All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [38]
It’s a little like when I decided to get married, to trust my heart and entire future to someone, and then was painfully betrayed: how could I ever trust myself to make a smart choice about a man again? The truth is that I’ve been too afraid, ever since, to even try to be in a relationship, because look what happened last time.
So how can I trust myself to travel alone again? Now I’m anxious just leaving the house. I make plans with my women friends or go out in groups. I put a whistle on my key chain. I’d like to meet a new man, someone who could walk by my side, be a companion, watch my back, but the last thing I can do is go out on a date with a stranger. I stick to my friends, whom I realize I can count on more than I thought.
When I drive down to Monterey one weekend, for instance, my car dies on the way, I’m in the middle of nowhere, and night is falling. Big black vans and Harleys slow down menacingly while passing my little car. I have a soft-top convertible that could be easily slashed and broken into. I call my friend Guillermo in Santa Cruz (we’ve been friends for several years and, since we have the same birthday, always celebrate by cooking for a big party together). He doesn’t hesitate: he rides his motorcycle right down and sits with me in the car, talking about food, until the tow truck arrives. It freaks me out when I climb into the truck that the driver is wearing plastic examining room gloves, under which I can see the outline of a swastika tattoo. I climb right back out and tell Guillermo, who says calm down, he’s an ex-skinhead freak, but we need to get the car back, I’ll ride right along behind the truck. When we get back to Santa Cruz, he makes us big steak sandwiches with focaccia and caramelized onions and we drink a bottle of wine before I head to the guest room. We go body surfing the next day, and when the waves get rough, I ask him if we should be worried. “The question right now is whether it’s useful to be worried,” he says, and so we swim like mad, but I know that as long as I’m with him, I’m in no danger.
At home in San Francisco, my friend Sandra, a woman of Italian–Puerto Rican descent and temperament whom I’ve known for many years, drops by to catch up after my recent trips. She has shared many a glass of wine with me after I’ve broken up with someone or calmed my outrage or confusion after a bad date with her practical, good-hearted advice. She is married with an adopted son; at age thirty-eight, she decided she wanted a husband and family and eventually got them; she’s made a lot of sacrifices for her child, as everyone does, taking full-time jobs when she’d rather be a freelance photographer, considering a move to the suburbs, where the schools are better but where she’ll feel culturally stifled, but she has a clear sense of her priorities and an optimism about her circumstances.
We hug each other, and I give her a fierce-looking Samoan T-shirt for her eight-year-old son. I pour wine and recount my trips to Houston and Kansas City.
“Wait a minute,” says Sandra, interrupting me after a couple of minutes. “Back up. What about Samoa? Who cares about Kansas City? I want to hear about Samoa.”
I tell her the fa’afafine were interesting, the islands were lush and the beaches pristine, but the photographer I worked with was a real asshole, treating me like his photo assistant and the fa’afafine like models. “I was really pissed off, too, because I lost my favorite sunglasses.”
Sandra looks at me quizzically. “You went all the way to Samoa, and all you can say is that the photographer was an asshole and you lost your sunglasses?” She frowns. “Come on—what’s the matter with you? It’s Samoa! Exotic island paradise! I’d give anything to go there for ten days.”
I shrug. “It was a lot of work, that’s all.” I wipe my eyes.
“What is it?” Sandra knows me too well.
“I had a difficult trip,” I finally say. “That’s all.”
“What?”