Life in a bag.

It’s my last day in my apartment.  I wake up and hear trickling water on my AC.  I pull my curtain open and hardly any light comes in.  The sky is sobbing.  I can see my bike in the courtyard, dripping water.  I’ve had my last ride until the fall.  On my desk are 7 shirts, 5 boxer briefs, 5 pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, swim trunks, a John Irving book, a deck of cards, and my passport.  This will be what I own for the next four months.  It seems sparse.  They say you should pack half the clothes you plan to and twice the money.  I’m a light packer already, and I don’t think 2 1/2 boxer briefs are going to cut it.  I have no option to bring more money, so I’m done packing.  And the act seems anti-climactic.  All of it does.  I try to remind myself why I’m doing this and the reasons escape me for the moment.

I have a few worries.  More than a few.  And they don’t have to do with being stranded in a foreign country or robbed or killed.  Don’t get me wrong, these are worries.  But my strongest fears have to do with what I will be missing.  There’s a common thought process in New York that if you step out of the city you slip out of the action to be forgotten.  This is especially true for actors.  I’ve had trouble leaving for a full week in the past.  When I went to Mexico in February I remember checking my email praying not to get an important audition.  I’d still comb the breakdowns and hope against hope nothing would be right for me.

Today I’m even more worried that I’ll lose touch with my friends.  I’m not great at keeping in contact over distance.  And my friends in NYC are busy people.  Which I can understand as a formerly busy person.  I’m afraid I’ll get back and life will have moved on without me.  My favorite bartenders will have quit.  My friends will have moved out of Hell’s Kitchen.  My apartment will be decimated, somehow.  I’ll look on the city I knew so well and it will be unrecognizable.

Of course these worries are less likely than something going terribly wrong while I’m traveling.  I am expecting at least one catastrophe on my journey.  I’ll run out of money.  I won’t have a place to stay.  I’ll be caught and sold to German circus-folk.

For now all I can do is stuff my clothes into a bag and take a deep breath.  It’s time to scrub my apartment to make ready for my sublet.

Hello. My name is Dennis.

Chrissy looks at me with doe eyes.

“Master gave me this.” she whispers, pulling a black leather collar from her purse.  A pink heart accessory dangles from it.

“Awww.” I say, not knowing what to say.

Chrissy has just finished explaining to me how she doesn’t get the whole gay thing.

“I mean.  A man and another man.  I just don’t understand it.” she confesses while thumbing her pink heart.  I shrug and check out the man two seats down.

Chrissy and I are on a bus to Atlantic City.  I mean to go for a drink at Hibernia.  But apparently writing about gambling is a trigger for me to gamble.  As one drink becomes several it seems inevitable.  I make my way to Port Authority where I meet Chrissy in line to buy tickets for the Greyhound.  She’s standing at the back, pudgy and uncomfortable, eyeing a piece of paper.  Apparently there is a two-for-one deal that she needs a new friend in order to redeem.  My luck seems good already.

I step off the bus after the two and a half hour ride feeling antsy to play and much too sober.  Chrissy borrows my phone to call her master and I notice two things.  One, my battery is dying.  Two, I have several texts from the friend I was drinking with saying “Fuck you.  I am really pissed off, etc. etc.”  I can’t remember why he should be so mad.  Another friend asks if I’m alive.  I’m more alive than ever.

Chrissy finishes leaving her message and I begin to walk.

“I’m not allowed in Bally’s” she says, looking toward the entrance fearfully.  I don’t ask her why.  She says she will call me and disappears.  I remind myself not to answer calls from unknown numbers.

The gambling goes as it generally does.  As it’s designed to.  I drink and meet other degenerates.  We watch one another go through the entire range of human emotions.  I swim in adrenaline.  Bathe in the stuff.  And when I lose my third buy-in I decide to take a break.  I’ve now been drinking and playing for ten hours and things are getting foggy.  I step away from the table and events are unclear from this point forward.

I wake up naked from the waist down in a hotel room, looking at the bland ceiling.  I grasp my head immediately and groan as I turn over.

