by Johanna Gohmann

One cozy night at home, while enjoying a pizza dinner, I flipped on the television just in time to see a close-up shot of a woman’s labia being “trimmed” by a surgeon.

“Look!” I shrieked at my fiancé, involuntarily crossing my legs. “How can they show that on regular TV?!”

David glanced up from his pepperoni, barely raising an eyebrow. “It’s educational,” he shrugged.

Yes, you could say that the Broadcasting Commission in Ireland is a bit more relaxed than our ol’ FCC in the United States. Since I moved to Dublin last August, I am constantly throwing a hand to my mouth  la Goody Proctor, shocked by what the Irish can get away with. Janet Jackson could not only flash her nipple here, she could shave it and cover it in creamed corn, so long as it was educational.

But back to the vagina trimming: The program was called “The Perfect Vagina,” and while it put me off my Hawaiian pizza, it was a fascinating look at the latest cosmetic surgery craze labiaplasty. No longer satisfied with merely having the boobs of a porn star, women now want the whole package. They are paying doctors to “sculpt” their vaginas into what they believe is a more aesthetically pleasing look. In the U.K. alone, the number of labiaplasties has doubled in the past five years, and never one to miss a trend the surgery is quickly gaining popularity in the U.S. Girls as young as fourteen are approaching doctors for consultations.

I was grateful when the program shifted to a more inspirational note: a segment on Jamie McCartney, a British artist working on a sculpture he calls “Design a Vagina.” Using only volunteers, he is making casts of 200 women’s vaginas and displaying them together in forty block panels. He wants to show people that where vaginas are concerned, “the variety of shapes is endlessly fascinating, empowering, and comforting.”

Indeed they were. As I stared at his sculpture work, I was astonished. I had no idea there was such a smorgasbord of vulva out there and I’ve seen my share of porn. Apparently the porn industry really does adhere to a strict labia code, because I’d never seen such variety. I squinted at the screen, wondering which one most closely resembled my own. And that was when I realized, with a blush of shame, that I had absolutely no idea. And I am thirty-three years old.

Sure, I’ve done the ol’ crouching with a mirror fandango. I have a vague idea of what I look like. But the truth i sand I am more than a little embarrassed to admit this I’m a bit…shall we say…bashful about my lady parts. I consider myself to be a pretty open, sex-positive person, and yet, for most of life, I’ve treated my vagina like I would my credit score I only look when I absolutely have to. As a result, I don’t even know myself well enough to pick myself out of a lineup. Men, on the other hand, could probably do a pen and ink drawing of their penises while blindfolded and clutching the pen in their teeth.

The only reason I’m not more embarrassed about being so vagina-shy is because I have plenty of female friends who are the same way. And these aren’t creationist child brides with twelve-inch braids swinging down their backs. These are strong, independent, open-minded women who suddenly go Victorian when the topic of vaginal examination comes up. We could be chatting about all sorts of things related to vaginas vibrators, tampons, you name it but mention the girly garden itself, and out come the painted fans and smelling salts. (Granted, these women are straight. My lesbian friends are on much friendlier terms with the vagina.)

I could sit and tsk tsk those women having surgery all I wanted. But I wasn’t exactly Eve Ensler when it came to vaginal confidence. Which is when I got to thinking… David and I had been wanting to take a trip to London… Why not pop over, see Big Ben, pose with a charming red phone booth or two, then hop a train to Brighton and participate in “Design a Vagina”?

The next day I Googled the artist. I found his web page and sent a nervous email. Did he still need models? I was half hoping he’d respond with, “Nope. I have all the vaginas I need, thanks.” No such luck. He wrote back that afternoon, with a friendly note saying that he did indeed need a few more models. His tone was so mellow and affable. I was expecting something more formal, but he sounded like we were arranging a drop-off for an old futon. We debated times and settled on the second weekend in January.

Convincing my fianc was astoundingly easy. I was prepared for a smallish row over the idea of letting a stranger pour plaster into my vagina. David has a bit of a jealous streak, and has more than once gone into a huff over the length of my skirt. He also is a software engineer from Northern Ireland, and the nerd factor combined with old timey Irish-ness can at times be a bit A Beautiful Mind meets Cinderella Man. He is a Russell Crowe box set, basically.

And yet when I posed the plan to him, he barely flinched.

“You’re sure you’re O.K. with it?” I grilled him. “Because I want to be absolutely sure you’re comfortable with it.” I was half-hoping he’d be terribly uncomfortable with it, of course.

“Well it’s your body. If you’re comfortable with it, then I guess I am.” He shrugged.

Oh dear. How dreadfully supportive and diplomatic. He must really really have wanted to see the London Eye.

And so, we booked our so-cheap-the-plane-must-be-powered-on-prayer Ryan Air tickets, found a hotel, and were set. We would officially be kicking off the new year with “Design a Vagina.”

A couple of days before we left, I booked a full bikini wax, as the artist said this would yield the best results. I hunted down Brazilia, a salon in Dublin that promised “luxury waxing,” and made an appointment for “The Hollywood.”

The morning of my wax I decided to do a little pre-wax pruning. I flipped on the shower radio and, instead of the usual U2 tribute, some station was inexplicably playing “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins. I stood naked with my scissors, thinking of what a fitting nod this was to my London adventure. Although I didn’t know if Poppins would approve.

Tuppence…a…baaaag!

I arrived at Brazilia rather nervous. A few weeks earlier I’d gotten an eyebrow wax at a different salon, and my eyes had swelled shut like I’d gotten a pint glass to the face. I was concerned that I was somehow allergic to Irish waxing methods, and envisioned arriving for my vagina sculpture with genitals like a blowfish. But Trish, my friendly Irish waxer, shooed away my concerns. “Nah, the wax was just too hot. You’ll be grand.”

With my legs hoisted into the air, she set to work with the precision of a sheep shearer. I casually steered the conversation toward labiaplasty. Was she by any chance familiar with the procedure?

“Ah sure. We have girls come in who’ve had it done. Young girls too. Like in their early twenties. It’s too bad really…” she sighed.

I asked if, in her many years of waxing, she’d ever seen a vagina that needed to go under the knife.

“No, no, no! They’re all different. But to be honest, in this job, after a while you don’t even see vaginas anymore. All you see is hair.”

Riiiiip!

Trish finished up, and after she left, I shyly gave myself a once-over in the mirror. My vagina now resembled a sad old man’s wistful smile.

The morning we headed to the airport, I was feeling the usual nerves of travel Do I have my passport? Is my face wash in a baggie?as well as the not-so-usual nerves that come with having your genitals made into an art piece. Once the wheels left the tarmac, my head was buzzing with paranoia. What are you doing? Your vagina on display? Are you insane? What if this guy is a totally gross pervert? Or what if your vagina has a reaction with the molding material, and you end up in an emergency room in England? My mind refused to conjure the image of David making that phone call to my mother.

I leaned over to David and confessed my anxiety. As befits a man who grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, he was unimpressed. “What’s there to be nervous about?” he scoffed. “He’s just going to put goop on your undercarriage, then take it off.”

We arrived in London without incident, although we were greeted by the sight of a man in customs with about sixty boxes of condoms in his open suitcase.

“Don’t know what he’s thinking. The Irish accent will only get you so far with the ladies in London,” David observed.

The English accent, however, had us in stitches. I hadn’t been to London since I was nineteen, and David had never been. Everyone sounded very Dick Van Dyke-ish to us, and we suppressed laughter every time someone called out, “‘ello love!”

We located our hotel and, after a night of fitful sleep, I turned to David. “What if he shows me my sculpture and I scream in terror?”

“What if he shows it to you, and you have a penis?” David whispered back.

We arrived in Brighton a little before noon and summoned a taxi. The grandfatherly driver whisked us past the pastel-hued tattoo parlors and tourist shops, then dropped us off on the oceanfront. The Brighton Pier loomed before us in a haze of ghostly fog, and I could barely make out the amusement park at the end. Opposite the pier was a string of little studios and art galleries, each located under a decorative archway. The place had a rather hippy, Venice Beach vibe, save for the people sealed into down parkas.

We located Brighton Bodyworks and gazed into the window. A cheerful sign advertised BODY CASTING, and on a ledge beneath the sign sat a rather ghoulish row of sculpted baby fists.

Oh dear.

I turned to David, my eyes wide, but he pushed me inside. The gallery was small, and we were surrounded by neon-colored abstract paintings. We gazed around and spied another sign with the words, BODYCASTING UPSTAIRS. We walked up a creaky spiral staircase and were greeted at the top by the sight of Jamie McCartney busily encasing something in bubble wrap. His head was shaved, and he was wearing jeans and a stylish hoodie.

“Hi. I’m Jo?” I croaked.

“Ah yes! You’re here for the sculpting! Great!” He came over and gave me a friendly handshake.

“And this is my fianc, David,” I gestured.

“Ah, yeah, nice to meet you.” He turned to David and gave him a smile. “So you’re going to let her do this? You’re crazy!” he laughed.

David and I exchanged tight grins.

“No, no, just joking. Here, take a seat and fill out the waiver, and I’ll be right with you.”

His sunny female assistant piped in, “Would you like a cup of tea?”

We declined, and I silently wondered if the English have yet to find an occasion where a cup of tea need not be offered.

Jamie got back to bubble wrapping, and David and I sat on two white cushioned cubes on the floor. On the wall behind us hung full body casts of naked torsos, both male and female. A ginger cat was meowing around the room, trying to wind its away around David’s legs. Over in the corner there appeared to be a table made of actual goat legs. I struggled to focus on the waiver in my hand. My eyes immediately darted to a paragraph absolving Jamie of any responsibility should I experience an adverse physical reaction to the molding material. I gulped. Then I spied the line that said, “Sexual arousal may occur.”

I stabbed the page with my finger and looked at David, fearful of a full-on Cinderella Man meltdown. Amazingly, he was the picture of calm.

Jamie returned. “So! Any questions?”

