Bikini Pants Guy

I’ll start with an admission – I like looking at the female body.  I’ll even go one step further and admit I like it even better when that body is sun-tanned brown and scantily clad.  But I try not to ogle.  I don’t want to embarrass anybody, myself included.  I prefer the casual glance, or perhaps a sequence of casual glances over time.  I don’t want to be creepy. 

We were camped at a place called Mary Pools when, out of the corner of my eye, my (non-creepy) perve detector registered that a black pair of bikini bottoms had entered my field of view.  “It’s surely worth a glance or two” my eyes said to the rest of Alan.  It soon became apparent that the bikini bottoms existed sans top.  This was truly a revelation.  It meant that, over to my left and about 50mtr along, a woman was walking around the campground topless; a rarity indeed. (I quickly acknowledge that we men do it all the time and that most of us probably shouldn’t).

I turned to take my first prolonged glimpse.  The bikini bottoms were walking away from me so I could only view them from the rear.  It was an odd sight.  I could see the black bikini bottoms with the little tie up straps swinging from the side but they were tied onto a very oddly shaped female bottom.  There was a distinct lack of curve.

This required further study so I disregarded convention and took a hefty great ogle.  The shoulders were very broad; the walk strident.  There was no real figure at all, hourglass or not, just a large bump on either side just above the hips that I recognised to be ‘love handles’.  Then it struck me.  This figure strutting through the campground was not female at all.  It was male; a guy; a bloke.  In a rush of confusion it became obvious that some old guy with leathery brown skin and an over-extended sense of bravado was striding barefooted around the campground in the black bottom half of woman’s swimwear.  I went from ogle into bloody great stare but he was too far away from me to take in the full effect. (Shana couldn’t believe it either but said she knew it was a guy all along).

I tried to let the image go as we got on with our day.  Our days aren’t taxing.  Basically we hung around until the (relative) cool of the evening to walk Morrissey.  There was water in the pools that we wanted to check out – not much water, but enough for Moz to swim in.  I took the camera hoping to catch the late afternoon light. 

While on our walk we saw bikini pants guy again.  He was still a distance away, walking in front of us.  Shana had been taking telephoto pictures of birds and had the camera in her hand and, well, you would wouldn’t you, she focused in and took a series of shots.  “Nobody would believe us otherwise” she said.   We wondered whether it was an invasion of his privacy but came to the agreement that it wasn’t privacy he sought.  No one would strut around dressed like that if they were seeking privacy.

 

That was pretty much it for our first experience of bikini pants guy.  We’d seen him.  We knew he existed.  We had photos to prove it.

It was the next afternoon that we realised we’d been exposed to legend. Apparently, like a Loch Ness monster of the dusty red outback, bikini pants guy was talked about often but seldom seen.  Those who had seen him kept his story in circulation.  Those who hadn’t seen him shook their heads, wanting to believe, yet not quite able to conjure the image. We’d just been in the right place at the right time.

We listened as Kerry, a woman we’d just meet, sat beneath our awning, sipping tea and sharing her experiences with us.  She knew him well – too well she said – having unwittingly camped beside him two nights in a row.  Like kids around a campfire we begged her to tell us more.

What she told us was this:

Bikini pants guy is friendly enough if you don’t challenge his point of view.  If you talk to him about life on the road, etc, he’s okay, as long as you can ignore the fact that the bits of him you don’t want to see are barely contained by the briefest swatch of black lycra.  Don’t encourage him to sit down though.  The lycra is old, stretched and is saggy.  It has little retaining power.  (But they are not women’s swimmers.  They are men’s tie on bathers.  He swears it is so).

His philosophy is akin to that of a small child in that the first person there gets to set the rules.  If he is the first person to be parked at a given spot, so his philosophy goes, and you then park near him, then in the act of choosing to park there you have broached his domain. Being there first, he has assumed sovereignty of the area.  He understands that some people don’t like his choice of summerwear but, if they park near him, then they put up with it or move somewhere else.  He believes that he shouldn’t have to be beholden to the prudishness of others.   If challenged by the new arrival, he takes off the bikini bottoms and walks around naked.  Sometimes he walks around naked anyway, especially if the place he has camped in is fairly remote.

