Karoke Night

We got a bit of work done the next morning – shoveling out some drainage ditches, cleaning up a flower bed, and giving the pony another ride around, which, thankfully, did go much better. Our work was cut short, though, by the rain, which started pouring down again. As we were getting ready for our big night out to the pub, we offered to drive. It was the least we could do, we thought, to serve as Simone’s designated driver. She accepted gladly, and went on making some weird comments about how naughty she could be that night, since she didn’t have to stay sober.

We met up with her group of girlfriends, four or five single women around her age. Simone introduced around (“Braun and Ellen from Sweden and Canada!”), and then we sat around, watching person after person get up to sing. We were sufficiently entertained. It was a standard New Zealand pub scene.

True to her word, Simone did not stay sober. She started out with two small bottles of champagne, and then, once everyone got loosened up and the evening could really get going, the men came over and started buying drinks. Bourbon and coke after bourbon and coke after bourbon and coke. Yuck. Bjorn was staying sober (volunteer sober driver), and I had no interest in having more than a couple of beers.

The men that were creeping around were foul – the kind of regulars you’ll find lurking in any backwoods bar in America. And one of them was all over Simone, and she was not putting up any kind of a fight. We assumed that, out of courtesy for us being her sober ride home, she would not linger too long at the bar, or at least tell us we could go on home and she’d find herself another ride. But no, we were forced to just sit there, watching this pathetic behavior, this disgusting, drunk, flirtation.

The karoke wrapped up, the bartenders announced last call, but Simone and the three men hanging around her, stayed on. I don’t understand why, but far past last call, while they were cleaning up, the bartenders continued to serve these idiots, and in the last hour we were there, they probably consumed four more rounds of bourbon and coke. It was like, as the hours got later, and their time ran out, they became desperate for total drunkenness. They couldn’t leave the bar until they’d reached the point they wouldn’t remember the next day. I somehow thought this kind of drinking was reserved for young people, who hopefully would grow out of it, but that was clearly a very naïve notion. And watching a sixty year old woman and her friends, get drunk and try to find a guy to go home with, made me very, very sad. It was like they’d never progressed past their 20s.

We were the absolute last people in the bar. Bjorn and I were furious. We’d stayed about two hours longer than we’d wanted to, but it was only our second night with Simone, and we didn’t really know how to explain to her that we wanted to leave. Even after we walked out the door and stood out front waiting, she stayed inside, having some argument with this guy. When she finally stumbled out the door, she explained that he just needed to make up his mind, between herself and his current partner. We assumed that this was the same guy she’d mentioned the day before.

The next morning, aside from admitting that she was feeling quite hungover, she really made no mention of the night and didn’t appear to feel sorry or guilty for anything, especially not for making us stay out much longer than we’d wanted to.

The next few days with Simone was a total waste of our time, aside from getting rid of quite a bit of our stuff and organizing the car. The rain poured down every single day, so there was little we could do for her. She did get Bjorn out on the pony a few more times, but I won’t get into that. I’ve gone on long enough as it is. By Saturday, halfway through the week, I was ready to go. Our last days in NZ were wasting away.