Anyone who has ever taken ecstasy will tell you that it is impossible to plan for when it will hit. It’s up to the purity of the drug, the environment and your general mental state.
I’d been waiting for this trip to hit me. To “come up.” I thought for sure it would be scuba diving The Reef, skydiving in Sydney or chilling on the beach in Seminyak. But it never hit until tonight, in Ubud. Bammmmmmmm, just like when E hits. A force that knocks your knees out from under you and leaves you hanging there, floating above where your toes just were.
Here is what I now understand about this trip.
The unplanned stops are going to be better than the planned ones. The low points are going to be lonely. I have figured out that I need to stop steering my course so accurately and pick left when it feels better than right, even if right has air conditioning and blowjobs. I need to take chances that I would never conceive at home. I need to miss New York in a devastating way before I can go back.
I can’t put my finger on why this is the place, but if you’re a traveler then you will understand. Sometimes you unexpectedly pause in a spot that feels right. At that point, either everything goes absolutely right or terribly wrong. Even when it goes wrong, you have a great story.
Inevitably, I guess, my comedown was horrible.
My last day here was ruined when a boy drowned in the hotel pool. There is no Meredith Grey here. I watched the staff pull his lifeless, face-down body from the water after other sunbathers started pointing at him. The unsuccessful CPR was not followed by emergency helicopters or vacationing doctors with miracles. Just death. A little boy, dead. I am still trying to shake the screams and cries of the parents, which drove me to my room. Their life is clearly over. I am sure that I should be writing more about this but I just can’t. It was a horrible thing to have seen. And now, five hours later, there are 50 people laughing and swimming in the pool.
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Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road
Non-FictionWayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road is a hilarious and heartfelt ride around the world, wherein the author eats dog, obsesses about chewing gum, gets stranded on an island, does dirty things, reveres rock n roll and muses about everythin...
