Last week I had a city-meltdown. The city was eating me. I escaped with my boyfriend to...Lake Geneva? My boyfriend and I have not traveled that much together, and I was pleased to discover that he is a good traveler, because boyfriends are never good travelers. I only screamed at him once, when we had to go to Wal Mart twice in one day to buy a fishing pole, which we never bought anyway, because both times we got there and he decided he didn't want to fish anymore. I couldn't get that mad because it was like something I'd do.
I used to go to Lake Geneva as a kid with my best friend Lindsey's family. We stayed in a big house on the lake and promised to make out with boys whose parents owned boats so we could go for boat rides, then we'd scam our boat ride and flee. Lindsey's mom was always dieting so we'd eat ham and mustard sandwiches all week and lay on the dock in the sun. I loved it.
Lake Geneva is weird now. Rich people name their properties things like "Exquisite Oaks." I still love it, though, because it is still a place where nobody does anything. People don't even utilize their own boats there: they dock them and sit on them and drink beer all day. Everyone in Lake Geneva is always hanging out. Even the people working in the crappy touristy shops have an aire of hanging out.
I started to hate the city. After the first day I said, "Boyfriend, can we move here?" I was serious. "We can buy a boat and live in it." I wanted to disappear in a teeny touristy town with no permanent residents. I could become the kayak-rental-girl, or the fat girl selling 'spensive and not-that-good truffles at the candy store. I could do nothing and not care that I was doing nothing. Because those are the people I'm most jealous of: who are doing nothing and are perfectly happy.
Really, though, I could not live there and do nothing. I would start to think everyone there was a loser. And I would get fat and beerbellied like in college. And I would think I was a loser. And then I would kill everyone.
And then I was sad.
2 comments:
Once I lived in a tourist town in Colorado. I worked at a book store and a hotel. Working at the book store made me incredibly sad, maybe just because there were books there, and because everyone only bought books by Wally Lamb. Working at the hotel was somehow more satisfying, but also desperately depressing because everyone was having fun except for me.
Also, I learned this interesting tidbit: If you're rolling through town late at night, and you see a hotel with vacancy, you can Totally Bargain your way into a very cheap hotel room. It costs about $39 for someone to stay in the room, so even if they're renting them for $109, you can probably talk them down to $59, for example. At least if it's a chain.
I'm a silly boyfriend when I travel too.
Post a Comment