Bra Pee

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GRUMPY

I'm in Turkey for a week-long dance festival. There's going to be a total solar eclipse smack bang in the middle of it. It's all going to be a little bit awesome. Farthest I've ever traveled for a party and there's a light show you just wouldn't want to miss. I haven't been to this part of the world before, so I know for a fact that everyone's a dodgy fucker looking for a way to do you over. What do I do about that? I get in shape before I leave. I shave my head down to a five oçlock shadow and generally try to exude the air of someone it would be wise not to fuck with. It's a plan that works well. Walking through markets and down dark alleys, I play the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in my head. I assume dodgy fuckers everywhere can hear that theme song because no one fucks me over.

So I've got this Clint Eastwood thing going on, which is why it surprises me so much when I'm mistaken for another Hollywood hot-shot. And I must add here that modesty usually prevents me from telling this story. I'm really quite a modest person, so I find this a very hard story to tell.

I'm in the communal room of a pensione outside of Effes. I've been talking to a Canadian traveler. I'm chilling with my girlfriend at the time, sitting on a cushion with my back against a wall. When suddenly a couple of Japanese travelers comes crashing through the door. I do some menacing squint action because you never know – they could just be ninja assassins or something. We stare at each other across the room. I cue up the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's a tense moment packed full of... um... tension.

Suddenly the Japanese girl points at me. I chew on my imaginary cigar and tighten my grip on my finger gun as the girl excitedly says, “Rook! Is bra pee!”

I give a WTF look at the others. They WTF back at me. I WTF the intruders. There's a whole bunch of WTF ricocheting about all over the place.

“Bra pee!” Ninja assassin chick accuses again.

“What did you just say to me?” I Clint back at her.

“I get camera. Oh my God. Bra pee!”

“Why do you keep saying bra pee at me?”

The Canadian seems amused by the whole thing as she says dryly from the back of the room, “She thinks you're Brad Pitt.”

The girlfriend looks at me like she's very amused and barely able to hold back hysterical laughter. I look at the girlfriend like aren't you the lucky one, Angelina. I also get a bit excited in my pants but the excitement goes flaccid when I realise that the ninja assassins must have dined on some of the most powerful hallucinogens known to mankind.

And, so, there you go. It's just one of those little stories that modesty forbids me from sharing with anyone else.

Grumpy is Lee Bemrose, freelance writer. Contact him at leebemrose666@gmail.com