The Disappointed Tourist Bureau

This may be tough to remember, at times—for you and for me both—but I am a person. An entire legal and biological entity. A human being with needs and desires and a weekly deadline. To fulfill all of these facets of myself, but most especially the weekly deadline, I must venture periodically into The World Beyond My Door.

Sadly this venturing does not include the literal world just beyond my door. That would give me credit for spending time in my front yard, not to mention several long walks on which I am all but guaranteed not to encounter another human unless they are on horseback.

These nearby places are also good for me to venture into, and they nourish my human spirit, which I have because I am (as established) a person. But they are not terribly well suited to writing assignment deadlines.

Deadlines tend not to care about the slow erosion of an arroyo, or the clouds gilded by the sunlight through the distant virga, or wondering what in The World Beyond My Door the dog just ate while I was gawking at clouds. No. Deadlines don’t care what I write about, so long as it’s not about that again.

So—I sometimes take myself, on deadline, to one of the approximately two dining options in my rural high desert community. We’re frankly fortunate to have that many. Here, I and every other person who makes it longer than a year excels at hermiting.

Tourists come here expecting beauty and splendor, which they find, and also amenities, which they do not. Oh, they think because they are paying money that they ought to have options. They don’t realize that the surcharge baked into every bun and fermented into every drink covers someone, probably the general manager but maybe someone’s twelve-year-old, driving an hour each way to pick it up from a place with stores.

You want big-city choices? You are in the wrong state, my friends.

I’m sitting here with chips and salsa, because I’m local enough to know when happy hour is, and taking part (as frantic notetaker) in the high-volume conversation happening with a server two tables over:

TOURIST #1: “Is this the café?”

SERVER: “Yes.”

TOURIST #1: “So we can order coffees?”

SERVER: “Yes. Two coffees for you?”

TOURIST #2: “Yes, please.”

TOURIST #1: “No. Do you have chai?”

[Me, staying silent, pen poised, knowing the menu well enough to know EXACTLY how this is about to play out.]

SERVER: “Yes, we have chai.”

Moments later, Tourist #1 complains that he ordered chai, not tea, and Tourist #2 is trying desperately to interject in a gentle European accent that chai is tea, darling, you want a chai latte, but neither she nor anything else can cut through the Gen Z Stare that the server has dropped on them. This server has served enough tourists at happy hour to know they do not tip on regular menu prices.

I don’t know how the rest of the vacation went for these two tourists, other than Tourist #1 poured a lot of milk in whatever it was he ordered, because two much worse tourists were soon seated behind me. This placement was helpful, because they could not see what my face was doing, although the back of my head was probably expressive enough for them to get the gist.

TOURIST #3: “What is the house wine?”

SERVER: “We don’t have any.”

TOURIST #3: “No house wine?”

SERVER: [with residual and audible Gen Z Stare] “No.”

TOURIST #3: “But it says here on the menu there’s house red. HOUSE. RED. WIIIIIIIINNN-NUH.”

SERVER: “Yeah, but we don’t have that.”

Then the husband, Tourist #4, was disappointed that this dining establishment—which they should be thankful even exists this far from an interstate—was out of the same beer they had been out of at lunch that same day. He was not designated to speak to the server, though, so upon her return, Tourist #3 spoke up.

TOURIST #3: “If you’re still out of that beer tomorrow, can he bring his own beer from the room?”

SERVER: [Gen Z stares at her with undertones of liquor license law]

My dude. They will be out of that beer until someone’s twelve-year-old finalizes their fake ID.

The World Beyond My Door is not all it’s cracked up to be, even if they do have a limited selection of half-price beers.

Maybe the problem is that I’m not venturing enough? It might be time I wander farther afield than my own front yard. Someplace like my back yard.

Or, someplace even farther! Take a real vacation; go somewhere where everything is new, where I can strip back all my concerns of deadlines and just be me—one human being, in a world of other human beings who I will get to TALK. LOUDLY. AND. SLOOOWWWWLY. AT.

It’s going to take a lot of new subscribers for me to spring for a vacation anywhere. And a vacation would mean I’m not writing new weekly pieces for you!

So maybe just chip in for my happy hour salsa and keep me around.

(Free subscriptions help too, you know. You’re like the bonus basket of chips the nice servers sometimes bring—you know, when they don’t get treated like garbage.)