Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Funny Stories Happened In My Travels

Funny Stories
I travel faster than bad news. I comb my hair with a plastic salad fork and use a toothbrush handle to stir my instant coffee, flavoring it with Pepsodent. A money pouch hangs inside my pants, and on my wrist is a Timex with a black vinyl strap-not to tell the time but to tell the world: I’m cheap. Go rob somebody with a Rolex.

I can’t afford to get robbed. It takes up too much time, my most precious commodity. The faster I travel, the more money I make. And after ten days of reviewing resorts throughout the Caribbean, I’m back where I started, at my favorite hotel in Jamaica, the Ocean View. Pink water fills the toilet, a tattered Popular Mechanics from 1997 sits on the bureau (compliments of the management), and an air conditioner grumbles loud enough to drown out the jet blast from the nearby airport.

You can tell a lot about a country by its airport. Is it named after a dictator? Do the pay phones actually work? How many crashed planes line the runway? Any sniffer dogs roaming the baggage carousels?

He rolled his eyes, and dismissed me with a wave of his hand while letting loose with a mouth fart, a uniquely European habit in which a pocket of air bursts up from the lower lip, a contemptuous gesture often accompanied by a theatric closing of the eyes, a facial drama meant to convey a subtle existential message: You’re dog shit.

When I turned to leave, the oiled people around the pool erupted in laughter. I stormed out of there, my pants flapping in the breeze. They didn’t know it, but the Red Brigade just found a new recruit.

At the hotel next door, the receptionist asked me in that charmingly blunt way of the French, “Monsieur, you have had an accident with your pants?”

“Just a little rip,” I said, but as I reached back to check the seat of my pants, there was just bare flesh. My Girbauds had ripped from the belt loop all the way down to the back of my knee and I hadn’t even noticed. So that’s what people have been laughing at. On an island where the women brazenly expose their breasts, my thigh seemed to be getting all the attention.

Travel fatigue had definitely set in, my body numb of senses yet moving one step ahead of an overactive mind. I should have recognized the first symptoms that morning at the St. Maarten airport. Whenever I had flashed a big smile, people recoiled in horror. Little children ran to their parents. Perplexed, I went into a bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My teeth and gums were colored inky red from sucking on a pen already weakened by so much high altitude flying. Leaking pens are another occupational hazard of the travel writer. My wife is always threatening to buy me a pocket protector. What I really needed was a pocket protector for my mouth.

At the Montego Bay airport, the first thing you notice are the Jamaicans themselves, a hands-on kind of people. When I landed here the week before, I sought refuge in the bathroom, which didn’t stop a mob of taxi drivers from following me in, tugging at my shirt while I stood at the urinal.

“Can I please pee in private?” I pleaded. Laughing among themselves, they moved back about two inches without loosening their grips on the duffel bag slung over my shoulder.

“I don’t need a taxi. I’m walking,” I said as I zipped up my pants. I ploughed my way through the taxi drivers, veering for the street while they pushed me in the direction of their taxis. They gave up when I told them where I was going.

“Let the cheap man walk. He go to de Ocean View.”

He laughed without answering. Then asked if he could make a detour to stop at the Bob Marley monument.

“I have to meditate on my man here,” he said. He sat down in a cross-legged position, closed his eyes, and hummed a reggae tune for ten minutes while I waited impatiently in the front seat. Then he charged me for a sightseeing tour of Kingston. Like he said, only hustlers and fools.

From the veranda of the Ocean View, I can see an Air Jamaica 737 landing, tail heavy with tourists. I’ll be taking that plane home in another two hours. It’s been a long 240 hours away from my family. I sometimes imagine that I am not actually traveling so much as running in place, just trying to keep up with a world that is spinning under my feet.

There are, however, aspects of travel I do enjoy, such as the assimilation of varied cultural traits I pick up along the way. On the flight over from Kingston, I talked with a couple who were just returning from a week at Sandals, a couples-only resort, about our respective trips. “But what you do isn’t really traveling,” said Mr. Banana Republic, smugly smiling to his wife. “You never really stay long enough to know a place, do you?”

I rolled my eyes back, waved my hand dismissively, and let a pocket of air burst up from my lower lip.

In the new millennium, Dominick redefined himself as a live-action filmmaker. His films have been well-received, garnering such accolades as ‘Best Short Film- Palm Springs International Hispanic Film Festival,’ and ‘Best Director- Long Beach Q Film Festival.’ Having sold two screenplays, Dominick decided to capitalize on a growing writing resume. At forty, (call it an acute awareness of his own mortality) he went on to pen a collection of Narrative Nonfiction essays titled “Jesus Shoes,” which he has been performing in Spoken Word events around Los Angeles. Two selections from the collection have recently been included in anthologies.

The Nameless Prince represents Dominick’s foray into Young Adult urban fantasy. He would be very happy to retire from illustration as a full-time author. He currently lives in Silver Lake, California, surrounded by hipsters.