I mentioned the allergic reaction, and he explained that the molding material is the same stuff that dentists use to make casts. None of his models had experienced any problems, but he had to include that in the waiver for legal reasons. The same thing went for the sexual arousal part.

“This will likely be the most un-erotic experience of your life. As you’ll soon see…” He gestured cryptically into the adjacent room, and I spied wires and a white tent constructed from a tarp. It looked like he was caring for an ailing ET.

“But because of the area I’ll be working on,” he continued, “I have to put that sexual arousal line in there. Really, the whole process only lasts about three minutes.”

But um…I had to ask…did he ever get aroused? Not that I thought the sight of my vagina was going to drive him into a manic fit of ecstasy, but just out of curiosity…was it difficult, as a straight man, to stay professional?

He sighed and rubbed a hand over the shiny dome of his head. “I’ve done so many of these, it’s really just a part of the body to me at this point. It could be a nose.”

Judging by the slightly weary look in his eyes, I believed him.

I then voiced my last concern anonymity. I was cool with my vagina being one of 200, but would be a little uncomfortable with a flashing neon arrow singling out “Johanna’s Bits.” Jamie assured me there would be no such arrow, and pointed out that anonymity was important to the power of the piece. It wasn’t about whose was whose, after all.

And according to the waiver, mine might not even make the cut. There was no guarantee he would use my sculpture in the finished piece. Apparently, my vulva might not be riveting enough.

Well.

I took the pen and signed my vagina away.

Jamie sat down to chat, and after a few minutes I began to relax. He wasn’t creepy at all. In fact, he was quite entertaining, and I began to feel like I was chatting with a fun new acquaintance at a house party at a very oddly decorated house.

He told us about some of the people he’d sculpted so far: young women, post-pregnancy women, a post-op male to female transsexual, a sixty-five-year-old woman. He wanted to break the sixty-five-year-old barrier, but so far, he hadn’t convinced anyone older to volunteer. He also was hoping to sculpt a woman who had undergone female circumcision, as he was really gunning to get as much variety as possible. He had already sculpted a woman pre-labiaplasty, and she was going to return for another sculpture after the surgery.

“I asked her after the cast was made, ‘Are you sure you still want to go through with the surgery?’ And she said, ‘Oh yeah, definitely.’” Jamie shook his head. He blamed a lot of the cosmetic surgery craze on porn. “Women are more exposed to porn now. It’s like in the ’70s, when men would see porn and everyone had a twelve-inch penis, and they would think that’s the norm. Now women see porn, and are critical of themselves.”

Out of curiosity, I asked him how much it would cost to have a separate sculpture made to take home with me. You know, since I was a volunteer and all. He quoted me a heavily discounted rate: Fifty pounds. We agreed that he’d make two casts. One for him and one for me.

“Of course,” he said, “it won’t be ready today. But I can put it in the mail.”

I liked this idea very much, as I would be spared any potential awkwardness at Gatwick security.

And then the moment was upon us. David and I stood and followed Jamie into the room with the dying ET tent. We were now actually outside, standing on a huge veranda overlooking the ocean. It was brisk, to say the least. Sculptures were scattered around the room there were a naked man and woman on the floor, and a voluptuous pair of breasts jutted from a wall. We eased our way around the bodies, and my heart began to rumba. Jamie ushered us into the tent. Inside was a single heat lamp and a workman’s table. Lining one wall were rows of metal shelves filled with various body parts: halves of faces, more baby fists, a smattering of vaginas. It was all very Frankenstein’s workshop. David tried to bumble his way into a corner and hit his head on a jutting penis.

“Oh yeah. I turned that one into a magnet,” Jamie apologized.

He said he’d give us a moment to “get ready” and then left to fetch the molding materials.

Now or never. I yanked off my jeans, leaving on my socks and turtleneck sweater, and hopped up onto the table. I looked at David. He stood shivering in a corner of noses and labia, and I immediately got the giggles. I seemed to be experiencing a sort of pre-piercing/pre-tattoo adrenaline rush. Not that I had ever gotten either.

Jamie burst back into the tent. He was carrying a couple of buckets, and he accidentally slopped water all over the floor, causing David to bump into the heat lamp. Their Larry and Moe routine wasn’t doing much for my nerves, and my heartbeat switched to flamenco. Jamie got to work mixing the materials, chatting away. He explained that it was a two-part process. First he’d make a cast out of the algaenatethe dental stuff. And then, using that as a mold, he’d make the actual sculpture.

The algaenate mixture turned out to be bright blue, and as he walked over to the foot of the table, I lay back, closed my eyes, and assumed the position: I spread ‘em.

And despite the strangeness of it all despite the fact that a man in rubber gloves was applying cold blue goop to my vagina while my fianc� looked on, despite the fact that it was freezing cold, and outside the tent I could hear children playing on the boardwalk, and somewhere in the distance, there was a chain saw my case of nerves seemed to ease, and I suddenly felt strangely…comfortable. I mean, I wasn’t ready to kick back with some chamomile and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, but I also didn’t feel that scandalous. It really wasn’t much different from going to the gynecologist or getting a bikini wax. True, Jamie had no medical or cosmetology license, but he was an artiste. And there had certainly been people who were none of the above whom I had allowed to see my glory. And while the cold goop wasn’t what I’d describe as pleasurable, it was a walk in the park when compared to hot wax or a speculum.

Once Jamie slathered the goop on, he had to let it set, so I had to lie still. The tent fell quiet. Ho Hum. How about those Mets?

Suddenly, the ginger cat slinked into the tent. She eyed our activities warily, then made a hasty move to jump onto my stomach.

“NO NO NO!” we all cried at once, and David and Jamie both lunged for her. Jamie managed to grab her and shooed her out of the room. Whew. Relief. I tried to block out images of starring in one of those wacky AP headlines. Did you see the one about the woman who got a live cat stuck to her vagina?

“O.K., here we go,” Jamie said. And I was shocked that it was over so quickly. It really did only take about three minutes. He began to peel the cast away. The sensation was akin to taking off a pair of bikini bottoms after a belly flop.

“There you go.” He held my Smurf-blue vagina up for me to see.

Well! There I was. I was for some reason rather surprised. What was I expecting? Fins? It just looked so, well…small. And it was more symmetrical than I’d imagined. It was beyond strange, but also incredibly cool to see it in this three-dimensional way. It felt like I was finally meeting a beloved pen pal that I’d known intimately for years. And now at last, here we were, face to face.

Jamie put the cast on a counter to dry, and immediately set to work making the second one, which would be mine to keep. This one was made even faster, and without feline interruption. He placed it on the counter next to the first.

“All right, then. I’ll let you get dressed. Take your time.” He headed back inside.

I hauled myself off the table and was very happy to slip back into the warmth of my jeans. I pulled on my sneakers and joined David by the counter. He was peering down at my twin blue vaginas lying side by side. I could only imagine what was running through his head. No doubt, he was wishing he had long ago settled down in the Irish countryside, with a shy Siobhan or a blushing Nuala.

He looked up at me, eyebrows raised. “You can’t give me a hard time about anything for at least a month.” He smiled.

On the train back to London, David sprawled across from me, quietly killing aliens on his iPod Touch. I was still feeling a slight adrenaline rush, and my brain was buzzing as I tried to process what had just happened. Was it worth it? Yes. Absolutely yes. If that sculpture kept even one woman from going under the knife, then my six minutes under the goop was beyond worth it. I was suddenly overcome with gratitude. By God, I owed my vagina an apology. My body was amazing and beautiful. And so was the body of the woman sitting behind me. And the woman pushing the coffee trolley down the aisle. I wanted to stand and shout for every woman on the train to go and get their vaginas molded at once!

I turned to David. “Maybe we could will my sculpture down like an heirloom?”

He stared at me in horror. “Are you mad? Can you imagine being given your great-grandmother’s vagina?” he shuddered.

I assured him I was only kidding. No, the sculpture would be a private art piece. I’d wrap it up in a pretty scarf and tuck it into the deepest recesses of my closet. It would serve as a unique memento of that place and time. A reminder of my body at age thirty-three, of my wonderful fianc’s infinite patience, of the time I was given a full introduction to a place that had always held such mystery.

If I ever wanted to, I could take it down off the shelf, unwrap it from its little shroud, and give it a friendly pat.

“‘Ello love!”

Johanna Gohmann has written essays and reviews for Bust, Elle, Red, The Irish Independent, Babble.com, Publisher’s Weekly, and others. A native of Indiana, she lived for nine years in New York City, and currently resides in Dublin, Ireland.

by Brege Shinn

I awake naked.  I’m on my bed but there are no sheets.  The pillow case is gone.  I scramble to my backpack for something to wear, but there’s not a stitch of clothing to be found. Confused, I look in my travel-mate’s pack, but she too has no clothes.

Damn it, I gave all my clothes to the hostel’s owners for laundering yesterday.  Washing and ironing every last stitch of clothing for two dollars doesn’t seem quite the steal it did before.

Trying to assess the situation and retrace my steps, I light my last cigarette from a crushed pack and take a look around.  No one is here.  Alyssa, my travel mate, is missing and her bed is without sheets as well.  I look down from the loft to the sparse, but clean, room below.  There are four other beds and, again, the sheets are missing.

My head is pounding.  I take a long drag and exhale a plume of dark gray smoke. The familiar comfort of nicotine makes me feel queasy today.  I find a sneaker and use its bottom as an impromptu ashtray.  I am sitting, without so much as a thong, holding a cigarette butt.

Thank God I treated myself to a Brazilian in Paris last week.

Over the pounding, I hear the resonating laughter of Alyssa down the hall. She has a voice that can carry through city blocksit can make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end while your whole body tenses in trepidation of her Leo-like need for attention.  As irritating as that quality has become throughout these many months of joint travel, I feel a bit of relief today.  If I can follow her voice, perhaps I can learn how I came to be in this au natural state.