“Not again.” I say aloud.  And at this moment the toilet flushes.  I start.  I try to peer around the corner, wide-eyed.

And then, casually, a naked man bounds in and begins to pick up articles of clothing off of the ground.  He whistles happily.  The first thing I notice about the man is that he is extremely well hung.  I start to stare… it’s mesmerizing.  He finishes putting his clothes on and sits on the edge of the bed next to me.  He pecks me on the mouth and says, 

“I have a bus to catch.  Call me.”  He kisses me again and walks out the door.  I sit in silence for a moment.  I find the room key.  Bally’s has comped my stay, of course.  I need water.  I walk into the bathroom and run the faucet.  I splash water on my face and lift my head up to look into the mirror and that’s when I see it.

“Hello.  My name is Dennis.” is on an adhesive stuck to my chest.

I sigh again, peel off the sticker, and put on my pants.  I have work to do.  

I sign up for a hold-em tournament with forty players.  No more table games.  I need to make my money back.  I sit and play for a while and begin to realize that I smell god-awful.  I haven’t bathed or brushed my teeth in more than thirty-six hours and I feel bad for those sitting near me.  My phone has been dead this entire time and if I were pressed to tell you the time or the date I could not.  

At one point I hear a man shout, “Dennis!”

He walks over to the table and stands next to me, smiling.

“How you doing?” he says.

“…Fine.” I tell him.  He stands and nods for a moment.

“Well I staked my friend there so go easy on him!” he laughs and begins to walk away.  “Good luck!”

I turn back to my cards.

The tournament continues for hours and we get down to the final four players before chopping the pot.  I head straight to the bus terminal to go home, stopping for a burger on my way.  I realize in this moment that I’ve neglected to eat for this entire trip.  There were more pressing matters.

I take the 4:15am bus out of Bally’s and fall asleep with my head on the glass.  I wake up and catch the sunrise.  I think about the bus that fell on it’s side and was split open by a telephone-pole decapitating all of it’s passengers and try to put things in perspective.  It’s only money.  I could promise I’ll never do it again, but it’s a familiar promise.  

I expect to find a host of texts and emails of concern on my phone when it turns on.  Perhaps there will be a missing-persons report already.  Of course when I turn it on I find nothing.  Once again I’ve made all the wrong choices and it means nothing.  Nothing changes.  I’m alive and well.  And this makes me wish I had stayed Dennis for one more night.  

Naked.

It occurs to me that my neighbor across the courtyard sees me naked more often than anyone has in a long time.  I wonder if I should get back into the dating pool.  After a long and eventful weekend with my stepmother I once again have my apartment to myself.  This means that being naked is once again on the menu along with a host of other things that one can only do when living alone.  I plan to cherish these moments as my solitude will end a week from Thursday.  This is when the first, and least dramatic, of the legs of my journey will begin as I crash with Erik for two weeks uptown to prepare for Canada.

Last night Erik stopped in on his way to the Bowery Poetry Club to read me a poem he was preparing to read aloud.  The subject of the poem is an infamous weekend we had in Atlantic City in December.  It is told from Erik’s perspective as he tries to put on my shoes after I’ve been drinking, gambling, and having sex for sixteen hours.  I haven’t fully told this story and even Erik knows only a portion of the details (the missing detail being how much I lost, and no, I won’t be telling you either).  My recollection of the night is as follows:

Erik and I sit down at a roulette table and I place bets for my coworkers in five dollar increments.  Nothing hits.  We play for a while and I begin drinking whiskey to remain lucky.  I was drinking whiskey when I won an absurd amount of money in Puerto Rico and in my imagination this night will dwarf that little take.  We lose our first hundred within an hour.  Erik takes a break, but I’m never one to waste time in a casino.  I move to three card poker.  This is a game based entirely in luck where everyone basically loses all the time and once in a blue moon someone hits a streak to win thousands.  In Puerto Rico, I was that lucky someone and stumbled out of the casino at 11am to call my dad and tell him about the 3K in my pocket.  Tonight I’m not so lucky.  I drop hundreds in a half hour and without blinking walk the straight line to the ATM that I will learn so well.  The ATM does not dispense my money, though I have the funds available.  I call my bank and they are unhelpful.  It’s fine.  I’m going to make so much tonight I might as well borrow from my credit card.  So I do.

