I am a bad traveler. This is not to say that I am only a bad traveler, I am bad at many things. I am a bad poet, for example (for example of this example, I hearken—yes hearken, because it is very poetic sound—back to my senior seminar in creative writing at Elon University. My teacher told me that we needed to conference about poetry. Not the finer points like iambic pentameter or the subtle metaphors one could use to describe a dog getting hit by a car, but conference about how maybe I should stick to nonfiction, or fiction. I was too melodramatic, I didn’t write good poetry. Melodramatic, eh? Fuck you, woman who was my advisor.) And, if asked, I would also admit to being bad at any and all of the following: basket weaving, computer programming, horse shoeing, and/or metallurgy. Any of these, though, do not bother me to fess up to about my inability. Traveling, though, something I tend to like to do and profess my will to see everything to other people, whether they care or not (as in “God, can you imagine not wanting to see everything everywhere? Like, I don’t understand how people can be complacent and a-okay with staying in one place their whole life.” This is sometimes followed by a “Well, I’m fine with it, I like it here.” Then they whomp me something fierce.) I like to travel, but I suck at it, and it kills me a little bit.
How can one suck at traveling, you may be asking, especially if one enjoys it? Isn’t it about the experience? Well, yeah, it is, but when you miss out on things because you are me, well then sometimes things suck. One major thing is that I can’t talk to strangers. Well, correction, I can’t go up to strangers and talk to them. I sit firmly in the camp that people should come to me and spark up a conversation. There is a slight problem in this because I do not look interesting, I am not supermodel sexy and I do not exude any sort of aura that screams come play. My friends tell me I look angry or pissed off quite often, even when I’m not. When I enter a bar by myself, I am totally cool with someone coming up to me and talking to me, provided they aren’t sizing up my kidneys by poking me gently in the back and sniggering as they do so. If the person is a pretty lady, even better. If they person buys me a drink, they are my new best friend and I will talk however long they want to. It is at this point that people find out I exude a subtler come play aura. Then I am in and I am golden and I can find out whatever I want. The problem happens that other 95% of the time when people pass me on by, more content to stick to their friends, or huddle on the exact opposite side of the bar, staring at the license plates that are under the glass that line the bar, or their nails. People really like looking at their nails when I sit across from them at the bar, it seems. Anyway. I can’t go up and talk to people. When you are in a foreign country or just another city, this is a little problematic. I’d like to attribute this to the idea that people just really don’t know how awesome I am, or how much I would rock their world (or bed, whatever[1]), but I think it stems from something deeper.
(Insert Lifetime-esque dramatic music that alerts the viewer that something groundbreaking is about to happen[2])
I think the reason I can’t talk to strangers is because of my dad. (What? Father issues? Shocking, I know.) I’ll give you a minute to get over that bomb I just dropped.
Ready? Got your breath and possibly even a nice, cool glass of iced tea with some fresh mint from the garden? Good.
Yes, my father loves to talk to strangers. Taxi cab drivers are his favorite, followed after that by waitresses in restaurants, people waiting behind him in line and really, anyone who will listen to him. He’s done this since before I could remember. I wonder if he got it from his father, but don’t care that much to ask my mother. All I know is that it embarrassed me as a child, embarrassed the hell out of me as a teen and still embarrassed the shit out of me when we are in public together. It wouldn’t be so bad I guess if what he had to say was entertaining, or informational, or in any way shape or form good, but my dad is a big nerd and he loves big nerdy jokes.[3] Even more then those jokes he love stupid jokes. Really, really stupid jokes. Like, the kind that you hear on late night infomercials trying to get you to buy spray-on hair or a waffle iron in the shape of Mister Ed. Puns, too, are hilarious to my father, and he uses them at a rate of one pun per, oh, say, three sentences (this is a scientifically proven fact that, incidentally and somehow unbeknownst to me, is also kosher). The only reaction left for these puns is to hide my face in shame. Sometimes, if it is a new one, I will hide my face to hide a smile, mostly so he doesn’t see it and cause him to dig back into his repertoire. It is like facing an angry dog, they can smell fear. My dad can smell when he has an audience. With strangers and people being paid to stand in the place where they are standing, providing the service that they are, this is part of their job. They have to at least act interested, maybe give a courtesy laugh. This is the on switch for my dad[4]. After the first pun I skooch down into seat and try to be one with the seatbelt for the remainder of the drive. Years upon years of hearing these puns and after many failed attempts at turning myself into part of a car, I started shying away from unnecessary interactions with strangers, if they didn’t initiate it. I spent many sober taxi rides bumping around Germany and Barbados, the taxi drivers totally fine with me just staring aimlessly out the window at the scenery, or in the case of Berlin, the middle-aged hookers who would do anything you wanted for ten Euros in the bushes a few feet away (a group of us visited one on a night we were there and surprised the hell out of her when all we wanted was a picture with her. Nur ein Foto, bitte. This stopped her mid-blow motion, her hand poised in a black power fist an inch or two from her mouth, her tongue pushing at the opposite cheek.). I realize that my argument has a few holes, which I will now fill.