Not having enough hands to cover all of my naughty bits, I must improvise some coverage if I want to find any answers to the multitude of questions now whirling about my mind.  I have two pillows within reach and a roll of my trusty silver duct tape in my pack.  Taping the two pillows on top of each other lengthwise, I make a short puffy skirt and slip it on.  I consider ripping off smaller pieces to make pasties, and therefore cover at least part of my top half, but decide against it: the pain of ripping them off later couldn’t possibly be worth it.  As I descend from the loft via a wooden and shaky ladder, I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror.

Thank the good Lord for duct tape.

My arms wrapped around me, with hands firmly cupping my exposed breasts, I make my way down the hallway towards the cluttered and ever-crowded common area.  My body feels heavy.  My heart thumps with a seemingly irregular beat.  My bare feet toddle along a dampened carpet.

Alyssa’s voice becomes louder as I approach the paint-chipped door frame.  I hear other, indistinguishable voices around the bend.  My face tightens as the noise decimal grows deafening.  I take in a deep breath and attempt a hard swallow, but my mouth is too dry.

Screw the clothes and explanations; I need caffeine and aspirin pronto.

I peek around the corner.  One by one, each person turns to look in my direction and stops speaking mid-sentence.  Thankful for the sudden silence, I lift my head and scan the room: Dead stares.  Pursed lips.  Condescending eye rolls.  I am openly and collectively abhorred.

Fight or flight, fight or flight…

I slip farther into the room and reveal my avant-garde, duct-taped ensemble.  The roar of laughter is so piercing and immediate that I cannot help but throw my hands up over my ears.  Jaws drop.

Tits: always a crowd pleaser.

I plop down on a thread-bare green sofa and cross my legshaving already flashed everyone in the room; I try to keep a miniscule amount of dignity by not revealing any more of myself than necessary.  Still laughing, Alyssa throws me a pillow to cover my top half more comfortably.  I lean back; the couch’s scratchy material irritates my unprotected back.

Another backpacker, a good-looking, muscular, twenty-somethingwho seems oddly familiar squeezes my shoulders from behind and messes with my hair in a too-affectionate, quick and circular tussle.  I am annoyed; I adjust my pony tail.  My hair is damp.  He asks me how I like my coffee.

“Black,” I barely manage to mutter with any decipherable volume.

Alyssa sees my confusion and tells me his name is John.

Like I care.

He hands me a mug of coffee.  I nod in gratitude.

Oh sweet delicious hot cup of blessed caffeine, how I love thee.

After a good bit of ribbing, and a generous gift of three extra-strength aspirin, my fellow backpackers begin telling my twisted tale …. It all started at Joe’s Bar.

Right off the Charles Bridge, on the stunning waters of the Vltava River, there is a small building crammed in among Prague’s many souvenir shops.  This non-descript structure, with the same white exterior walls and bright orange roof as its neighbors and a small luminous neon sign flickering in its corner window, is the home of Joe’s Bar: a three-story, happy-hour-loving backpacker bar.  Pumping American classics like “Mustang Sally” and “Born on the Bayou” through its speakers, Joe’s is a much-appreciated and familiar respite from the many months of travel.

I had been there once before.  For the equivalent of one American quarter, you could buy a tall, and delightfully cold - by European standards, - pilsner of Czech’s finest ale and one chilled shot of well vodka.  If you wanted to splurge, a shot of absinthethe green-eyed monsterwas all of fifty cents.

Of course I would want to splurge.

I splurged.

I danced, sometimes on tables.  I sang, always poorly.  I played pool, surprisingly well.  I became friends with a visiting professional soccer team from Bavaria.  I spoke at length of my love of the freshly picked cherries, particularly the white ones, which I had bought for an eighteen-hour train trip from Amsterdam to Prague only a few days before.  I lit my nipples on firemy infamous party trick for a laugh.

Tits: always a crowd pleaser.

After a couple of hours, I felt the dizzying spins.  I disappeared from my group and snuck off to the upstairs restaurant.  I was seated at a corner high-top table, with full view of the restaurant, and ordered the internationally-renowned bar food of cheesy nachos.

The next thing anyone knew, I was on the floorphysically sick with cheese still in the corners of my mouth.  The servers were screaming, the fellow patrons were thoroughly (and understandably) disgusted, and the  olice were called.  I was immobile and out-cold.

American buffoonery… over-indulgency… irresponsibility…

Word spread quickly of the drunken young American woman upstairs.  Alyssa and my new best-friendsthe orange-clad Bavarian soccer teamsprung up the stairs in a fury.  My limp, dead-weighted body was carried out of the bar and onto the streets.  Unable to stand, and barely conscious, I was placed face-down on the hood of a nearby car.

While Alyssa and my orange heroes went back into the bar to collect bags, jackets and fellow hostellers now partying at Joe’s, I was left behind to mumble alone about my new-found love and admiration of white cherries.

The presumed owner of the car hood, and the vehicle on which I was most likely drooling, entered the scene.

Oh boy, I remember this part…

He gently reached around my back, cupped (and squeezed for good measure) each breast, muttered some sort of compliment regarding his handfuls, and proceeded to lift my body off his car.  Leaving me face down, yet again, on the cobble stone street, he drove away.

Tits: always a crowd pleaser.

After my friends return to the street, a long ordeal finding a cab driver willing to take me, and a near ejection on the side of an isolated freeway due to my mid-ride sickness, we all (minus the soccer team) made it back to the hostel safely.  I asked to take a shower.

Water puts me at ease.

A fellow hosteller helped place me, clothes still on, sitting upright with knees at my chest, in the corner of the shower stall. He turned on the water, adjusted to an adequate temperature, and closed the glass doors behind him.  Then, he, along with everyone else, went out on the deck to relax and smoke a thank-you joint, courtesy of my purse.

Concerned, the same hosteller who had helped me into the shower decided to check on me after a considerable, though widely unknown, time period has lapsed.  As he opened the bathroom door, he saw that the water had risen three or more feet and was now leveled directly below my lower lip.  My legs were stretched out and my heavy wet clothes were now covering the drain; the water had nowhere to go but up.  I was unconscious.  He sprinted towards the door and swung it wide open.  The water rushing out of the stall created a wave and caused my body to lose its positioning.  I sunk under the water for a brief moment before the deluge of water exited.

Meanwhile, Alyssa finished smoking and walked back into the hostel, dark with only a few dimly lit hall lights.  She turned the corner into the main hallway and saw a flash flood of water come barreling towards her.  She was ankle deep in water, her sneakers soaked through.  When she entered the bathroom, I was soaked, awake and disoriented.  My new hero sat against the wall looking completely terrified.

The hostellers jumped into high-gear.  Everyone was woken.   Sheets, pillowcases, and comforters were handed over.� People, though some still sleepy and some now high, jumped on the sheets like grape crushers in an attempt to save the soaked carpets.  My wet clothes were peeled off of me and thrown on an outside clothes-line to dry.  My new hero threw me over his shoulder and carried my stripped body up the ladder.

Oh good Lord.

“So who got the show?” I ask without a hint of embarrassment.

I have no pride left.

“That would be me. Not bad,” John says, smirking.

I need a cigarette.

By the time the storytelling has ended and my ensemble, and probable side-boob view, has lost its appeal, the common room has mostly cleared out.  John stays behind and pours me another badly needed cup of coffee.  Just as the throbbing feels as though it may one day, subside, the overwhelming feeling of shame and remorse for my over-indulgent and destructive actions flood in.

I am the reason people hate Americans.

I hear clamoring in the hall. Gasping; then screaming. I sink lower into the bowels of the couch, clenching onto the mug like the life-preserver it has become. I don’t understand a single word of Czech.

I don’t need to; I know.

The hostel owner, a tall, slender, curly-haired woman in her mid-forties, enters the common room. I want to flinch, jolt, recoil… but I cannot move. I sit there in silence and wait. She is pulling on the bottom of her red knit sweater anxiously. I can hear her breathe heavily and with conviction. She too is silent. She scans the room before speaking.

“Who?”

I lift my hand slowly like a child unsure of the answer. My hand feels heavy. For just a second, the hair on my arm sticks to a piece of duct tape protruding from my make-shift garb.

“How?”

My mouth is dry. I take a swig of burning hot coffee. I never lose eye-contact.

“Absinthe.” I answer.

She closes her eyes; her head slants down. She bounces slowly on the balls of her feet.

I stand up, having absolutely no idea how to translate my regret and embarrassment.

Her eyes lift to mine. I see a glimmer of a reluctant smile.

“Of course.”

This is not the first time.

And then, she hands me a pile of my freshly laundered clothes. Even my socks are ironed.

by Pearl Chen

“Do you speak English?” the blonde woman asked casually as she plopped right down next to me on a block of concrete outside the bubbly Water Cube on Beijing’s Olympic Green.  For such a sprawling, futuristic, Disneyland-esque plaza, it wasn’t exactly overflowing with places to sit, and we were both relieved to take a break on this random little rock.

As a Chinese-American, I looked like about 95% of the fans there, who came out in groves waving red flags, sporting crimson tattoos on their faces, and chanting with ear-splitting enthusiasm anytime a Chinese athlete took the stage.

So I surprised the woman a little when I replied that I grew up in Cupertino, California.

Her eyes lit up like she had found a kindred spirit, and she started telling me about how she and her husband had arrived at the Olympics two days ago with a group from Texas.

“It’s my first day. I’m still pinching myself that I’m here,” I responded. A month ago, an aunt in Beijing (whom I’d met just once at age twelve) had agreed to host me, setting off a mad dash to string together the Olympics adventure I had always dreamed about but didn’t think was possible until now. My search for elusive sports tickets had ended only a week earlier, when a travel agency mailed me passes to swimming, gymnastics, and track - a lifesaver, since many of the Olympic ticketing sites online had turned out to be massive scams.

This wasn’t the first time I had gone to China, but having been raised in America where media depictions of an intimidating, red country were often too longstanding to ignore, this was the first time that I felt I could truly be proud of my roots.  Speaking Mandarin at home ensured I wouldn’t be a banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside), but growing up, it was just much easier to take for granted that the United States was the superior country. Now through the Olympics at Beijing, I was eager to witness how much China would “prove” itself to the world - and help me come to terms with what it means to be bicultural.

