Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road

the patron saint of my round-the-world trip

May 20, 2011, Logan Airport, Boston

I have blagged my way into the British Airways lounge by complimenting the check-in lady on her silver dollar-sized earrings. They’re hideous.

First Class lounges often find me buzzed on queer combinations of cheese, water crackers, Kahlua, Campari and any other kind of odd liquor/liqueur that it never strikes me to try at home. Today is no exception.

The guy across from me is wearing a cardigan and reading Yacht World. I want to put him in front of a speaker and blare Ramones and shake him from his necktie existence, to give him a tour of a world where he doesn’t have to gingerly cross one leg over the other. He’s fine wine and I’m a Jello shot. He can have his yacht and I’ll keep Joey & Dee Dee & Johnny & Tommy.

I cherish these odd shaped rooms, full of stained chairs and stinky- pitted businessmen. They portray an excellence that is the opposite of the double-coupon clipping class from which I am bred. Here I am regal because I can eat cubes of Monterrey Jack for free.

May 22, 2011, Hotel JL No. 76, Amsterdam

It’s been a longstanding dream of mine to be the first person to sleep in a new hotel room. I’m checking that one off tonight at this hotel, which is in previews.

The room is a monster success – sleek, big, and comfortable. A flat- screen-TV-in-the-shower kind of joint. There is zero aroma of cleaning products and only a slight waft of fresh paint.

I become obsessed with taking the room’s virginity, making sure to try everything for the first time. I open curtains, drawers, cabinets, the mini bar and sewing kits. I am the first one to go potty in this room, and the first to realize that the bathroom has no windows.

I imagine the things that will happen in here. Children will be conceived. Someone will cry in bed after hearing bad news from home. A woman will say “aw, fuck” in the bathroom as she realizes that she’s forgotten Playtex. Another will pace as she waits to find out if the pregnancy test reads positive, contemplating abortion.

A couple will have an hour of silence as they each imagine the words that will hurt their partner the most, then turn those thoughts into perfectly formed, actualized syllables. Relationships will end. Relationships will begin. A teenager will suffer through having to share a room with his parents. A drunken man will punch a mirror and require stitches.

Someone will smoke way too much weed and have three traumatic hours on the bed. A man will dance to James Brown in his underwear. A woman will try on four outfits, only to leave in the first one. A man will be impotent on his wedding night.

And surely, someone will die.

May 25, 2011, Deli Italy Restaurant, Paris

The restaurant tic. I have to find the right restaurant. The right one is the one that is stumbled upon, gut feeling, after a lot of wandering.

They all call to me like hookers:

“I’m cute.” Too tarty.

“I’m adventurous.”
I was looking for vanilla.

“I’m the unknown secret.”
You know you’re working with two-week old scallops.

There it is. Italian place, rammed to the rafters with chalkboard specials. 20 tables, if that. Put me in the corner. I am in Le Marais and I want to get wine-drunk and stare at gossipy French homosexuals.

I order a lifeboat of antipasto, which comes piled on a cutting board, all kinds of pretty. A marvel. Prosciutto and eggplant and mozzarella and artichokes and mushrooms. Some other kind of pig, too. I consume it like an aristocrat for the first minute, then like a caveman for the next nine.