your name?"

"Daniel. What's yours?"

"My name's Nicholas Cage." This was a man at the bus stop. He had about 3 teeth, a heavy Australian accent, a cigarette in his hand, and a mouth dirtier than an old rag after washing the plates from a bbq dinner. He was a large man, grotesque to look at and he was not happy that the bus was running late. And it just so happened that both Good Ol' Saint Nic (as he called himself at one point) and me were both waiting on the 506. Furious, the man kept rattling off things about the "fucking buses, always fucking late, fucking cunts." Pardon the language, but these were his words. Bloody and bugger entered his vocabulary frequently as well. This has been fairly common language in my experiences here thus far. Certainly more common than in the States. However, that's not what I want to record about Nicholas Cage. The man was nuts. Let me go into a bit of detail.

A nice night after a good day spent at the beach (at Manly), I'd just eaten Thai with Tess and Rachel. We'd taken Kara to her home, because she'd lost her glasses in the ocean and couldn't see to navigate the buses. Fortunately, her home is in Drummoyne just around the corner from Wesley. We dropped her off and headed down the street to the Thai place. The food was quite good, as was the company. Well, I decided it was time for me to head home, about a 30 minute bus ride from our current location. I said my good evenings to the girls and headed on up the street.

As evenings go, buses here become less frequent. So, I sat down on a bench at the stop waiting. Nicholas Cage walked up and sat on the next bench down. Time passed. No sign of a bus. I got up to check the time sheet. One had gone by just a few minutes before, apparently. Nothing to do but wait. And wait. And wait. Twenty minutes pass before he spoke to me specifically, but the man was cussing under his breath basically as soon as he arrived at the bus stop. And then he approached me to discuss how he felt. "Mate, we're all cards in the same deck, you know what I mean? You, you're the Queen of Diamonds and I'm the Queen of Spades, mate. And you know what I do? I take all the queens and I rip them in half and that makes twelve. And there's the bloody problem, mate. They've got it all wrong. There are twelve commandments, not ten, you know what I mean? The religion's lying to us. That's what's wrong with the world. They don't even have it right, mate."

Through all this I thought it best simply to agree with whatever the man said. I nodded and gave some "Yeah, uh huh" responses as appropriate. The man continued. "I've got a secret to tell you. We're in America, mate." At this I laughed.

"Oh really? How do you know?" I asked him.

"The bloody McDonald's, mate. They're everywhere. Just listen to Good Ol' Saint Nic. They don't have those in the rest of the world. If we went up to Canada, you'd never seen a McDonald's. It's awful. Cards in the same deck, mate. Twelve commandments, not ten, you know what I mean? How old are you?"

"Twenty," I told him a bit hesitatingly. "Yourself?"

"Jesus, I'm forty two. All awful."

"Really?" I asked. "Surely not every moment has been bad."

"It all has. They kidnapped me and fucked me up. Made me crazy."

I laughed again a bit nervously. He certainly had the crazy part right. Well, he continued cussing about the bus system and he continued his random stream of consciousness statements that didn't make much sense--he kept coming back to the part about twelve commandments (I never did figure out what the extra two are). Finally the bus arrived, he shook my hand, and wished me well. He sat towards the back, I sat towards the front--where I just happened to be right in front of Ryan and Santiago, who I was relieved to see. The man was harmless, but he still made me a bit nervous.

The people here are so different. It's wonderful and strange. But hey, I came to Australia less than a week ago and I've already had my first celebrity encounter. Sure, it was Nic Cage rather than Hugh Jackman, but you gotta take what you can get, right?