Back on the Green, the woman suddenly veered away from our small talk and said, “You don’t have a pin to trade,” pointing to the many sports pins decorating the lanyard around her neck.

“Here, you can have the best one,” she offered, removing a large pin with Olympic colors from her collection and shoving it over to me.

Before I could politely refuse her unexpected generosity, she continued, “This pin represents Jesus. All the Olympic colors here symbolize his life, our sin, and our salvation through God.”

Apparently, the “group” she was part of was actually a missionary that went to the Olympic Games. As she explained the pin’s symbolism in depth, a crowd of Chinese gathered to witness our conversation, something not uncommon in China whenever there was English spoken in public for a prolonged time.

By the end of it all, a Chinese woman pulled me aside and asked in Mandarin, “You can understand her? How much was the pin?”

Regardless of how well she was understood, the missionary continued to have an interested audience after I went on my way. I couldn’t help but wonder: Was it okay for her to preach Christianity at these heavily monitored Games in China, a country the West often portrays as devoid of religious freedom?

So the next morning, during a (shockingly uncrowded) early-morning bus ride to Tiananmen Square, I asked my Beijing aunt point-blank, “How much is Christianity allowed in this country?”

“China’s increasingly open to it now,” she replied, pointing to various Catholic churches en route to the square, though they were, of course, controlled by the state and not by Rome.

“The new Catholic bishop of Beijing [Joseph Li Shan] was appointed by the official [communist-approved] Chinese Church but was also supported by the Vatican,” she added. So it was possible to have the support of both the Pope and the Party after all.

I supposed if there was one thing Christianity and Chinese communism had in common, it was that both involved god-worshipping, a thought I couldn’t shake as we arrived in Tiananmen Square and I made my way into Mao’s Mausoleum. Staring wide-eyed at his perfectly preserved body, his jet black hair, his surprisingly “healthy” skin tones, I left my jaw hanging with morbid fascination. For so long, he was the god of the Chinese, and officially, lying under that crystal box, he still was; but the 65 million Chinese Christians in the country would tell a different story.

This duality - of Chinese people being increasingly open to religion while still officially upholding its communist doctrine - was only one example of the dichotomies I saw in Beijing.

It wasn’t just that religion mixed with communism. Ancient palaces, segments of old city walls, and gorgeous traditional Chinese parks stood side by side with pieces of the cosmopolitan city - spaceship-like skyscrapers, neon-studded shopping districts, and ever expansive subway lines.

I had brought two identities to Beijing - Chinese and American - hoping to reconcile them at the Olympic Games, but in the process, I found that the city had two identities of its own too: Its past constantly mingled with its present.

A day after marveling at the intricate concrete silver “lattice” work covering the phenomenal Bird’s Nest - a venue so huge it took me ten minutes just to get to my seat - I found myself staring at the dusty but likewise intricate latticework under the roofs of imperial palaces in the newly renovated Forbidden City, thinking about the different yet also oddly similar architecture China has adopted to symbolize its might.

The country may have spent part of its $40 billion Olympic budget on the dozens of sparkling water fountains that danced to blaring music between the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest, but a bus ride away, you could take in an equally stunning water scene at the traditional Beihai Park, where water lily pads the size of yoga mats clustered peacefully above a lake under weeping willows.

You could also catch traditional narrow-alley housing, the “hutongs” of Old Beijing, peeking out through certain preserved neighborhoods. Here were people living as they had for generations, in housing that often included shared bathrooms with neighbors, not too far from where you could have a McDonald’s meal for 24 yuan. (Can you imagine shelling out $24 for a big mac, fries, and coke? And yet business was booming.)

Beijing was a city holding onto its history while simultaneously charging ahead to the future, and it helped me see my own dual identity as a Chinese-American more clearly. Much like Beijing, I was learning to simultaneously embrace two ways of life, with all of their contradictions. On my last day, as I stood in the Bird’s Nest cheering for both Chinese and U.S. teams during the men’s 100m, I never felt more strongly that I had found another home and struck a new balance - to give China, the place of my birth, a bigger chance in my heart.

**********************************

Pearl Chen was born in China and raised in the U.S. starting from the age of three. She has edited for People magazine and produced websites for Barnes and Noble.com. She lives in New York City.

by Rick Steigelman

At the risk of sounding like a scamp of a child, ungrateful towards the one whose generosity has provided him his first glimpse of London, England, part of my plan going into the trip was to ditch Mom as often as was possible and for periods of time as long as I could get away with. The subway (which Mom prefers to travel from one site to the next, while I make the trek by foot), is developing as one such vehicle of this noble aspiration. Visiting an old buddy, I hope, will work as another.

There is in England a native Brit named Russ, with whom I’d worked in a restaurant a few years earlier, while he was slumming it over in the States. He had since returned to his homeland and lived in the coastal town of Brighton, from where he commuted to his job in London.

I had gotten in touch with him prior to my visit and we found ourselves in complete agreement that my wish for an authentic ‘English experience’ would best be served by our getting together for a pub crawl. It simply must be done, in the name of cross-cultural understanding.

Upon returning to the hotel from a visit to Westminster Abbey on the second day of our trip, I make contact with Russ. We’ll meet that evening in the hotel lobby at ‘half-six’, which, translated, means six-thirty.

The old boy looks the same. He tells me I’ve lost weight. I suggest that we remedy this deformity by adding a few pints to my frame. He says he knows just the place.

With great anticipation, the two of us head out the door, joking like old times. It doesn’t take me long to fall into my old habit of teasing Russ about his pronunciation of certain words of the English language. It takes him even less time to remind me that I am now the foreigner and, as such, am now the one off-key. It’s a right solid point. I shut the hell up.

Our livers are not long idle, for in no time at all we are turning into a curving little alleyway that, though seemingly non-threatening, has me instinctively placing one hand over top my wallet as I cast about for any sign of Oliver or that little bastard, Jack Dawkins. This lane, rather than being a shortcut, is, in fact, our destination. There it stands at the bend in the road, Bradley’s Spanish Bar, Hanway Street.

My English friend sheepishly informs me that he comes to this favorite haunt of his for the German beer. I’ve come to London, England to go to a Spanish Bar and drink German beer? My understanding was that the Armada and the Luftwaffe had both been repelled. But, what the hell, if this is Russ’ definition of an authentic English experience, I’m going to have to trust him on it. It is his home turf, after all.

We take our German beer in the ultra-cozy downstairs portion of the bar. If Goering is capable of mustering one last air raid, this looks to be as good a place as any to wait it out.

With that threat seemingly well past, we eventually emerge and cross over Oxford Street into Soho. Long a fashionably hip district, I fancy myself a natural fit. We weave our path towards Frith Street and the Dog and Duck. They say that George Orwell used to drink here. The author of Animal Farm drinking at the Dog and Duck? A coincidental connection perhaps, but, on the other hand, if this place did, in fact, serve as the inspiration for such literary genius, I cannot help but wonder whether there might be something in the pints they serve here. I think I’d better look into it.

It is a small corner bar and, on this evening, jammed with patrons. We take our pints out onto the sidewalk, where we join many a reveling passerby in the pleasure of a delightfully cool spring evening. The Dog and Duck proves another good call by Russ. My friend certainly knows his pubs.

Unfortunately, our voyage into the London night life must come to an end much earlier than either of us would like. It turns out that Russ has a house-sitting obligation. He proposes that we simply finish our ‘crawl’ the next evening and he extends to me an invitation to join him and some friends “to watch the dogs run” in Southwark. He tops it off with the suggestion that I spend the night at his place down in Brighton.

The appeal is obvious. My availability, less so. Mom wasn’t particularly thrilled with my going off on my own this evening. To follow it up with an overnighter seems like a bit of a prayer. I will have to proceed delicately. I explain the situation to Russ and tell him that I’ll call him the next day with the results of my begging.

Amazingly enough, Mom doesn’t much go for the idea. She opens up the spigot of maternal guilt and sticks my head underneath for a good soaking. I am able to surface just long enough to recognize my cause as desperate.

I fish out my ace in the hole. I sell my soul. Despite my refusal, in response to my mother’s earlier supplication, to ever set a single foot inside Harrods Department Store, I would now be passing through their front door with both feet. My role, as clearly delineated to me, would be to serve as the bearer of the inevitable purchases to be made at Harrodsand God knows where else.

With a deal in hand, I call Russ with, what is on balance, ‘the good news.’

I repay Russ for his kindness in having me along with his chums that night by inviting him up to the hotel room to meet Mom. My guess is that he’ll never forgive me for it, but I don’t dare ask. You see, Mom proves as deft at turning her spigot upon a complete stranger as she is in directing it towards her son. It is a show of Mom’s egalitarian bent.

Russ and I cannot leave soon enough. First, however, we must make a dash to a nearby store to pick up some beer for Mom, which she intends to drink in her hotel room. I had recommended instead that she spend her evening taking in the local atmosphere round the corner at the Museum Tavern, which sits across the street from the British Museum. With Mom’s being a bit of a Lefty, I thought that the Karl Marx association would appeal to her.

My sales pitch, though, had been rebuffed. My suspicion is that portraying the martyr is much more easily accomplished by sitting in ones hotel room with only the BBC for a companion than it is by actually going out and enjoying oneself.

The beer delivered, Russ and I hit the road. Fast. Or at least as fast as his little yellow, French-made automobile can carry us. Probably not much bigger than the dogs we are rushing down to see, I find my concern for our safety not terribly alleviated by Russ’ maneuvering this miniature along the frenetic streets of London like someone who’s already worked through his first few pints of the day. On the other hand, perhaps this approach is the key to mastering the London traffic. With barely enough room to do so, I keep my fingers crossed.

