On Second Thought

There's nothing like having a professional athlete to rescue you from near-death.

I arrived at my latest farm-stay feeling like an old pro. Wait at a bus stop in some middle-of-nowhere town to be driven to an even smaller, more-nowhere village -- we're talking not even a town center -- by some guy I've never met, driving up a very long, treacherous driveway with a mega electronic security gate, not knowing even the address, with no cell phone, no transport of my own and a big ole bag with all my life's possessions that quite inhibits running. My lifestyle has become such that this is not immediately alarming.

At first I was too dazzled by the house to pick up on anything else. The family brought their every life's possession to NZ when they left Germany in 2002. They literally brought the kitchen sink. A 1986 super-deluxe German kitchen was the centerpiece. A $3,000 steamer the size of an oven (I want!). Cheese- and wine-making facilities. Homeade liquers and jams and fermentations of every possible variety. A lil tool with a weight at the top that you used to crack open your hardboiled egg so you don't have to get your hands dirty. The first night's dinner concluded with homebrewed eggnog drizzled over alpine strawberries (very very tiny strawberries, differently shaped than the ones we know, and they taste like real-life sweet tarts -- flippin unreal!!)

Over dinner, the man of the house (let's call him Earl) told me about farming by the lunar calendar, about forms of healing involving psychic channeling of family members who need to aid in the emotional part of your injury, and general hippie shit that I keep encountering in the circle of NZ organic-diehard tiny-farm freaks. I was loving it.

But I did notice that it felt a bit too romantic, and not on my part. Where was his wife? I have a rule about not staying with single men on the WWOOF circuit, so I was glad that Earl's emails mentioned "our farm" and "our daughter who lives with us." The wife, it turns out, hadn't taken her ticket home from overseas a few days back, and she may never. The daughter (23, living at home to save money for starting a business) was spending as much time as she could at her boyfriend's house. Ok, but how creepy could this guy be? He knew about gourmet food and didn't pshaw-away psychic nature. He was ridiculously neat and small, and all the signs besides his occupation as a lifestock farmer initially screamed Gay! to me. (I sometimes forget that the American sexual preference stereotypes don't apply to Europeans.)

On my first day of work, Earl spent hours walking me around his property introducing me to all the animals. He's got highland cattle which are strinkingly beautiful, and one of the babies came right up to me to nuzzle my face, which in theory had scared me but in practice was magical and cute. We milked the goats, which is not as simple as it sounds (they aren't all that into standing still). I gave myself a minor concussion on a forklift. While I dug up the thistle next to the strawberry patch, Earl slapped a trucker hat on my head. I was in.

Too in. Earl started telling me how great it was to have my company. When I went to bed he accused me of leaving him (ahem projection). He made elaborate meals. Lunch lasted for 3 hours. He made jokes about dressing me in leaves, getting really back to nature. I started to plan an escape timeline in my head. And at the same time I started to notice how often he talked about killing the animals. Hear it in a German accent: "Deehz eehz a very naughty goat. I vill keell heem." I knew it was a livestock farm, but something about the way he said it, with a deep twinkle in his eye, and an almost robotic glare, gave me the Silent Bob shudders.

When you live and work with someone, you quickly come to know a lot about their life. Something about the constant proximity invokes rapid sharing. After 8 years in New Zealand, Earl has only one friend, and is estranged from his family for various reasons, involving people owing him money, or being "in the wrong drawer" (Earl, you see, likes to judge people and "put them in drawers"). He doesn't get on well with the neighbors, either. Something about them being mentally ill and coming over with an axe in a failed attempt to kill his dog (which, by the way, was super scary)? That's when he installed the security cameras. "You never know who's going to come on to your property and when. That's why I have such a high-tech gate; no one can come in without my permission." Etc. I've known people like this, who build a world of neurotic others in their heads, while always feeling they themselves are perfectly fine. I've lived with them, and at first chance, ran as fast and far away as I could. And here I was again.

His daughter came and went a few times, and though they only spoke to each other in German, I could tell things between them were not good. It came to a head on my forth night there. I'd been in bed all day with that annoying stomach-pain thing that keeps popping up (back in the States, too.. I'm totally hitting an acupuncture clinic stat, no worries). Suddenly there was a bunch of German screaming. Five minutes later - for the Germans seem efficient, even in their fighting - daughts knocked on my "door" looking wobbly and said I had to leave the next morning, that "something had come up with the work situation." I tried to get a little more detail, but she kept repeating that exact phrase, "something has come up with the work situation," as though her vocabulary was being remote-controlled by a tiny computer chip that only held one phrase. I went downstairs to use their phone to book a backpackers in Ch'ch for the next day, and Earl made his usual intense eye contact coupled by a too-big smile, but didn't have a word to say to me.