Eight hours later I’ve been to every table in Bally’s and Erik is getting tired.  I’m playing roulette again and I’m deep in the hole.  Erik suggests we go to a dance club and I tell him maybe later.  At this moment Erik meets some girls at the table who he is clearly smitten with, so he buys back in.  A scruffy, handsome olive skinned man in a tailored suit flirts with the girls as well.  This goes on for a couple more hours.  I’ve now lost all but my last hundred dollar bill and I’m frustrated.  Erik has left.  The scruffy man continues to flirt with the girls.  I should leave.  I stagger away from the table and realize how incredibly drunk I am.  I begin to walk the floor when the scruffy man appears at my side.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

I shrug.

He says, “What do you want?”

At this point I’m feeling brazen.  I’ve just lost X amount of money and I’ve drank my weight in unlucky whiskey.

“I want to have sex with you” I tell him.

He doesn’t hesitate.

“Ok.”  He gently ushers me in another direction by the shoulder.  We begin to walk.

“Did you hear what I said?” I ask him, confused.

“This way.” 

He leads me out of the casino and into a taxi.  We ride for a while, and I watch the flashing lights blur around me.  We stop in front of a large hotel which is flanked with security guards in tuxes with ear-pieces in.  I’m certain they won’t allow someone who is so drunk inside of wherever this is, but the handsome man and I breeze by each of them.  We take half a dozen escalators and then an elevator to a landing where we take four more escalators.  I can hear the man’s shoes echo on the marble floors through the cavernous rooms with walls of glass.  Silent tux-clad guards stand stone-faced in every lobby.  We ride another elevator and finally arrive.  The man is staying in an expansive suite which stretches out further than I can see upon entering.  There are plush linens everywhere.  The room is immaculate.  I don’t see any personal belongings.  

“Would you like to take a shower?” the man says.

I nod.  We strip down and shower together.  

Afterward we lie on the king-size bed and he tells me about his wife and his son.  He tells me he has lost over eighty thousand dollars in this hotel and that’s how he can afford the suite.  It’s a comp.  He is completely broke.

He then turns over and opens the bedside drawer.  He pulls out what I can only assume is a crack pipe and begins to smoke.  He asks if I’ve ever smoked crack.  I haven’t.  But I respond as if he’s asked if I’d like another helping of dessert.  I put my hand up.

“I shouldn’t”.

I want to get away.  I have to find an exit strategy.  Slowly I begin to dress as he smokes and struts about the room naked.  

“Well, I should…” I move toward the door.

“Yes!  Let’s get back to the table.” he rushes to put his clothes on.

I want to be away from him.  I walk through the living room.  As I put my hand on the doorknob, he’s appears behind me, half-dressed.  We walk into the hall and begin to make our way to the elevator.

“My pipe!” he says.  “Hang on.”

He walks back toward his suite.  And I begin to run.  I realize I’m beginning to look like Cinderella but sometimes running is called for.  I get into the elevator and jab at the button.  I can hear him rushing back down the hallway, probably stuffing his crack pipe into his fancy blazer.  His face appears just as the door shuts.  I begin the ride down and immediately find it overwhelmingly apparent that I have no idea where I’m going.

I rush out of the elevator into one of the many marbled lobbies and sprint past several statuesque security guards.  They don’t bat an eye.  I take escalator after escalator two steps at a time and step out onto several terraces which I think are the ground floor.  It’s now pouring rain and I can see only a few feet into the darkness.  I run and run and finally, thankfully, I step out into a circle filled with taxis.  The first two wave me away and the third lets me inside.  We ride back to Bally’s.  I walk back onto the casino floor dripping wet and out of breath.  I stroll back to the roulette table.  The girls are still there.  I buy in with my last hundred and a moment later the scruffy man appears at my side to do the same.  No one seems to know the difference.

