The One That
(Finally) Got Away
© 2012 Greek to Me by Michael Raysses
"How you gonna get anywhere if you don’t travel?"
—My Uncle TassoFrom an early age, I enjoyed the idea of having a reputation. You know, the notion that people knew and appreciated me based on some salient trait that more or less defined me. When you’re young that can be a physical characteristic or some behavioral mannerism that provides the prism through which people see you. But as you get older, those things become more refined, subtler.
Of my siblings, I developed the reputation as the child who was most likely to stay put, to not move away. It was always put forth with quiet admiration; unlike my wayfaring sisters, I was the one most likely to settle within striking distance of where I was raised, which suited me just fine.
That is, until I got it in my head that I had to leave the Midwest for Los Angeles. Even when I did that, though, implicitly everyone figured I would ultimately return. Twenty-two years later, we all know differently.
Despite what looked like a move of expansion, life here took on a lot of the same aspects of the one I would have led had I never left. For instance, I have always had this inexplicable desire to be connected to a place with such intimacy that I want people to think of me when they thought of it. The last job I worked, my coworkers called me ‘Malibu’ because that’s where I live. It sounds benign enough, maybe even sweet, but over time it took on a darker meaning.
Somewhere along the way that desire for connection to a place resulted in me becoming rooted. With roots comes a job, a title however humble, and best of all for my purposes, routines. Routines anchor me; without them, I’m convinced I would just fly into space, never to be heard from again.
Then my roots sprouted a habit for habits. Living in a small beach community 30 miles from the city provided me with ample privacy. But the line between desired privacy and unwanted isolation blurred, and my relationship with my routines metastasized, until they formed a noose around my neck. One that grew ever tighter with each passing day.
I found myself on a gallows of my own creation right around the time I unexpectedly lost my job. Most of my routines were instantly gone, throwing me into a void of unprecedented depth, a situation made paradoxically worse when my wife suggested a remedy:
Why not take a trip out of the country?
At this point it should come as no surprise that I had never travelled abroad. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see the world; somehow I just never made the time to do so. The funny thing about travel is that if you don’t do it by a certain age, your chances of ever doing so decrease with each passing year. With that evolution something is born that feels like fear and shame’s offspring, some bastard emotion that literally makes travel a near impossibility.
Thus, I responded to her loving offer like a gored bull. Forget that the universe had provided an open span of time, along with a modest windfall from an unexpected source to fund this trip. I had to get a job, I had to find new routines, I reasoned. What I ultimately had to do was recognize that I found myself at the end of a cul-de-sac in which the universe had provided every reason for me to submit to the road. Or to my pathological fear of it. And for once in my life, fear lost.
A few weeks later, I was on a jet to Cambodia and Vietnam. On the long leg of the flight there, I sat across the aisle from a mother and her toddler, a child with lungs so strong my ears rang for hours after we deplaned, so loud were her screams. Throughout the flight, I stared holes through the mother, alternatingly cursing and cajoling her with my best laser stare, all to no avail.
We started our journey in Phnom Penh, a city where squalor and splendor coexist without incident, something that took me more than a while to adjust to. We saw palaces and ruins that were over a thousand years old; we toured Tuol Seng and the Killing Fields, gruesome reminders of Cambodia’s darkest days under the regime of the Khmer Rouge.
We exited Cambodia for the south of Vietnam, where we traversed the country north to Hanoi, but not before exploring Da Nang, Hoi An, and Halong Bay along the way. To say that my experiences enlarged me would be rank cliché. It would also be the truest reflection of what happened to me while there.
Though the sites were astounding (the temple at Angkor Wat at dawn and the limestone rock formations that jut up from Halong Bay in the mist come most readily to mind), what sticks most deeply for me are the people I met. People with whom I couldn’t speak directly, but with whom I was able to connect in a way that transcends speech and is a testament to what the road does to you—it touches you the way you might tap an egg shell, cracking you wide open in the gentlest way possible.
I was sitting on the stairs of a post office having just toured the Museum of the Vietnam War; shaken by what I saw, and more than a little ashamed at the damage we inflicted there, I was approached by a group of Vietnamese students who wanted to interview me for their civics class. In broken English, they asked why I was there, how it felt, and what I thought of them. Grateful for the chance to respond, they thanked me and offered me a figurine in thanks for speaking with them. They posed with me for a picture and were gone.
That incident embodies what travel represents: the chance to get out of yourself, beyond your routines, to experience other people’s lives in a way you could never even conceive of. It requires you to open up in a way that allows for random charm. Or unexpected horror. You don’t get to choose.
On the flight back, I was boarding the jet for the long leg back when I saw the same mother and toddler standing behind me. My eyes glazed for an instant—what were the odds?—but it didn’t matter. The man who scorched them three weeks ago was gone now, left behind on the road that deposited me here.
And that is something I would stake my reputation on.
Michael Raysses is a writer/NPR commentator/actor living in Los Angeles. E-mail him at MichaelRaysses@hotmail.com.