The coziness of the ride is enhanced when we stop off and pick up Russ’ friends. Speaking cockney rather than English, these two chaps’ commanding of the conversation has the unintentional effect of excluding me. I guess that I’ll be saving my voice for cheering on the dogs.

We are across the river in Southwark, which, consistent with British tradition, is pronounced differently than it is spelled. How did these people ever invent a language? How they arrive at ‘S-u-t-h-i-c-k’ from Southwark, only Dr. Johnson knows.

We knock off a quick pint at Copperfield’s before heading over to Catford Stadium.

Russ and I can only stay for three races, as we have other obligations to meet, namely the catching of ‘last call’ down in Brighton. With such an abbreviated stay, we gamble fast and hard. I recklessly throw down a pound apiece on three miserable losers called Pink Gal, Slough Joe (a savvier bettor probably would’ve read something into the name here and cast his quid elsewhere) and Kate’s Law (not to be confused with Kate Rulesbecause obviously she didn’t, unless doing so from the back of the pack).

To those who consider cruel and inhumane the sending of dogs around a track in futile pursuit of a fake bunny, I can only say that watching them squander my money proves hardly a picnic for me, either. I am already conjuring up better uses for these mutts.

Russ and I leave his friends with best wishes for the reversal of their own dismal fortunes. They probably do not understand a word I say.

Our first matter of business upon leaving the two of them is food. Though I am not a big fan of fish, I sign on to Russ’ suggestion that we pick up two orders of fish and chips to consume on our drive south. It certainly sounds like an English thing to do. It is an act of consent that I will dearly regret the following morning.

With food in hand, we scamper back to the car. I’ve quickly fallen into the practice of waiting for Russ to let me in on what should be the passenger’s side of the automobile. Oddly, my rising blood-alcohol content has done little to lessen my confusion over the design flaw that, in vehicle after vehicle in this country, has placed the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car. Until a recall can be brought into effect, and the mistake corrected, I am resigned to the likelihood of finding myself, time and again, redirected round to the left side of the automobile to occupy the driver’s seat without the steering wheel. Russ, bless his heart, is patient with me.

We then stop by a beer store to pick up some Newcastle Brown Ale with which to help the fish ply the grease downstream. Russ runs in to make the purchase. I stay in the car so as not to complicate the seating arrangement.

I am not sure how the laws in England read concerning the issue of drinking and driving, but I suspect that we may be violating them. Technically, of course, I am not the one driving, despite being seated on the left side of the front seat. It is a circumstance that I’ll gladly point out to any arresting officer.

We arrive in Brighton at ten-thirty (’half-ten’ for those of you with the steering wheel located on the wrong side of your car), a mere half-hour before the absurdly early English closing time of eleven o’clock. How in the world they expect a person to drink responsibly when, by official decree, ones drinking must be conducted at an accelerated pace is beyond me. We certainly haven’t been having much success in tapping the breaks.

So, we hustle on down to The Battle of Trafalgar, where we are privileged to witness Round Two of this famous confrontation in the form of a couple of locals squaring off over some issue or other. It results in only a minor skirmish, however, and hardly threatens Lord Nelson’s place in the history books.

My hunch is that these two fellows might’ve experienced a difference of opinion regarding the propriety of the pub’s serving Budweiser on draft. If so, I fall squarely into the corner of the combatant who opposed it. The bland American giant muscling its way into a spot along the beer lines that could’ve, and probably should’ve, been reserved for any one of the many top-notch homegrown brews is damn near enough to make a fella wish that the Crown had quashed the rebellious colonies into submission, and had hanged wholesale the likes of Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Patrick Henry may have his damn libertyas for me, give me an iron fistful of ridiculously high tariffs served up with a well-crafted ale anytime.

“Time, gentlemen, please” is our cue to pick up more beer at the store and head back to Russ’ apartment. Here, we meet up with his girlfriend, Angela, who, like Russ, is a photographer and who, like just about anyone trying to make their way in that field, is a waitperson. She is just getting home from work.

Though a native of Maine, USA, Angela, after several years of living over here, now speaks as funny as Russ does (except, of course, that we are in England, where they don’t think they sound funny at all). Angela explains to me the photography project on which she is presently working, depicting the cruelty of the fabled English fox hunt. I do not share with her my feelings regarding the dogs of Catford Stadium.

Russ sneaks over and pops into the tape player a cassette that he had recorded on the sly one night back in Ann Arbor when we went to see a Zydeco band play at a local nightclub. Between the music and the old photo album pulled down from a shelf, how good it is to drift back to our days together in Ann Arbor.

The reunion takes a decidedly less pleasant twist the next morning, as the fish from the previous evening finish their voyage with something of a flourish. It is a rough train ride back to London. Fortunately, the only other people to occupy my train car are a young couple who are far more interested in each other than they are in the possibility that the Irish Republican Army may’ve had a hand in packing the overnight bag I leave unattended on the seat behind them during my lengthy relocation to the restroom facilities.

Suffice it to say, my first choice of ‘things to do’ upon my return to London would be to go to the hotel and sleep off my condition. I find my second and third choices running along those same lines. Expecting no sympathy from Mom, however, I shall be keeping this dream to myself.

She meets me at the station and leads me over to the train that will be taking us out to Windsor Castle. I am only thankful that this train ride goes more smoothly than the last. A result, I suspect, of having nothing left to give.

by Kevin Kaiser

Scarlet and I are making out in a bathroom stall in the men’s restroom of a Hollywood eighteen-and-up club.  Her fist twists the cityscape image on my red Dismemberment Plan t-shirt, pulls my body close, as I grip the flesh of her hips exposed between the too-small black shirt, the tight black pants.  Pepe doesn’t notice.  We’ve crushed a tiny, round, blue pill between the numbers and letters of two credit cards, shaped the dust into three lines atop one card.  Hunched over the toilet paper dispenser, Pepe snorts a line with the cut-down straw we’re sharing, the one I carry in a film canister with a couple of pills.  As he turns to pass the straw, Scarlet disengages, and I stumble back against the locked door.

Adderall is a dextroamphetamine-a generic for speed-prescribed to me not for ADD but because I am “an enigma.”  A psychotherapist’s analysis.  This means it takes me an inordinate length of time to process information.  My mother thought it would be a good idea for me to see a psychotherapist, since I routinely fail or drop out of my college classes.  I still live at home, and it’s a difficult process extricating myself from my mother’s influence.  And the psychotherapist was right about the information-processing; I’m often reminded by others of my awkward pauses in conversation.  But what the psychotherapist and my mother both failed to note during my evaluation-what my mother still fails to note and which I’m not about to reveal-is that I don’t want to be in school.  I’m only going because I don’t know what else to do with my life.� I don’t know how to escape.

When I ingest it orally as prescribed, the Adderall gives me headaches.  Usually I carry a bottle of water with me to diminish the impact of the pain.  But Scarlet stole a handle of vodka from a supermarket-it’s 2001, and I’m the oldest at 20-and we each drank a fifth of the store brand alcohol before entering the club.  Any headaches at this point I won’t be feeling until the morning after.  Already loose from the vodka, the Adderall offers the energy to dance all night.

Another quote from the psychotherapist:  ”When you take this, every day will feel like a good day.”  Somehow I don’t think this particular night is what she had in mind.

Scarlet passes me the straw, and I snort my line.  My sinuses tingle.  This stuff goes straight to the head.

*

Scenesters can be found up and down the California coast, from San Diego to San Francisco, but nowhere are they more plentiful than Los Angeles.  Of all regions of Los Angeles, Hollywood is the mecca- the shrine around which scenesters congregate, pilgrims from all regions of Southern California.

Those who live outside Southern California tend to believe that Los Angeles comprises half the state.  This is close to the truth: you can’t get to Mexico without driving through a series of interconnected communities.  It’s not hard to imagine these coastal cities as one being one long, snaking Los Angeles.  But Los Angeles is not Orange County and Orange County is not San Diego; they are simply connected via the phenomenon of urban sprawl.  In contrast to Los Angeles, San Diego offers its own brand of safer, diluted culture.  And while Orange County is close, both physically and culturally, it is entirely suburban.

I’m from Orange County.  Cypress, to be exact.  Even Orange County citizens have no idea where Cypress is.� It’s in North Orange County, which is nothing like South Orange County.  North Orange County is conservative, old money, homes that have been standing since the fifties.  South Orange County is new money, hundred thousand dollar apartments, cities owned by corporations.  Cypress is nothing like what they show on The OC or Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County.  The waters of the Pacific do not wash up to my backdoor; they’re a half hour away.  Tonight, it took three times that long to make the trip into Los Angeles- traffic.

Los Angeles is, of course, a rambling metropolis.  Unlike most other metropolises, however, Los Angeles is largely devoid of clearly defined boroughs or districts.  Hollywood-a separate city until 1910 and a border-defined district as of 2006-is one of the few exceptions.  In this sense, Hollywood is treated as though it were independent.  It has the benefit of both belonging to the city and maintaining some form of autonomous dignity.  Those who flock here seek the same comforts the district holds: community, autonomy.  And my reason for being here tonight is no different from any other pilgrim’s; I’ve come to indulge in the Hollywood scene.

*

Saturday night, and you’re standing on the patio of the club on Santa Monica Boulevard between Sycamore and La Brea, taking a drag off a Djarum clove and blowing the smoke like a French movie star up into the sky.  Streetlights and neon lights conceal all but the brightest stars from view, while the bronze-rimmed pink terrazzo stars of the Hollywood Walk of Fame mark the center of each segment of sidewalk that runs before the club.  A line of palm trees at sidewalk’s edge is the only plantlife in sight.  Less than two blocks away is Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a point the tourists rarely pass.

You lick your lips, and they taste like cherry; it’s the clove.  The black acrylic scarf wrapped around your neck is pure fashion statement in the sixty-degree air.  It matches your black pointed shoes, black skinny jeans, black-and-white striped shirt.  Pinned to your vintage red lipstick-matching purse is a button with Michael Jackson’s face on it that reads “Beat It.”  You find this ironic, although you pretend to not find it ironic, since you also pretend to really like Michael Jackson’s music more than you actually do, because you know everyone thinks you’re just being ironic when you really do like Michael Jackson’s music.  To an extent.  More than you obviously care to admit.  In the midst of conversation, you brush your short, dyed-black hair back out of your mouth.