I can understand this to a degree, but according to Kerry it’s not so benign in practice.  Apparently he targets the young and the female. As legend has it, two young backpacker girls recently parked near to him in a Hi Ace van.  He was there first.  He presided over the space.   The girls became distraught at his continual presence around them.  Apparently his hand kept wandering in and around the black lycra in a way that sent the girls seeking company and protection.  Plus he has no front teeth.  Possibly this shouldn’t make any difference, but it did for the girls.  It added ugly to the leery and the creepy.  Eventually they moved to somewhere else.

As Kerry talked, even though we’d seen him and had photos, to me he still existed mostly as story. We’d only ever seen him from a distance. I was a bit jealous of Kerry actually.  I wanted a close encounter of my own.  But, as they say, be careful what you wish for.   

The next afternoon, as we wheeled into another roadside rest area, we automatically went into spotting mode.  The ideal rest stop spot has trees to the west, thereby shading the side of the ‘bago, which is especially important over the fridge.  It has an open flat area to the east so we can sit in the shade provided by the ‘bago itself.   It should be near to the toilets but not close enough to smell them or cause us to have to nod to every person walking past carrying toilet paper.  With my little $5 compass directing us, we spotted a site that wasn’t too bad, although our awning would have to extend very close to a covered picnic area.  This wasn’t ideal, as covered picnic areas attract backpacker vans, and backpacker vans contain backpackers who are often nice but generally noisy.

There was only one vehicle nearby, parked alongside the picnic area. 

 

We parked, set up the folding chairs and Morrissey’s bed, then I went to the toilet.  When I returned Shana was angry.  “It’s him”, she said, nodding toward the other vehicle, “bikini pants guy”.  She told me how she’d tied Moz to a picnic table and how he immediately came up to her and said “You can leave him there if you want but I wouldn’t.  I’ll be welding there soon.  He might get hurt”.  She said he almost grunted the words at her.

Initially I had only the one pressing question – “what was he wearing?”

He was wearing only his bikini bottoms and we watched as he ignored us and assembled various bits of steel across the tables.  He got a mobile welder from his ute and started his generator.  I was a bit pissed off that he thought it okay to just take over the space, turning picnic tables into a workshop, but I was equally intrigued as to how he’d go about it.  I have a knowledge of welding and I’ve been burnt by welding sparks. I know how important it is to cover yourself up. 

I had this image of him, leather welder’s apron covering his front, little black bikini pants at rear.  It wasn’t a pleasant image but it made sense.  However, the image underestimated his toughness, or his stupidity, or his craving to be noticed, I’m not sure which, because, there, 5mtr from where I sat, in a rest stop 250km east of Broome, this guy welded a frame together bare footed and wearing nothing but bikini bottoms.

It was noisy and foolhardy and whenever he bent over it was damn close to obscene.

 

 We began thinking he was doing it solely to piss us off.  It was obvious we weren’t going to comment on his (lack of) clothing, so he sought another way to make us move.  But we weren’t moving.  This was the last spot out of the sun.  We figured he’d have to stop work eventually; he couldn’t weld in the dark.

A standoff ensued.

 I brought out the guitar and sat facing away from him, but close.  Everytime he stopped welding I’d smash out chords.  I wasn’t going for melody, touch or technique.  I was attempting to hit the strings as hard as I could, as fast as I could.  Everytime the welder stopped, I started.

 Our noise duel lasted for over an hour.  I didn’t ever look at him and began to enjoy it, inventing weird sounds and strange fingering positions to increase the dissonance.  He finished welding (he had actually made a frame to attach solar panels onto).  I stopped playing.  Shana and Morrissey, somewhat shellshocked, emerged from the van.  There had been no winner.

At one stage afterwards he nodded his head toward us.  Perhaps this was in recognition that I’d played a good game because he soon wanted to talk, just small talk, him beside his ute in his bikini pants, us seated on our chairs trying not to encourage talking at all.