When I finally leave the table, I find our hotel room and pass out on the bed.  When I wake up, Erik is jostling me.  We can stay in the room, but only if I check in, because the hotel is offering me a comp night for all the money I’ve lost.  Erik struggles to put on my shoes.  He carries me through the lobby as I yell at passerby:

“Are you not entertained?”

I ask the hotel agent if she has “bacon and eggs back there?” while I try to stand up straight.

At the actual breakfast counter I tell the woman “coffee gives you heart palpitations” and she gives me a cup anyway.

I wish for weeks that I could erase the weekend.  But all you can do is move forward.  I won’t have Erik to put my shoes on when I get to Monte Carlo, so I’ll do my best to stay away from the tables.  In the meantime, he’ll have to find some new poetic inspiration…

“I love you. And no one else ever will.”

Tonight I’m doing my own bit of hosting.  My stepmother, Gay, is visiting from home and is currently fast asleep in my bed as I type from my friend’s leaky air mattress.  She’ll be here for the weekend which means I get to do what so many others will be doing for me in the months ahead- check out silly tourist spots and be slightly put out in return for quality time.

In order to preface today and why it was so tiring I should first explain last night.  

I begin the evening at my local pub, Hibernia, where I play cards with Erik.  In an unprecedented losing streak I lose both four dollars and my ability to decide what will happen after Hibernia.  In a desperate move to get Erik to accompany me to Ninth Ave Saloon I agree to a bargain.  I agree (and this feels silly to admit in a sober light) to provide Erik with unlimited high-fives for the remainder of 2014.  I think that I’m getting a deal considering I’ll be traveling for much of the year and Erik couldn’t possibly want to high-five all that often.  I’m horribly wrong.

In our five block walk we high-five no less than fifteen times.  I order a drink at Saloon and Freddy, my bartender, says “I see you’re doing a travel blog, that’s so 90’s.”  To which I reply “That must make you feel almost young again.”  Without missing a beat he cracks a wineglass hard against the bar and it shatters everywhere.  He holds the broken stem out and glares.

“Is everything ok?”  The other bartender turns, shocked.  Freddy glares for a moment longer and gets back to making my drink, smiling now.  Freddy will do anything to land a joke and he knows theatrics are why I come to Saloon.

As I stand at the bar, the high-fives continue at an accelerated pace, though at this point I refuse to look Erik in the face.  As my hand begins to lose feeling I meet an Ecuadorian man who tells me his name which I hear as “Rafiki” but whose name is not “Rafiki”.  We talk for a bit.  He moves in to kiss me and I whisper to him (mid high-five) that this is a regular spot for me and kissing makes me uncomfortable.  He does not seem to understand and continues to lean in every few moments.  Five minutes later he says it.

“I love you.  No.”

He begins shaking his head.  An accident.  I pretend not to hear.

“I love you.”

Again.  I pause a moment and smile.  It’s a matter of translation, right?  Or this is normal in South America?

“How long have you been in New York?” I ask him.

“Twelve years.” He responds.  “I love you.”

“…Tell Kenny what you just told me.” I tell Rafiki.  I point to my friend at the bar.  I high-five Erik, who has been waiting for my hand impatiently.

Kenny perks up having heard his name.  “Yes?”

“I told him I love him.” Rafiki says.

Kenny smiles silently and turns back to the bar.  

“We should go.” I tell Rafiki.

I high-five Erik goodbye, and we begin to walk.  Rafiki stops me twice to look me in the eyes and say nothing.  When he does this a third time he says it.

“I love you.  And no one else ever will.”

I burst into laughter.  This is the funniest and strangest thing that’s been said to me in recent memory.  I want to know what it means but I also think it’s perfect the way it is, encapsulated in this moment.  I stop laughing and look into Rafiki’s eyes.

And I run.  

As fast as I can, I clop down the street toward home, looking behind me only once to see if I’m being chased.

I get home and get four hours of sleep before my phone rings.  It’s Gay and she’s landed.

