Homecomings

Nowadays I vacation alone though I still find the majority of my time is spent sending text messages and reports back home. For the most part to make sure that they haven’t replaced me but also out of need to make jokes that the locals wouldn’t understand. There is a common thread of decency that most peoples of this world have as an unwritten bond: Dead hooker jokes should not be told within the first twenty minutes of meeting people.

Traveling alone does fulfill my need for me time but mostly revolves around a large group of my friends discovering a journal. It was a trivially piece of nonsense I kept while traveling through Europe with a friend of mine, we'll call him Jordan for the time being.

The first few pages of the document are innocent enough: experiences with famous castles, seeing the sex district in Amsterdam and interactions with locals at some of the fine watering holes of which Europe is so deeply blessed. Then the tome takes a turn for the worse, all communication betwixt Jordan and I break down. He can't shut up about snow orangutans and nonsensical ideals of his own philosophy. Two categories he is not adequately prepared to speak on, yet does not shut up nonetheless. Mental articles of war begin to form in my mind as I plan how to kill him.

If this would've been a Phillip K. Dick story I would, no doubt, have been arrested or worse. It wasn't as though I was just going to kill him, no this was something I was going to have fun with. Different uses of tools of medieval torture are readily available to the eager minded traveling Europe. Never mind the fact that I have no real background in the subject. I've always been a quick learner and, it's like they always say: Learning is only as fun as you make it. Carving up Jordan with a curved blade while he screams bloody murder sounds like an aces trip. Take that! You and your monkeys with typewriters writing every book ever written!

Alas, but the trip ended before I could take his life and to this day I think we're better friends for it. Still, I do have lots of friends and often contemplate where my rep would be if I would've shived Jordan, even just a little bit. I would've had to replace him, but I'm sure there is some local crazy at the soup kitchen that would do an adequate job.

Now I'm here alone. Today is a big day of seeing the sites that are hundreds of years old and then finding an establishment that caters the beverages that make trips bearable. Back home it's a birthday party for a friend of mine and while I carry on text message conversations with the entire party I do miss them. Surrounded by all this culture and different people and unable to enjoy it because this isn’t where I want to be.

I'll be home soon.