Although you pretend you are not pretentious, you use the word so often to describe anyone and anything that is not you it makes you sound pretentious.  You listen to bands that have little musical talent just so you can act like you know about some band no one else knows about, because they only listen to that crap on the radio.  The band’s singer is fuckin’ hot.  In fact, you know the band personally.  The band is local or British or representative of a certain non-major label.  You describe their sound as twee pop or dreampop.  Something pop.  Which defies the true definition of pop, as it applies to music.

*

I’m wearing Converse high-tops, black.  I’m rocking the obscure band t-shirt.  I am not wearing a scarf, because it is sixty degrees outside and at least ten degrees hotter inside the club.  I’ve got sideburns.  I used to play keyboards in a couple bands.  Although I listen to my fair share of obscure indie bands, I also listen to a lot of hip-hop and jazz, amongst other genres.  The music they’re playing here is all right, but if I weren’t hanging out with these kids, Scarlet and Pepe, I probably wouldn’t listen to these subgenres of rock as much as I do.  For that matter, I wouldn’t even be here tonight.

Last time I saw Scarlet she was a blond.  Tonight, she’s raven-haired.  She’s from Santa Monica, is half-Jewish, and judges music based on how hot the band’s singer is.  The results of some gynecological exam-a paper I’ve never wanted to take a closer look at-are taped to the closet door in her bedroom at her parent’s house.� I spent the night there once, in her room.  She made me sneak out the window the next morning.

Pepe is of Mexican descent, and for the longest time I swore he was homosexual.  He’s not.  He wears scarves on occasion-tonight is one of those occasions-and takes photography classes at Santa Monica College.  I speak Spanish with greater fluency than he does.  He lives with his family in a rundown house off Normandie, next to the 405.  Since he doesn’t drive, I am forced to make the trip up to Los Angeles if I want to see him.  I don’t know how he gets by without a vehicle; it’s almost a necessity in the city.

Inside the men’s room stall, Pepe widens his eyes, exclaims, “Whoa!  You guys, I’m freaking out!”  Meanwhile, Scarlet makes puppy dog eyes at me, as if this is supposed to turn me on.  I’m in the midst of a Robert DeNiro-in-Raging Bull punch-out routine against the stall door.  I grit and grind my teeth, give the door a solid punch, unlock it, and step out.  Pepe and Scarlet follow behind.

I’m surprised more people don’t stare as we head out the restroom door.  Maybe I shouldn’t be.

*

In Orange County, there are all-ages venues for shows.  A “show” is nothing more than an intimate concert, intimate because it is usually held in a former public storage warehouse or an ex-Chinese restaurant that was run out of a house.  The bands are local or have what can be affectionately termed a “cult” following.  Although these venues are scenester hot spots, they are not conducive to dancing, drinking, or drugs.  There is even a strong distaste for the latter two amongst many Orange County scenesters.  This is why a trip to a Hollywood club is necessary if one is to truly indulge.

*

This club is split into three rooms, each with its own musical flavor: one plays hip-hop.  No one is in here.  Another is dominated by 60s soul, much of it Northern soul, a distinctly British form of the genre.  The room we’re in, the largest of the three, focuses on current scenester favorites from subgenres music snobs know, like Britpop (Pulp, Blur, Suede, anything British really) and electro (Ladytron, Chicks on Speed).  Occasionally David Bowie or Morrissey are worked into the DJ’s set-see “anything British”-as are so-called indie bands.  Currently spinning is the decidedly not very indie “Last Nite” by The Strokes; Scarlet demanded I request it.  For all the music snobbery, the bands being played are far less obscure than the average scenester cares to admit to.

A silent video is projected onto the wall above the DJ.  It looks like something Stan Brakhage might have filmed.  Opposite the DJ is a wall of couches, where boys, girls, and the androgynous are sprawled across each other’s laps or huddled into corners.  Women in brightly colored dresses go-go dance on platforms that rise from the dance floor.

Other than the go-go dancers, we’re the only ones up and dancing.  After a couple songs, an androgynous kid sporting thick black glasses, a black scarf, and a t-shirt promoting some obscure band with a drawing of an owl on it approaches us.  It stops before me, and I decipher that it is male.  He says something to me, but with the music blaring, I only catch fragments.

“Thank… dancing.”

“What?”

“Thanks… first… dancing.”

From what I can decipher, he’s thanking us for being the first ones to dance.  He mumble a “your welcome,” and it nods and wanders off.

*

Alcohol, Adderall.  Destruction of body, enhancement of life.  Depression, stimulation.  Visceral vitality.

Until I began driving up to Los Angles every weekend to hang out with Pepe, Scarlet, and the other kids I’ve met up here, I never drank alcohol, never did drugs of any kind.  Even before the pills were prescribed to me, the worst I’d done in Los Angeles was drink.  Talk about your gateway drug.  I regret nothing, blame no one.  If a “why” is necessary and my failures in school, my apathy and angst, don’t seem to add up, I can always blame it on the depression I never dealt with, an untapped grief I bottled up following a drawn out break-up and the death of my grandmother, events that transpired in the span of a single week.  It’s been a few months now.  I’m still spiraling down.  I don’t see a bottom.  I can no longer see the top.

You can escape from a city, you can escape from a county, you can escape from states or provinces, from countries, from anything that can be labeled a location.  But what you can’t escape, can never escape from, is the pain of living.  As obvious as that is, it’s what we often spend our youth doing.  Attempting to escape from the pain by finding out where we belong.  Who we are.

The neon city lights, the empty dance floors, the shows in former warehouses, the two-story record stores, the vintage clothes, the mixed drinks, the clove cigarettes, the banter about sex and bands and love and drama…  And the drugs.  Pills, mostly.  Prescribed by your psychotherapist to help you deal with the terminal existential crisis that is your life, a life that is dead to you, except in these moments when you become a scenester.  Although you’d never, ever label yourself as such.  No, you’re no scenester.  You’re an enigma.

*

Scarlet runs her hands through her hair, her body sandwiched between Pepe and I.  A song by the London-based Placebo is playing.  ”Pure Morning.”  Brian Molko, the band’s bisexual singer, sneers the lines:

A friend in need’s a friend indeed

A friend who bleeds is better

And I’m bleeding.  Red streams from my nose.  I hurry from the dance floor-by now packed with bodies writhing-my head tilted down as I dab at my nose with my index finger, self-conscious to any eyes that glance my way.

Inside the men’s restroom, I stuff a piece of toilet paper up my nose, hearing the psychotherapist’s phrase: “Every day will feel like a good day.”  It’s surprisingly empty in here; I step up to a urinal.  My penis is shriveled, my piss dark orange and reeking of chemical reactions.  Like the headaches, these too are side effects from the Adderall.

I flush and pull the toilet paper from my nose.  Blood is encrusted around the interior edge of my nostril, dotted with what also appears to be a blue-greenish mucous.  I wipe at it with the toilet paper and realize the mucous is actually congealed remnants of crushed Adderall.  Staring at my vacant reflection in the mirror hanging over the sink, I clean my nose as best I can with another sheet of toilet paper, this one damp.

Music bleeds in through the walls, bass pulsing like a heartbeat.  It sounds like Suede.  ”Beautiful Ones.”

*

When I was sixteen, I swallowed a handful of Vicodin in a half-hearted attempt at suicide.  The Vicodin were prescribed after I’d had my wisdom teeth removed.  I awoke the next morning to find I was still alive.  And decided that from that point forward I would have to keep living.

*

A kid attired in a skinny black tie over a white fitted shirt swings open the restroom door.  I slip out of the restroom as he heads into a stall and locks the door.

Back on the dance floor, I spot Scarlet and Pepe.  I stand close, but they take no notice of me, oblivious to my presence.  Scarlet grabs Pepe by the shirt, pulls him close, as he whips off his scarf, wraps it around Scarlet’s bare and swaying hips.

by Diane LeBow

“That’s the Hindu Kush Mountains, the killer of Hindus.” An Afghan man sitting next to me on the Ariana Afghan Airlines flight from Dubai to Kabul leaned over and explained. Outside the window, the flat desert lands of Iran and southern Afghanistan suddenly gave way to barren blue and gray ridgebacks, like waves of a stormy sea. I thought about the land I was visiting and wondered how stormy the political situation would be during my upcoming visit to this war weary land. As I was leaving for the San Francisco airport twenty-four plus hours ago, a friend called: “Have you been listening to the news? There’s just been another bombing in central Kabul, many people killed and injured, and an assassination attempt on President Karzai. Do you think you should delay your departure?”

Beneath us, small villages of stone and mud dwellings became visible as we angled in toward Kabul Airport. Voices and nervous laughter grew louder as excitement among the passengers mounted. Many on the crowded plane were Afghans returning after fifteen, even twenty years absence.

“I left when I was three,” one man said to me.

Another confided: “I’m afraid to get off. Everything will be so changed.”

The landing was a new experience for me: past bunkers and a graveyard of smashed up planes and cadavers of military aircraft, evidence of over two decades of war. I remembered I was entering a land of lawlessness, anarchy, warlords, and twenty-three years of conflictactually a part of the world where civil war and foreign invasions are more the norm than peace.

Then we stepped off the plane into the “Country of Light,” as Afghanistan has been known. A young Afghan-American man who was traveling with us, said to me, “I thought I wouldn’t remember since I moved to the States when I was five but now that I feel the air and sniff familiar smells I know I am home.” The scene inside the terminal was bustling but well organized. Young men in ragged brown garments, looking like they had stepped out of the Middle Ages, pleaded to help me with my luggage in order to earn 10,000 Afghanis, about twenty-five cents.