We have breakfast together and then walk half of Central Park to The Met.  We walk around there for a while and I tell her I’m nervous she’s going to knock over something priceless.  My stepmother is a character.  She is originally from Georgia and has health problems which require her to be heavily medicated at all times.  She is a bundle of energy and enthusiasm that stops only when she has tuckered herself out as she’s done now.  I found it hard to keep up, given my hangover and lack of sleep.  But tomorrow I should be in better shape.  We’re off to Coney Island (my first time) to do… whatever one does in Coney Island.  

Sweet dreams, all.

Look what came today.

I guess all I need now is a placid girlfriend to put her head on my shoulder.

Feel your body, heavy on the table.

I saw my Shaman today.  I should preface this by saying that I never thought I’d be the kind of guy who sees a Shaman.  I’m not a person who would generally refer to myself as a “believer”.  I’m the guy who’s skeptical of hot yoga, let alone any sort of spiritual energy practices.  But I’ll also try anything once.

I met James three years ago as I checked him into The Jane.  He’s a Scottish Londoner who practices healing modalities, channeling, and mediumship.  I just went to his website to confirm these terms as I don’t usually define what he does, only that it works.  James is one of the most consistently cheerful individuals I’ve ever met.  He’s a middle-aged man with wavy salt-and-pepper hair and a beard to match.  He’s always listening, even when you’re silent.  And in many of the moments you’re not speaking he will suddenly curl his mouth into a mischievous smile as if someone has just told him a delightful and adorable secret about you.  As it turns out, this is exactly what’s happening.

I remember my first session.  I walked into a building which was under construction in the more industrial section of Chelsea.  In the three years I’ve been walking into this building, it has always been under construction.  There is always a plastic curtain billowing out of the doorway.  There is always an unmanned post which might, in some normal circumstance, be a station for a doorman.  I take the elevator up sixteen flights and the door creaks open into a small, strikingly quiet foyer.  Sometimes there are empty desks and pillowed chairs arranged on the carpeted floors.  Sometimes there are tranquil employees behind them, never speaking.  There is a rack for your shoes and a rack for your coat.  This is one of the few places in New York where you have no worry that you might be robbed of such items.  

In my first session I was greeted by James in the hallway with a bright smile and a hug and he brought me into a little room filled with calming fragrances, several small bottles of liquids, gemstones, and a massage table.  We talked for a while.  I can’t remember now what we discussed.  He usually checks in with me about what’s going on in my life.  I’d guess if it were three years ago I was doing my best to maintain a shoddy relationship and a day job whose benefits were impossible to see.  After that he invited my to lie on the table while he would do energy work.  I did not understand what this meant but I obeyed.  

“Close your eyes and feel your body, heavy on the table.  Let your mind sink.  Let your heart open.  Breathe in white light.  Breathe out any gray matter…”

What happened in the next half hour is hard to explain.  I went through a series of thoughts, mostly about how I wasn’t breathing in white light the right way.  How I didn’t have the lung capacity to breathe out all the gray matter when he asked me to do so.  And then blank spots.  A rush of thoughts about arguments I’d had that week and a sudden letting go of them.  Some memories I’d forgotten.  Swirling light behind my eyelids.  James bringing me back with his voice.  Bringing me back to the room.  And then it was over.  I sat up slowly and he handed me a glass of water.  I’d sweat through my shirt and my mouth was very dry.  As he sent me home he told me to drink lots of water and rest.  I passed out at eight o’clock and slept fourteen hours.  When I woke up I felt different.  I felt more at ease.  Something had happened.  I don’t try to understand what.

Today it’s pouring rain so I ride the subway down to the building in Chelsea.  After kicking off my shoes (red Pro-Keds which are falling apart and will never last Europe) I walk into the room with James and we talk as usual.  I tell him about my upcoming trip.  About the fact that I’ve had no work for the last three weeks and I’m worried about financing travel uptown, let alone internationally.  About how stagnant I’ve been both with freelance work and with auditions.  I haven’t heard from my agent in weeks either.  It’s as if I’ve told the world I’m going to leave it and the world left first.  I sit there telling James I feel listless and fat.  That all I can do lately is sleep and eat.  That it’s hard to get out of my apartment or shave.  I become quiet and James smiles, listening to the silence.

