I Can Fuck With That!

by Ben Carey (Australia)

A leap into the unknown Slovakia

I met Slade in a small village called Ždiar, high up in the Slovakian mountains. He was the most interesting person I’d ever met. He was born in Scotland and moved to Australia when he was four. He had a thick Scottish accent, which his parents hated so they sent him to a speech therapist to help him sound more Australian. The speech therapist must have turned that dial up to eleven because Slade was the most Australian guy I’d ever met. He kept everyone in stitches trotting out classic Australian idioms in his ocker accent, or making up his own creative sayings to suit each occasion. I dedicated two pages in my travel journal to his sayings. We were staying at the only hostel in town, the Ginger Monkey. I’d heard about it from a guy in Prague and felt drawn there by some cosmic magnetic force. I hitched a ride to the mountains. The guy who picked me up was incredibly kind, but an absolute maniac behind the wheel. He gunned it 140km/h on the icy highway, changing lanes without indicating, and pulling his phone out to take pictures of the mountains. In Ždiar, I trudged through knee-high snow up to the hostel. Out the front I saw a bunch of people in jumpsuits digging out a trench. A guy in a hot pink jumpsuit shook my hand and offered me a blue plastic toboggan. ‘Stack on, mate,’ he said. That was Slade. On the surface Slade just seemed like a very masculine, fun, laid-back Aussie bloke, but there were many deeper layers to him that complicated that simplistic view of him. When he was a teenager his dad had a special type of cancer. His medication was ridiculously expensive, so Slade took up cage fighting in his late teens to pay for it. He earned big money in a short amount of time and was able to pay for his dad’s meds. Back home he was studying criminal psychology and microbiology. His dad had been a cop, and Slade’s dream was to help stop human trafficking. He also had this hilarious habit of calling other men (usually me) ‘babe’ or ‘bub’. Slade was bursting with life and energy. He was fun to be around, not just because he made you laugh, but because you always felt like anything could happen when he was around. He was playful. He dared, inspired, or encouraged people to do things that they wouldn’t usually do; to take a leap and follow him into the unknown. One night after a couple of drinks we stumbled down to the local corner store and blew 40 euros on a box of fireworks, because we could. We took them back up to the hostel and set them off in the front yard while everyone else watched from the front porch and cheered. A few days later, I suggested we check out the abandoned hotel just out of Ždiar. ‘I can fuck with that,’ he said with a grin. He was always saying that. He slipped into his hot pink jumpsuit and I found a yellow one that reminded me of Uma Thurman’s jumpsuit from Kill Bill. We waded through the snow and climbed through a window on the ground floor. The building was dimly lit and the air was stale and motionless. We explored each level, testing out each creaky floorboard before stepping on it. Up the top, in the attic, there was a creepy door to a dark small dark room. ‘Dare you to sleep in there tonight,’ I said. ‘50 euros.’ Slade considered it for a moment. ‘Nah mate, that’s a grim fandango.’ I hated the thought of leaving Ždiar, but I hated the thought of leaving Slade even more. We went to Budapest together and then down to Belgrade. After that I went east to Romania and he hitchhiked through Bosnia with a guy we met on the bus from Budapest. Sometimes I wonder what mad adventures we would have gone on together in Bosnia. I don’t regret the path I took, but I wish I could have spent more time with the wild, Australian enigma that was Slade.