Dust and people swirled all around me. The people were strikingly handsomeif dusty, like everything else there. Afghan eyes, dark and deep and very calm, really look into you and the look is not pained or demanding or threatening in any way: it is calm and clear. Perhaps the look is a result of millennia of survival and resignation to whatever the fates or world politics send their way.

Even though I travel extensively, I was never in a war zone before. There were a few things to get used to. As we left the Kabul Airport, my driver said, “Don’t worry that there is no seat belt,” as he saw me searching along the side of the seat. “I drive slowly.” With that, he floored it, and we raced up the wrong side of the divided street against the oncoming traffic. There are no traffic rules or stop lights in Afghanistan. Traffic when it moves, like spilled milk, goes anywhere there is a space. My driver Nabil’s technique suited the general sense of lawlessness in the air.

Through the open window of our car, I bought The Autumn 2002 Survival Guide to Kabul from a street child. It opened optimistically: “There’s a lot to see even if most of it is wrecked.” On the way to our guesthouse, all around us large areas of Kabul were bombed out wrecks of former homes, stores, and even palaces. Near the center of the city, burned skeletons of buses lie stacked one on top of another around the devastated former public transportation center. The ubiquitous blue burqaed women and street children begged at the windows of our van and later when I walked through the streets. Men with no legs, mine victims, negotiated along on a sort of skateboard amongst the traffic, pleading for “baksheesh,” some money.

As we drove up to the hotel I was to stay at, I noticed the top floor was missing and I joked to my driver that I hoped my room was on a lower floor.

There’s something about Afghanistan and the Afghan people that draws me back again and again. When I am there, I feel out of time, connected to all of humanity at all times. This land has been touched by so manyfrom Alexander the Great, the Egyptians, ancient Greeks, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Soviets, Taliban, to most recently, the USA–– and yet maintains a strong sense of identity.  There is approximately eighty percent illiteracy, few roads, little to no electricity, running water, phone service, postal or banking system. People live mainly on a subsistence level. Yet, to be with an Afghan is to be aware of a keen intelligence, often along with a sharp wit, a sense of irony and enjoyment of life, and a pervading kindness and hospitality.

How can this be when all around are bombed buildings, destroyed roads, adults and children with missing legs, piles of rusting tanks and crashed planes? I sought to learn more about this strong pulse of life that was throbbing here.

My lifelong work for women’s rights and the horrors of the Taliban especially pulls me to this part of the world. Imagine being confined inside your house with the window painted black, only being permitted outside when accompanied by a male relative, being beaten for even showing a bit of wrist, and even stoned to death at the whim of a perhaps disgruntled husband who wants to be rid of you?  Imagine not being permitted any education or access to earning a livelihood, receiving medical care, or even an occasional visit to the public bath as you have no running water in your simple house? I wanted to learn more and see what I could do to help.

PART 1 Beyond the Burning Burqas: My First Visit with Afghan Women

Two years earlier, June 2000, the Taliban were still in power in Afghanistan. Their treatment of women is the ultimate in man’s inhumanity to women. Could any of us do something to help? Living in France at the time, I met a group of exiled Afghan women. Along with some French women, we organized a conference near the Afghan border in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, as it was still impossible to have such a gathering inside Afghanistan. There we met with over 300 Afghan women who had escaped across the Afghan-Tajik border and were living at the time in this former Soviet republics. Our goal was to help them write up “A Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan Women,” based on United Nations’ documents. Major elements of our work were eventually incorporated into the new Afghan Constitution.

“Please, speak out about these crimes. But tell not just about the suffering, but also about the successes, how we are resisting.” I met Halida, a math professor from Kabul, who ran secret schools for girls inside Afghanistan all during the Taliban repression. She was one of several hundred Afghan women at this conference. These women were the lucky ones, educated and middle class, having the means and know how, to escape from their country as the Taliban took over. The stories of these women professors, doctors, engineers and computer scientists revealed to me what the civil society of Afghanistan has been and can be once again.

Western news coverage of Afghanistan generally presents a picture of illiterate warlords and draped women. However, earlier, into the sixties, Afghanistan was a progressive society. Women’s equal rights were guaranteed by the Afghan constitution.  In pre-Taliban Afghanistan, women, at least in the urban centers, were educated and active participants in the society. They comprised fifty percent of the civil administration, seventy percent of the teachers, forty percent of the physicians, and had fifteen percent representation in the highest legislative body in Afghanistana larger number than the United States.

“Persecution of women is a method to install terrorism in order to paralyze society, to create a submissive society,” Khalida Messaoudi, Deputy from the Algerian government opened the conference with these words.  She is a petite, auburn-haired powerhouse. Facing death threats everyday of her life and surrounded by security guards, she was a central force in uniting the Algerian women and ousting Algeria’s version of the Taliban and in establishing representative democracy in her country. “Imagine,” she said to me later in the lobby, “right wing Christian fanatics, armed with automatic weapons, taking over Washington, D.C., and the U.S. government. This is the situation in Afghanistan with the Taliban.”

During meals, the stories poured into my ears:

A young woman at our table told me she had three children and that her pilot husband was killed in an airplane crash. “I hated the burqa,” she said. “With the burqa, you always have eye ache and headache. It is especially difficult for women who wear eyeglasses.”

One woman, Masada, is a dentist with a computer engineer husband and two children. She is an exceptionally beautiful woman around thirty with symmetrical features, large eyes, and dark brown hair. Like many of the Afghan women, Masada eschewed traditional dress; in her case she wore an oversized tee shirt and jeans. She told her tale of escape, which was like many others. “The Taliban were entering our town that day. I couldn’t reach my husband. I quickly arranged visas and plane tickets to Iran for my children and myself. After eleven months in Iran, I was able to take a train with the children to Tajikistan. Finally, from here, through an international company, I got a message to my husband that we were alive.”

Another woman who had escaped from a Taliban controlled area told me: “The Taliban took seven hundred women hostage. More than 2000 people were killed when they took Kabul. They sold and raped many women, using them as sex slaves. Aged and disabled people, they left to suffocate in closed barracks in temperatures over 110 degrees.”

A young male Afghan journalist spoke to me as we were walking outside after one session. “The Taliban live in darkness, they follow ancient beliefs. It is not our culture to treat women this way. Women are human, not animals.”

Habeeba, an engineer, said: “When the Taliban leave, the women will burn their burqas, the men will shave their beards, and there will be music on every corner.”  The burning has begun but much remains to be done.

On my last afternoon in Tajikistan, a number of women friends from the conference arranged a country outing. We drove out in two vans and picnicked by a fast-moving river, surrounded by sunlit mountains which led on toward Afghanistan. A thin business woman in a tailored dress crouched down and drummed a Middle Eastern beat on an overturned rusty metal table. Soon one after another of the women began belly dancing. Small girls joined us. One woman drew me into the circle, the others clapping around us. Repeatedly, they said something to me that sounded like “Hurhun.” The word sounded uncomfortably close to a term I wouldn’t want to be called and wondered if somehow my behavior was unacceptable.

Back at the hotel, when we hugged goodbye, I took a deep breath and asked: “What does “hurhun” mean?

“Sister,” they replied. “Thank you, our sister, for being here.”

PART 2 Afghanistan: The Friendliest Country

After the fall of the Taliban the following year, I flew to Afghanistan as part of a human rights delegation sponsored by the San Francisco based organization Global Exchange. There were eleven of us, mainly young Afghan-Americans and me. Our mission was to assess the state of Afghan culture and the arts and set up projects to help both immediately and in the long-term. In addition, I planned to visit women’s projects and learn about specific ways I might be able to get involved..

The cover on an Afghan tourism brochure from the 1970’s that I found in a Kabul bookstore announced “Afghanistan, The Friendliest Country.” Believe it or not, that’s what I’ve found during my visits there and with the continuing friendships I have with Afghan people.

Driving through Kabul with my young Afghan friends even in the midst of the dusty chaos that is Kabul’s perpetual traffic gridlock, I never saw anyone yelling in anger. People laughed and joked. Kabul is a remarkably tight knit community. My driver used the traffic jams to shout messages to other drivers and passengers. “Tell my cousin to ask his friend Hamid about the tire he is fixing for me.” Since there were few functioning telephones in Afghanistan, I realized that the gridlock is a communication opportunity. Even when people run into each other, they don’t seem very upset. On one occasion, one of my drivers knocked a man off his bicycle. They both chatted for a few minutes, laughed about it, and drove on.

My friend, Tareq, a university student, said to me, “Why does everyone pick on Afghanistan? We are merchants and businesspeople. If they want something we have, all they have to do is talk with us and, we’ll do business with them. They don’t have to drop bombs on us.”

My new friends even made up jokes about the ubiquitous blue burqas. “Will the woman in the blue burqa please stand up?” they imagined someone announcing to a large crowd. Hoots of laughter on their part and mine followed. Wiping her eyes from laughing so hard, Shoukria said, “To the coat check girl: ‘I’ll take the blue one.’ More gales of laughter.

Not just high spirits but industriousness and ingenuity were apparent everywhere. In areas of Kabul, as well as in surrounding villages, piles of freshly cut poplar logs, a fast growing tree, were being used for rebuilding. During visits to Kabul Radio and Television, the staff showed us how they had concealed their precious archives of tapes and film inside panels of the ceilings or plastered up doors, so the Taliban couldn’t find them. Now everything was out in the open again and being broadcast. When the Director of the Kabul Museum showed me room after room of statues smashed by the Taliban, he and his staff assured us that, with international help, “We can reconstruct them.”

We purchased a few hundred dollars worth of electrical supplies and helped get the lights back on in the Kabul University library reading room where we saw students hunched over books in the darkened rooms. Every department at the University needed international assistance. The music department lack instruments. The Fine Arts department wrote out a prioritized list of supplies they needed. Before we left, we dropped off paper, paints, and clay.

At the National Archives, the director took me into a room where mounds of deliberately ripped canvases lay stacked. However, the establishment reopened and they were hanging a show of recent paintings while we were there. At the University as well as the National Library, we examined cases displaying books that the Taliban shot through or shredded with knives as all images are forbidden under their extreme rule.