“You look great.  You look… happy.  Open.  I’ve never seen you like this.”

I realize I’ve been smiling through all my complaints.  He’s right.

“Let’s get you up on the table”

I climb up.

“Close your eyes and feel your body, heavy on the table.  Let your mind sink.  Let your heart open.  Breathe in white light.  Breathe out any gray matter…”

Immediate bright green swirls swimming through blue swirls behind my eyelids.  I’m not exactly on the middle of the table and it bothers me.  The thought passes.  I think there’s water in my ear from my shower.  The thought passes.  I have a chance to never be beholden to anything again.  The thought passes.  James is bringing me back with his voice.  Back to the room.  And there’s a glass of water waiting.

I walk home the twenty blocks because it’s suddenly sunny out.  I step into my studio and open my laptop to write this blog.  My buzzer buzzes.  And my first thought (as usual) is not to answer it.  Whoever it is, it can’t be important enough to go down four flights.  It buzzes again so I press the button.  I have a package.  I run down and open the box on my way back up.  I discover the new shoes I’ve ordered (and since forgotten ordering) for my travels.  I kick open my front door just in time to hear my computer “ping”.  I drop the box and check my email.  For the first time in over three weeks there is a substantial freelance assignment waiting for me.  I start to open the assignment and within thirty seconds another “ping”.  My agent has an audition for me tomorrow.  I’m to prepare a Norwegian accent for it…

I text James and he’s happy for me though he does not seem surprised.  I’m sure I’ll be seeing him in London when I get there.

Awake.

As it turns out, planning for four months of travel involves a good deal of waiting.  It’s currently 3:30am in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City.  I can hear the usual far off commotion through my window.  I live in a carriage house through a dead silent courtyard, but when the neighborhood gets rowdy I can hear voices echoing over the rooftops.  I imagine myself asking the sloppy weekenders just what needs to be said so loudly.  I’m sure I’m never so boisterous when drinking… right?

Ordinarily I would be lost to the world at this time of night, tricked to sleep by a happy little Ambien.  But not tonight.  I’ve gone off it.  And although this isn’t the first time, I suspect it will be the last.  I started taking the sleeping pill when my ex-boyfriend introduced it to me four years ago.  He took it because he worked too much and said he needed it to sleep in between.  Though I remember distinctly that he took it during summers (he’s a theater professor).  So when I would pick up an internship or book a play which rehearsed at night and had to do double duty at the hotel, I would take it as well.  On the nights we’d both take the pill it’s anyone’s guess what happened in that apartment.  Sometimes we’d wake up covered in chocolate and have no idea who brought a candy bar to bed.

Considering my current lack of employment (and thereby health insurance) I’ve decided I have little use for the pill.  And so I’m wide awake counting heartbeats and unable to stop the “Mad About You” theme song from running through my head.

My freelance work has suddenly (four days after my departure from the Jane) come to an unprecedented standstill.  I’ve gone from 70 hour work weeks at two jobs to watching the entirety of Breaking Bad in a few days’ time.  At first the freedom was confusing.  I had what my friend Erik calls a “stress vacuum”.  I would suddenly become agitated, feeling I had to be somewhere.  I’d have imaginary arguments for responsibilities which no longer concerned me.  I’d rush down the sidewalk to keep some invisible issue from boiling over.  And one day the agitation suddenly disappeared.  And in the instant it went away it was immediately replaced with boredom.  I thought there would be some in-between time of satisfaction.  I’m not sure people are meant to have this much time to focus on the possibility of all this being a random collection of atoms.  It has also occurred to me that if I somehow died alone in this apartment before departing it would be weeks before anyone found me.  Which is the kind of uplifting thought which watching all of Breaking Bad has left with me.  

