Page 44 of Friends with Benefits

It’s probably clear by now that I believe in signs. No, not signs, but something. Some kind of power. That belief has certainly been heightened by my aunt and uncle, and the time they’ve made me spend trying to ‘find myself.’ But it started before then. It started with my parents and my understanding of why one of them couldn’t exist without the other. But how’s this for an invisible form, or a sign, if you prefer…

It had been years since I had met Danny Dukkha – that’s what I decided to call him after our first meeting the morning of the alms-giving ceremony in Laos. I was nineteen and celebrating my birthday at a beach shack bar in Bali. I wasn’t alone because I was in a bar full of backpackers who were willing to take tequila shots with me. But in terms of having anyone close to me, anyone who actually knew it was my birthday and that was why I was feeling the light buzz of my first four shots, I was on my own.

I was sitting on a wood swing, in place of a bar stool, turning my empty glass in my fingers on the bar top. Ruth and John were on a trek in the mountains somewhere, and I’m fairly certain they had forgotten it was my birthday in any event. The sun had long since gone down and fire candles lit the beach out front of the bar, but I was still wearing the kaftan I’d made myself and had been wearing all afternoon. I was still wearing the cowboy hat some guy I briefly flirted with a few weeks back gave me when he left for his next destination – Australia, I think he was headed to.

I must have looked quite sad. I was. I remember I was contemplating whether I should be celebrating that I had managed to live another year, or whether I should be mourning the fact I was one year closer to the young age my parents were when they died. That’s when it happened.

‘Dukkha.’ A voice came from over my shoulder, close to my ear, making me jump. Yet I didn’t turn because I thought I recognized that voice. And it made me freeze.

For years, I had contemplated the words Danny Dukkha had said to me in Laos. I had come to understand what he meant by being in a constant state of suffering in the cycle of the Buddhist interpretation of karma. He didn’t know me, yet that day, he knew I was clinging to something I could never hold on to, and he was telling me that it would lead to me suffering until I was reborn.

I had thought about Danny a lot since that day in Laos. So tell me it wasn’t some kind of sign that he had found me in Bali, after no connection since Laos, and he was whispering into my ear as I celebrated my birthday alone.

He pulled out my swing an inch and I rocked forward. I was so busy trying to get my head around what was happening, I was surprised by the smile that took over my lips.

‘You got more beautiful, if it’s possible,’ he said, and my lips spread wider still.

He signaled to the barman, holding up two fingers, as he straddled a wooden swing next to me, and sat down facing me.

‘Danny Dukkha,’ I eventually said. His name left me as part of an exhale.

‘You remember.’

Remember? He’d been in my thoughts so many times. ‘Yeah, I remember. What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Same as you, I suspect.’ He took one of the shot glasses filled with tequila that the bartender had set down. ‘What are we drinking to?’

I don’t know why I told him, when I hadn’t mentioned it to anyone else, but I said, ‘It’s my birthday.’

He nodded and handed me the second glass. We took the shot, laughing as we winced through the burn of the cheap, beachside tequila. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said, his face contorted as he spoke, then he shook his head.

I laughed, a little deliriously, and I still don’t know why his presence made me so happy that night. The coincidence? Having company when I had been feeling alone? That he stopped me from pondering life and death and made me smile? Or that I had possibly been waiting to confront him about his thoughts on karma from years before?

But that night, it didn’t matter. We talked and laughed. He told me everywhere he had been in the world since we’d last met and I told him where I had been dragged. Between us, we had covered six continents, forty countries with five near-death experiences.

After a few more tequilas, Danny ordered two bottles of water and we walked on the beach. Under the firelights, we drank our water and talked more. He asked questions about me. About my thoughts and feelings. About the clothes I made. And it was a revelation. Someone wanted to know about me and seemed to care about the answers. And he was fascinating. The guy who seemed to have no troubles and wanted to travel the world, not interested in growing roots anywhere. He was my polar opposite, and it was refreshing.

Age had changed him, made him broader, taller. His arms and legs were more tanned under his short-sleeved shirt and board shorts. There was more character about his face. Being in his twenties suits him, I thought. He was more attractive than I remembered. But more than anything, I liked the combination of youth and worldliness about his eyes. He had bright irises that seemed incredibly alive, but he had an abundance of knowledge and wisdom for such a young guy.

‘The wisdom comes from being an explorer,’ he said.

I was sitting next to him in the sand, my knees pulled in to my chest, my hair blowing in the warm Balinese wind. I laughed. ‘An explorer? You make yourself sound like Gulliver.’

He smiled but he said, ‘That’s what I am. And, you know something? I don’t ever want to be anything else.’

‘You don’t? Truthfully? I mean, don’t you ever think about what you’re going to do with your life?’

He chuckled then and lay back in the sand, his hands behind his head. ‘I am doing things with my life, Jess. I write travel articles and sell them. I work bar jobs here and there. People would kill to see the world the way we do.’

I stared out to sea and sighed. I knew that, of course. I knew in many ways, I was insanely lucky to see and experience the things I did.

‘But don’t you ever feel nomadic? You think of yourself as an explorer and I… I can’t help but think of myself as homeless.’

‘The world is your home, Jess.’

I stared at him then, the firelight flickering across his face, and I wished I could be like him. I wished in some ways that I had never seen the perfect home life; then I might not crave it. But I had and I did. I craved the bond my parents had shared. I wanted to feel the unconditional love of family. I craved the way my parents had loyal friends who would always help them out when they needed it and laugh and joke with them when they needed to be picked up. I longed for that kind of happiness and I feared it.

As I stared at Danny, I started to think if I could only be more like him, I might be happier.

---