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I’ve taken a woman to Australia before. It was awesome.

Well, Australia was. The woman? Not so much.

I was with my ex-wife (at the time still my wife obvs). This was not so awesome. But it’s a testament to how completely, utterly awesome Australia is that I still enjoyed my trip even though she was the person I chose to go with.

You see, we never should have been married. We weren’t right for each other. In a myriad of ways we were actually beyond wrong for each other. Not that she’s a horrible person (he said through gritted teeth). But whatever she is, she is not for me.

I’m sure that someone out there is right for my ex and that she’s right for him. There just has to be.

Actually I’m not sure but I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt. After all, even serial killers on death row get love letters and sometimes married. So bearing in mind the serial killer on death row thing and the fact that there are 6 billion people on earth, I’m betting she can find someone who is really into girls who yell and scream a lot for no reason and are rabidly insecure and say mean stuff just to be mean and have moods that are more unpredictable than Texas weather. I’m just positive that someone is out there.

However that someone is not me.

Confession – my ex and I went on an amazing journey to Australia in 2005. We stayed in the nicest places and did all the nicest things. Well, all the nicest things except that one really, really nice thing. What I’m getting at, what I’m beating around the bush about (pardon my pun) is that during our whole stay in Australia my ex and I had sex exactly zero times. We may actually have had sex a negative amount of times. I don’t know if that is possible but honestly I remember us doing the deed approximately negative six times.

And here’s the worst part. We were there for 11 days! We had 11 days just brimming with opportunities to get busy. We had romantic dinners. We had scenic train rides. We had long walks on Sydney’s beautiful harbour. We drank copious amounts of delicious Australian wine! We had it all!

Except sex. We had zero sex.

This should have been my first clue we were headed for divorce. Who goes to Australia with their wife and doesn’t get freaky, nasty or at least a little lovey dovey? No one, that’s who! Except, obviously me. Clearly going to Australia and not having sex is something I am good at. That and podcasting.

I still don’t get it. It’s not like Australia doesn’t put you in the mood. The entire continent/nation of Australia is constantly enticing you to have sex. It’s the sexiest place on earth. I don’t know if People Magazine or the World Health Organization rank that sort of thing but if they did it would be Australia at number one followed by Tahiti. I’ve never been to Tahiti but that’s an educated guess based on photos and their Wikipedia entry.

England, however, would not even be in the top 50. But that’s for another blog.

Seriously, Australia, you sexy little minx. You’re so hot and you don’t even know it. Your flag should just be two hot, naked people in post-coital embrace, winking knowingly at onlookers.

Side note – How much would that rule at the Olympics? “Oh really, China? You have some nice stars on your flag? What’s that, Nicaragua? You have some sort of trippy, psychedelic pyramid thing going on? Cool, cool. Now check this out. We have two smokin’, freshly laid, hard-bodied Aussies festooned on our freakin’ flag. Yeah, son. See, your flag needs a pole to be raised. Our flag can actually raise it’s own pole.”

(I humbly apologize for the bad joke in that side note. I get one bad joke per blog. It’s a rule.)

Let me explain why Australia is the sexiest of countries. First of all, Australians themselves are walking aphrodisiacs. They are for the most part attractive, friendly, well groomed, smell nice, and are somehow blissfully unaware of how hot they are – which makes them that much hotter. Even if my ex didn’t want to have sex with me she could have let me do my thing while she pretended I was one of those outrageously handsome beach volleyball player dudes with six-pack abs you see on the daily in Sydney or Melbourne. Hell, I would’ve done my best to even replicate the accent! I’m good at accents, damn it! WTF?

Second, the country’s laid back, sexy sideways smirk of a lifestyle is uber conducive to recreation and procreation. Most people can’t have sex when they’re stressed and I’ve never been to a less stressful place than Australia. Hell the entire nation’s unofficial motto is “No worries”. It’s the Aussie version of “Hakuna Matata”. (More like “Hakuna Mata-tas,” am I right? Oh god, somebody please stop me.)

Here’s a typical vacation day in Oz. Imagine a beautiful morning at the beach surrounded by friendly, intelligent, engaging hot people (who don’t know they’re hot) and don’t act like just because they are hot they are better than you. This nice beach morning will maybe include a game of frisbee if you want. No pressure, mate. No worries.

Strangers will give you friendly looks. You get lots of inquisitive, friendly looks in Australia. Especially when they hear your American accent; Australia may be the last place on earth where people don’t automatically judge you for being an American. It’s really refreshing to not be immediately hated because of your passport. I wish the rest of the planet would take a hint from the Aussies on this one.

The people you meet may inquire about where you are from and when they find out they’ll actually be interested. Do not be alarmed. Australians love to meet new people!

If you’re like me you hate meeting new people. This is because we are Americans and therefore intrinsically mistrustful. Probably because you’ve been screwed over by these “new” people a lot. It’s a survival mechanism that Aussies haven’t had to develop and I love them for it.

During your conversations, these aforementioned awesome Australian folk will never, I repeat never ask what you do for a living or how much money you make. This is because how much money someone makes really isn’t that interesting to them. Wow. Just wow. This may be my favorite thing about Australians and what differentiates them from Americans the most.

Because whenever I meet someone I always ask them what they do for a living. I don’t even mean to half the time. I just do it. We all do. Because we’re Americans and our jobs define us. Not so in wacky, “life is about fun and not working yourself to death” Australia.