First hole: I mentioned up there that I spent many sober taxi rides gazing out the window. Keyword here is sober. I have spent many taxi rides in assorted states of drunkenness and all of these entertain different scenarios and amounts of talking that I tolerate. Fuzzy Drunk Sam means I don’t care if the person talks to me—I’ll give short answers and stare at the pretty lights and moving things outside, my face in a fixed-on grin. Drunk Sam means I’ll talk to the person in full sentences and possibly initiate lines of dialogue to pursue. Waste-Case Sam, I am told, holds the floor like Cher in Vegas. I am certain that I have invited multiple cab drivers back to my hotels for drinks. Most times, the cabbies are tolerant to a point, then they just ignore me. I am honestly surprised I have never turned up dead in a back alley somewhere, or woken up in a bath of ice. Two-Streets-From-Waste-Case-Sam, well I don’t remember any of those cab rides, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t do much talking. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t all that functional at all, really. I again consider myself lucky that I got back to my bed or an approximation of there. In summary, a drunken conversation never, ever counts. If it does, well, fuck. I owe some people some drinks and I owe a bunch of girls dates. Woops. Glad I’ll never see them again.[5]
Second Hole: I know I also said multiple times that I waited for people to come up to me to talk. If cabbies initiate conversation, why doesn’t that count? It just doesn’t. There is always that awkward air between you and a cabbie that they sometimes feel the need to try and fill. That is not coming up to me on their own accord. I am always wary of any sort of paid staff taking a genuine interest in anything I say. I know at times I’ve lied out my ass to make it seem like I gave a damn about someone’s story because I knew they were a good tipper, so who is to say that the sex coed with the low-cut, job endangering white shirt isn’t doing the same when she says she likes the New Jersey Devils or the band The Starting Line, too? The person has to come up to me on his or her own accord. Sure, a cabbie or a waitress might talk on his or her own accord, but I can’t be so sure, so I never really accept that one.
My second problem, which permeates other aspects of my life, but with travel it can affect it in bad ways, is that I space out fairly often. One moment, I could have the focus of an antelope running from a cheetah on the savannah and the next I could be off in la-la land, thinking about how much I want some tea or a slice of good Jersey pizza. There have been multiple instances this has sucked, but one that has continued to stick out was when I was in Las Vegas one time. It was later on, after eleven, and I was sitting at one of the penny slots, hitting buttons, pulling the handle, collecting ten cents here or fifty there when all of the sudden I feel a tap and hear a voice,
Mystery Girl: “How’s it going tonight?”
In those few nanoseconds that all of this takes to occur, I shudder, because I was off in la-la land staring at the wall. I am turning, giving a thumbs up and mumbling some sort of response when a group of four girls are passing by. The one is looking back, shaking her head and laughing. Good one, Sam. You got spooked by a pretty girl because you were spaced out. As they’re walking away, I hear one cackle.
“You scared the shit out of him.”
Awesome.
I will forever be known to that group of girls as some little pansy-ass penny gambler. That is not the image I want to come across. I was calm in my seat, slouched a little like I saw the other gamblers doing (I was new at the whole gambling thing, so I watched the old hags who sat at the machines for hours.) I was also incidentally slouched because my mind preferred to think about pattern in the paint on the wall. Without enough stimulation, I space, and this is bad, especially since I like scary things. I don’t jump, I don’t shudder, I don’t get spooked by scary movies or abandoned buildings or old things. On the contrary, I get off on it. There is nothing more that I enjoy then turning off every light, popping in a scary movie and watching as some blonde hussy is hacked apart by incestuous siblings.
[1] To any one night stands reading this: I always count the first time as practice. That’s why it probably sucked for you. My bad, homies. Find me this time around and it’ll be better. Promise.
[2] Wouldn’t it be cool if this were like those old school Goosebumps books that when you opened them they made noise? Yeah, those were awesome.
[3] I’d provide you with a civil engineering joke here, but that would involve asking him one and I just don’t have it in me to do that. After one of these suckers at a public dinner I have so much red in my face it looks like I spent an afternoon walking on the sun.
[4] This, incidentally could be a reason behind some shitty tips I have gotten while working at restaurants. I can’t stand when people tell me pointless stories then expect me to laugh. Wow, really, you went to China and had something so hot you couldn’t finish it? Fascinating.
[5] To the girls I may have said I would take on a date but never did: it was really just because our schedules conflicted and there was never a good time. Really. That, and I was drunk as shit and have only vague recollections of saying the following words all in the same sentence: I, take, will, on, date, you, and a. I apologize. Find me, we’ll get drinks.
Let's Not Crash and Burn 