"Dear Diary,
'Something's come up with the work situation.' Daughts is bringing me back to Christchurch at 7:45 tomorrow morning. It's 9:30pm now. I spent all day trying to sleep off my stomach blues, and I haven't eaten a thing. I can't imagine sleeping more, and I'm hungry but scared of going downstairs to the kitchen because I feel vastly uncomfortable with this situation. I'm not keen on waiting 10 hours to get out of here. But I'm on a farm in the middle of nowhere... HOLY FUCK I'm on an island where I have ZERO friends, no phone, no transport, and no idea of my address!!!

"10:28pm. I really need to poo but don't want to leave my room (which only has a door MADE OF CARDBOARD! Could it BE more ridiculous?!) because I'm scared that Earl has turned crazy/violent/creepy, and because I don't want anyone to ask me to give the landline phone back which I've kept in my room in case I need to dial 111 when my swiss army knife fails to defend me. How the fuck do I relax??? I don't. I count the hours til morning.

"11pm. The phone rang but Earl didn't answer it. He's supposedly asleep? The house is dark.

"11:18pm The phone has been beeping literally every 15 seconds since it rang. As if I wasn't feeling crazy before!

"Well it's 11:42pm and no one's come into my room with an axe yet. At least I've been granted that courtesy."

Eventually I convinced myself that, while creepy, and murderous, this guy wasn't going to harm me. I closed my eyes, cleared the visions of a knife slowly slicing a square around my nail-and-string cardboard door "lock," and somehow fell asleep.

"1:39am I've never heard a sound like this in my life. It sounds like every cow in the paddock is giving birth. The sound of a dozen large animals in distress is not a good thing to wake up to when you are trying to sleep to ignore the fact that you may soon die. Earl just went outside, so I guess the sound is unusual even to him. Or maybe that was his footsteps coming back inside? Maybe he was just out in the field testing out the sharpness of his blade."

In an amazing testament to the adapability of the human to most situations, I fell asleep again, and, naturally, woke up alive. Earl had left and his daughter was there to take me to town. On the drive, we talked about her interest in becoming a vet, the weather, everything but what exactly the big German fight that lead to my evacuation was all about. She'd never been around, really, to see Earl get all creepster on me, but maybe, like most women, her intuition had told her.

I was quite relieved, truth me told, to be evacuated, instead of having to concoct an excuse to leave. And perhaps it all sounds a bit paranoid, the leap to Earl being a vampire (not the sexy, Twilight kind) or The Terminator or whatever was going on. But those Germans man -- when they don't want to tell you something, and they look at you with serious eyes, well it's all very quite intense.

Back in Christchurch, my first stop was this steallar cafe run by the devotees of Sri Chinmoy. Though I'm sick of all the groups of female devotees to one male leader, this place wins for having every possible healing beverage on earth - kombucha (!!!), keifer (with a vegan coconut option), dandelion teas, superfood smoothies of every variety (beyond goji and acai - shit I'd never heard of!, but that my intestines are siked on). If you're familiar with Sri Chinmoy, it's probably through his lil poems printed on business cards with line-drawings of birds that vaguely convey the poetic sentiment. I sat down with my kombucha, breathed a sigh, and picked up a card.

"When troubles
Attack you,
Just smile them away."

Through a cardboard door? Bugger off Sri Chinmoy!

But seriously, I do dig his lil poems. The next one said:

"The best and most
Effective way
To rectify your mistakes
Is not to repeat them."

I've got ya on this one, Sri. My next farm-stay will be more carefully constructed.

Oh! But the fun part, the rescue. So I'm totally flying to Wellington tomorrow to see Rugby Guy (let's continue to call him "James"). We've exchanged a bunch of emails, and despite his overuse of lols and other such non-words, I like this guy's style. He's direct. And he's on TV. I'm sorry but no matter how liberal-alternative I may be, at the end of the day, a professional athlete? Like DUH! How can I not??

I've never been a sportsfan (to the chagrin of my mother, who still updates me on the Red Sox every time we talk). I was a fan of living in Boston during those amazing Pats and Sox victories. That was some of the best partying of my life! In the last moments of that fateful Pats game (I dunno, 2002-ish? See, I really don't know..), I was at the White Horse tavern, where I managed to puke on myself, run to the bathroom, throw away my hoodie, and promptly order another beer. When they released us onto the streets, Waasinator was doing kegstands in front of stopped traffic while I stared at the naked guy in a tree and someone hung gigantic speakers out their window blasting G&R. So yeah, sports can be cool, I guess.

And the other thing about sports is that they are full of hotbodied guys wearing nice lil outfits. I can get behind that. I had a Tom Brady poster on my wall during my Allston days. And having a tryst with a rugby guy in NZ, where it's *the* national sport, is the closest to Tom Brady I will probably ever get. I've got my best cheerleader smile at the ready -- BRING IT ON!