After a while this insane attitude starts to rub off on you and you become, what’s the word… oh yeah – “HAPPY”. Happy like an Australian. In fact that should be a saying. “He’s got the weekend off and he’s happy as an Aussie.” I’m coining it but feel free to use whenev.

If you are having a hard time believing me about the level of happiness in Australia then please do this immediately – spend two weeks in Australia and then come back to the States. The minute you go through customs and are back in the U.S. you will see something in people that will strike you as new but has always been there. You will see worry. A tremendous amount of it. It will shock you.

You will see most of this worry on people’s faces. You will see how much it is affecting them and you will wonder how you never noticed this before. Well the reason you never saw it is because as Americans we worry and stress so much that we can’t even feel how much we worry and stress anymore. It now feels normal to be constantly in a fight or flight mode. It’s like a bad elbow that you are used to and barely notice except when it rains.

It’s kind of like Americans are the guy who’s worked at a sewage plant so long that he can’t smell the rancid fecal poop stench anymore. In other words – when you live in shit and you work in shit, you can’t smell that shit.

But give that same person two weeks in Australia and boy howdy will they notice that stench when they come back home! They will be overwhelmed by it! They will wonder how they have lived this long with this amount of rancid fecal poop stench attacking their smelling parts! This person may even be inspired to make a change for the better and decide once and for all to reduce the amount of rancid fecal poop stench in their life!

Okay, I’m nominating that as a new Australian Tourism slogan. “Come to Australia and get away from the rancid fecal poop stench, mate! It’ll do ya right good!” Tell me you don’t want to go to Australia when you hear that! Tell me!

But back to our day…

Now let’s have some amazing food for lunch because Australians don’t believe in eating crappy food. There will be no Taco Bell consumed and believe it or not, no Outback Steakhouse. Instead you can just pick a random place on Sydney Harbour, plop right down and get a decently priced, delicious meal.

Next let’s take a ferry ride to Parramatta, cuddle a koala bear and pet Kangaroos and let’s do it for like no money because it doesn’t cost that much to do things in Australia.

Why are we cuddling koalas, you ask? Why would you not? My god! Are you even alive???

Next we’ll go shopping, then eat more amazing food, then drink the finest wines, then a walk along the most gorgeous harbour in the entire world, and then finally, deliciously, to bed.

Which is where we do not have sex. Ever. The whole 11 days we are there.

AGH!

See, that day I just described to you is an exact day I had with my ex the last time I was in Australia. I could’ve taken a perfect stranger on that date and gotten some nooky. Instead I wasted it on her and got the stink eye for even suggesting she take her clothes off and engage in light snuggling. Light snuggling I tell you! An activity at which I am greatly skilled, I might add!

Almost every day we were in Australia was as great as the day I just described. In fact that day may have been the least great and it was still freaking greater than the greatest day you can think of right now not counting when your kid was born or you got married. RIght? Right.

But before, during and/or after any activity we did, there was no “sexy  time”, as Borat puts it

This is because it was only two years into our marriage but we had already had one fight too many. We had already realized we weren’t going to be together forever. We knew things weren’t right even though we were half-heartedly trying for things to be “right’.

All I can say about my marriage is this – Never survive cancer then marry someone after only three months of dating because you’re in a romantic frenzy because you just survived cancer and you feel so ALIVE and also never marry someone who shows signs of being a total psycho because those aren’t outliers or one-time glitches, those are actually glaring warnings and eerily accurate predictors of future behavior. Then don’t stick it out for four years out of misplaced guilt and give away all your money in the divorce settlement out of even more guilt.

And certainly don’t bring that person to Australia and expect to have (figurative) balls to the wall, mind-bending, life altering sex. Because it’s not going to happen.

In short – don’t do anything I did relationship-wise between 2003 and 2007 and you’ll be fine.

Which brings me to this Monday, when I will be bringing the love of my life, hell the love of a thousand life times, Ms. Rachel Dory, to Australia.

If you don’t like to hear the word soul-mate, then stop reading. Because that’s what she is. She’s my soul-mate through and through and if I’d never met her my life would have been meaningless and all for naught. She loves me madly. She loves me fiercely. I love her back the same. We’ve been together for seven years and we still can’t keep our hands off each other.

Without going into too much detail, whenever we get a moment away from our kids (like the cruise we took in 2008 omg I’m still a little sore from that) we tend to not be able to keep our hands off each other even more. In fact we become a maelstrom of hands (which I’m pretty sure is the title of the next book in the Game of Thrones series. Book 6 – “A Maelstrom of Hands”).

So as a sincere apology to Australia for the egregious lack of sex I had the last time I visited there, Rachel Dory and I will be having egregious amounts of incredible, luscious, juicy, dirty, crazy (within reason), head-banging, athletic, vigorous sexy sex every single day while we are there. It starts this Monday.

As Caesar said, “Veni, vidi, vici.” Except in this case there will be less vidi, vici, and a whole lot more veni.

So fair warning, Australia. Fair warning. If the Great White Shark cage is rocking, don’t come a knocking. Unless of course it’s rocking because we are being eaten by the sharks. In that case PLEASE COME KNOCKING. MY GOD, MAN, COME KNOCKING!

Rachel, my darling, love of my life and the reason I take each breath – if you are reading this please don’t forget to bring a swimsuit and also your vagina. You are going to need both.

#GOAUSTRALIA #GOMIGHTY