On a lighter note, there are many legs of the trip which are confirmed.  My first excursion will be to Canada.  Considering it’s proximity and the fact I’ve never been it seems appropriate.  The plan is to fly to Montreal first.  I’ll be there for three days in my first Hostel then take a train to Toronto where I will stay with a lovely friend for four.  I’ve then booked a three day, fourteen hour train ride from Toronto to Vancouver.  I’ll have a small hammock-esque berth as my home on the train.  From there I will take a ferry to Victoria and spend a few days there with some dear friends that have graciously offered a room and to show me around.  

I’ve also made some European arrangements.  I will be flying into Madrid in June and leaving via London in early September.  I have a Eurail pass which is good for two months in between, as well as some more generous friends who have offered places to stay.  Beyond that, I do not know what is in store.  There is a lot more to do to prepare.  I have to keep reminding myself how incredibly lucky I am to be able to do this and how this transitional dead time is a necessary part of the adventure to come.  In the meantime it beats writing on pink letterhead how much we sure would appreciate it if guests would stop using the in-room garbage can as a receptacle for urine.  So there’s that.

Quit your day job.

I’ve worked at The Jane Hotel in New York City for four years, nine months, and one day.  I’ve spent more time as Front Office Manager than the time I spent in every major relationship thus far… it has outlasted high school, college, and most of the homes I grew up in as a child.  

Today I will quit my job.  But I don’t wake up and think…

“Today, I’m giving notice.”  

I probably think something more along the lines of…

“Should I bike in today or take the train?  I’m already late, that’s clear.  It’s been an unusually cold winter, maybe I should take the train.  God, I don’t want to waste $2.50 and another $2.50 just because I’m being a wimp.  And I might run into people and have to talk to them.  I should bike and then I’ll only be fifteen minutes late.  Well… twenty now.”  

I probably stand at my front door with my hand on the knob continuing this silent argument for another ten minutes.  It’s excruciating to get myself out of bed.  Getting myself out of my apartment is always a miracle.

And suddenly I’m in my office composing resignation letters.  It’s like a muscle kicks in.  And once again I’m having a silent argument with myself.  In one moment I’m fully aware that I’m going to resign and in the next there’s no doubt in my mind that I will never quit this job.  Amanda, who shares my desk, smiles and listens.  She’s stopped working altogether to help me make the decision.  I stand with the two letters and it takes me another forty minutes standing in one place before I leave the office and head down the stairs to my boss’s.  He’s there.  I can hear his voice echoing down the hallway.  I can see him behind his desk.  And I’m walking toward him, holding envelopes.  This is happening.  I can’t turn back.  I walk in.  He’s on the phone.  Immediately he smells that something important is happening.  

“Can I call you back?”  

He hangs up.  I extend one envelope to him.  He cocks an eyebrow.

“What is this?”

I can’t answer.  I shake my head and smile a smile that says “It wasn’t me, I swear.”

“Resignation?” 

He asks without opening the envelope.  Without even bending his elbow to bring it closer.  I nod.

“Where are you going?”

He means which hotel has hired me.  He means where do I plan to be polite for a living next.  Where will I make schedules and run payroll and stand smiling while guests yell “I want to speak to the owner!  You can’t kick me out, baby balls boy!  Boy boy boy, baby balls!” with two very bored NYPD officers at my side.  (Yes, this happened)

“I’m not.” I say.  “I’m not doing this again.”

He relaxes a bit.  We have an odd relationship but he does feel some kind of possessiveness over me as his FOM.  Another hotel won’t be getting me.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

“Travel.”

“Oh.  Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.”

I gesture around the small basement room spastically, meaning beyond the walls and into mountains to speak languages I do not know and to pay for meals I’ve never eaten with money that looks like a play thing.  I want to mean all the places that might provide an answer to why am I here and what am I meant to be doing on this earth.  I want to describe the steps and miles and train rides and plane rides and strangers and sex and fragrances that will bring back memories and the memories and the memories.  I want to mean all the places I’d regret not having been to when I die.  I want to mean all of this as I flail my arms about but all I can say is.

“Out… there.”