Just when we thought the worst was over he strode past us unannounced, on his way to the toilet.  He came so close that he almost brushed my leg.  Unfortunately he was now wet, his bikini bottoms clinging like cling wrap around unwanted leftovers.  I’ve got no idea how he got wet, or why, but the lycra passed by directly in my line of sight and way too close.  I didn’t turn away quick enough.  “That’s it” I said to Shana, “I’m going inside.  I refuse to see that again on his way back”.   Shana took Morrissey for a walk. 

The generator rattled in the darkness until almost 9pm.

Even though I thought him disgusting, and probably unhinged, and maybe even a borderline sexual deviant, a part of me respected him.  I didn’t like his philosophy or his arrogance but I respected his commitment to it.  There’s something compelling about people who truly don’t give a shit about what other people think.  That’s why I wish we’d never met him again.  I wish he would have remained in my memory as I’d experienced him that day – when there was something almost super-human about what he did. 

But we did meet again. 

It was in a caravan park the next day.  Caravan parks are businesses and businesses require rules.  Although I’ve never seen a notice requesting that men wear more than bikini bottoms, it’s pretty much a given that there are standards of appropriate dress and behaviour.

Shana noticed him first.  She’s more observant than me and she recognised his van as it drove in.

“There’s bikini pants guy again”

“No way, where?”

“That’s his van isn’t it?”

“Bullshit”.

He parked near us, with nobody in between. 

“What’s he wearing?”

“Shorts and a blue T shirt”

He noticed Shana, waved and said hullo.  Shana couldn’t help herself.  She was friendly back to him.

“What’d you do that for?”

“Because I’m polite”.

“Jesus!”

I knew she shouldn’t have done it.  He was soon standing beside us.

Up close and dressed, the only disconcerting thing was his lack of front teeth.  Other than that he looked like your common garden variety nomad.  His hair was grey and needed cutting, his clothes were rumpled and a bit dirty, his conversation was inoffensive, his tone mellow.  Really, we were simply talking to somebody’s grandpa, like we had done hundreds of times previously.  But there was sadness within him. He was travelling alone but mentioned his wife at one stage.  He mentioned his children.  He mentioned his grandkids.  He sought us out because he desired conversation but we failed to ask any probing questions.  We’ve found that there are some people you converse with easily and some you don’t.  With him we remained guarded.

Actually, I couldn’t help thinking that the legend was losing its lustre.  What if the Loch Ness monster turned out to be nothing more than a large and lost wet carpet snake?  I didn’t want to know about the man beneath the bikini pants (I didn’t want to know about anything beneath the bikini pants).  I really just want to say that I saw him in full flight and that we butted heads. 

But the story has a happy ending. 

Before we parted he tried to outrage us. That was more like it. He started talking about how people complained about his favoured state of (un)dress.  He started espousing his philosophy. “Yeah, yeah” Shana and I said to each other with our eyes, “here we go”.   Once again he failed to shock us so he became anecdotal.  He told us about one guy who parked next to him and then complained that he was inappropriately dressed.  In response he stripped naked, challenging the guy to take further action.   Apparently the guy ranted and raved and wouldn’t let his wife out of the caravan.  He finished the story by saying “but I bet she was perving out the window anyway”.  This made Shana scoff audibly.  He didn’t know how to react.  The conversation finished shortly after and he wandered away.  

“He’s fucking joking”, Shana said after he left, “does he really think any woman wants to sneak a peek at his penis?” 

I’m here to say that I think he does. I honestly believe that he thinks most women want to sneak a peek at his penis.  I think it is this thought that fuels his strut.  

We never met him again and I sincerely hope he’s harmless.  I hope he’s nothing more than an eccentric old man who fancies himself a bit.

 Maybe, if you’re driving around the top end, you’ll see him yourself one day.  If you do I bet that you’ll walk a line between being offended and being amused. And I bet that, like me, you’ll be busting to tell someone; busting to keep the story going.