I visited an orphanage that housed more than one thousand children but had no running water or functioning plumbing. Children made a game out of taking turns at a single hand pump in the schoolyard. A fifth grade class of orphaned girls sang for us: “Afghanistan, you are now my mother, and I must take care of you.” Over the next days, we purchased pillows and wool mittens for the children.

Afghanistan is a teacher’s paradise. Eager learners, both girls and boys, pack schools, half of the students sitting on the floors, shared the scarce books and writing on tattered bits of chalk boards. “Please stay here and teach us. When are you coming back?” the students of Alfatha Girls School addressed me in excellent English. Their 37-year-old principal, Mahgul Nawabi, ran underground schools for girls during the Taliban years when all girls were forbidden education. In many classrooms during my visit, I saw older women attending classes with much younger pupils, hoping to catch up on the years the Taliban denied them education.

I also visited a well-run school for the deaf, the first and only one in Afghanistan. The director developed the first system for signing in Farsi. “I try to help those who have been forgotten,” he told me. Another unique school is for street children. There are five such centers in Kabul, serving over 38,000 homeless children or children without functioning families. At these centers, the children spend a few hours each day, are taught literacy and basic mathematics, have a meal and access to bathing facilities, and, perhaps most important, have friends they can count on.

One day, several of us hiked up on the side of a mountain near the ancient walls of Kabul. Throughout the town, most people headed toward the stadium where the commemoration in honor of Masood, would occur.  A national hero, Masood, the great Afghan freedom fighter, was assassinated on 9/9/01, as part of the 9/11 attack on the USA, This was the infamous stadium where the Taliban performed public executions and stonings every Friday.  Above us security helicopters whirled. Below women washed clothes in the tiny trickle of water which was all that was left of the Kabul River after five years of drought

As we clambered up the steep gravelly hillside, from the flat roof of a mud and stone dwelling, a man on crutches waved at me and, with a smile, beckoned me over. As I approached him, I could see he had those movie star good looks of many Afghan men: gorgeous symmetrical features, muscular build, dark hair and beard, and expressive dark eyes. “Come in, have tea with my family,” he said through the university student who was my translator. I was having trouble staying upright on the steep slope and wondered as we entered his tattered house how my new friend managed on his crutches.

He introduced himself as Ashref. “I’ve fought against the Soviets and the Taliban to protect my family and little community here. I’m the mayor,” he told me in a matter of fact way, a broad smile on his face. A mine had blown one of his legs off, he explained, and he showed me various holes in his chest and back from mortar fire. In spite of his personal history, he joked constantly and was one of the most jovial people I’ve ever known. His wife, a beautiful woman with those special golden green eyes seen on some Afghans, interrupted to tell me, “My husband is a very good man.”

I asked him, “Here you are after twenty plus years of war, you’ve lost a leg, your body has been shot at again and again, yet you are so cheerful. How is that?

“Now we have peace,” he said, “and peace is everything.”

PART 3� TWO YEARS LATER

When I entered the unheated old cinema building in central Kabul, where until recently the Taliban had banned all films, the electricity went out for several minutes and I stood in the pitch dark with about one thousand Afghan women. They had traveled from all corners of Afghanistan to be here, on planes, on donkeys, and on foot.

Two years had past since my last visit to this country. The specific occasion this time was a women’s conference to prepare materials for the new Constitution at their Loya Jirga, or Constitutional Convention. For three days we sat in a packed hall for about eight hours each day, witnessing what the American Institute for Democracy, which helped fund the conference, described as “true grass roots democracy at work.”

Like a dam had broken, these women demanded every possible right and a perfect society. “We want freedom to wear what we wish. We want to be free to marry whom we wish or not to marry. No more polygamy, no violence, free education, health care. We want the right to ride bicycles.”

A few days later, some of their proposals were in fact added to the new Constitution, including a twenty-five percent requirement of women in the Parliament. Of course, enforcement is another story.

One afternoon, my plan was to find Ashreef, my one legged Mujahadeen friend, again, to see how he and his family were doing, and bring them photos from my last visit as well as gifts. With a few friends, I drove to the place in Kabul where the hills rise up from the bed of the Kabul River and where I recalled meeting Ashreef two years earlier. Street names or numbers don’t exist here. When we showed my photos to some people, they recognized him immediately, as he is well respected in his community. “He’s at the mosque,” and they ran to get him. Within minutes, rushing down the street on crutches toward me, with a new artificial limb, was Ashreef. We were both very moved by our reunion, tears streaming down both our faces. Somehow this illiterate warrior and I have a close bond.

“Diane,” he said, “we spoke of you often throughout the year. I looked at the little blue card you left with us, especially when I was sick or felt sad, and the thought of you always raised my spirits and made me feel happy again. Last evening I had a dream you were coming back and my wife and I spoke of you.” We spent a couple of hours talking over tea, nuts, and raisins in his modest but well kept tiny mud brick house.

He says he is an Islamist: women should have full rights to have careers, to go to the university, but still he believes they should wear the hijab. “We are Moslems, we want to respect our women wearing the cover. It is not the burqa which is the point but the freedom to move about in their lives, to live full lives, that is important. However, after conversing for over 1 1/2 hours, Ashreef said to me, “I’ve been at war for over 15 years, that’s all I know. I am thinking that maybe my mind and ideas haven’t developed as they should be. Maybe I need to rethink some of these new ideas especially regarding women and expand my mind and thoughts.”

Then he turned to the two young Swedish women journalists who were with me, “You are my guests, but Diane is no longer a guest.” My heart stopped for a moment. Had I offended him in some way?

“Diane is now part of our family.”

When William Faulkner accepted the Noble Prize for Literature in 1950, he talked about the human ability to endure and prevail: “When the last ding dong of doom has clanged and faded in the last dying evening… there will be one more sound, that of the puny human voice saying ‘I refuse to accept this.” That’s the voice I hear in Afghanistan.

By Erin Byrne

Imagine being placed at the top of the main staircase inside the most visited museum in the world. Daylight streams from above, bathing the arched walls in golden light, illuminating and exposing you.  You’re there for thousands to see, but have neither head nor arms.

Winged Victory stands boldly atop the sweeping Daru staircase inside Musée du Louvre in Paris.  Her legs, caressed by wind-whipped fabric, are sturdy.  Her chest is thrust forward, and her feathered wings fly out behind her.  The loss of her head and arms is said to enhance her ethereal beauty, what she has more than makes up for what she lacks.  She beams with boldness, for she is authentic.

Sometimes, if we are in the right place at the right time, a work of art can release a current of electric insight that challenges us to our very core. Thus did a trip to Paris became a pilgrimage in which Winged Victory’s spirit entered my bloodstream.

As I prepared to travel to Paris in January, I remembered a lecture by writer Phil Cousineau. He’d been speaking about his book, The Art of Pilgrimage, which puts forth a new model of mindful travel. Cousineau directs the traveler to weave his way through disappointments and follow the hunger for something deeper. As the traveler progresses through seven stages of pilgrimagebeginning with the longing to go, continuing all the way through to the arrival home and reflecting on the trip the journey becomes transformative.

I remembered Cousineau’s voice shaking with the excitement of reimagining the way we travel.  ”The truth of your life is as close to you as the vein pulsing in your neck,” he’d said.

All of the answers are within us, but such is our tendency toward forgetting that we sometimes need to venture to a far away land to tap our own memory.

-Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

I was returning to the city I loved. I had been to Paris oftensipped wine and saturated my palate at tiny sidewalk cafés, dashed from the left bank literary haunts to the haute couture of the Avenue Montaigne, listened to violins inside candle-lit Sainte-Chapelle and wailing jazz inside crowded clubs.

On previous trips I had felt the city tug a string inside of me, threatening to unravel something tightly knit, though I knew not what. I had been certain Paris could melt me, thaw me out, and untangle me. The odd thing was that I didn’t think I needed melting or untangling. I had known that this was a place I could be my true self. Each time I’d been there, awareness had crept in that this self was far, far away.

Indeed, my authentic self had disappeared sometime around 1963. The last time anyone saw her was in a black and white photograph of Miss Beckowitcz’s preschool class. In the photo, a girl sits in the front row staring at the camera with quiet, solemn eyes. A million questions roll around inside her head. She is an observer, a thinker. She knows exactly who she is and is comfortable in her own skin. She is me.

By first grade, the unblinking little owl was usurped. In the first grade class photo, the girl tilts her head, shrugs her shoulders prettily, and wears an adorable smile. The same look appears repeatedly in the stack of photos that chronicle my life: the laughing teenager; the gregarious sorority girl; the effervescent wife and mother; the accomplished public speaker.

Was it twisted parental pressures or just America’s expectations of little girls in the 1960s that made me decide at the age of four to act the role of the cute, center-of-attention-loving little red-haired girl? I’m not sure, but I remember making the conscious choice that it was easier to hide my brooding introspection than live with awkward reactions to it, so I cultivated perkiness instead.  By the age of six, I played the part of the party girl to perfection. I had donned the extroverted persona that the world adored, and it didn’t quite fit, but still clung to me forty three years later as I prepared to travel to Paris.

One of the ancient functions of pilgrimage is to wake us from our slumber.

As drizzly night descended upon Charles de Gaulle airport, I climbed into a taxi. The cab glided into the city as streetlights gradually came on. Paris shimmered with light. The huge Corinthian columns of the church of La Madeleine held a white glow within, the opulence of The Opéra Garnier gleamed against the indigo sky. As we circled the Place de la Concord, its obelisk soared out of the mist and the gigantic medieval palace of the Louvre exuded a beckoning air of mystery that seemed directed at me. An awareness emerged out of the blueness of my brain that my soul was here.

My soul was here? It sounded melodramatic and new ageynot at all like me. But in that taxi floating around the brilliantly lit city, I felt my soul stir, stretch and blink the sleep from its eyes.

Pay close attention to any dreams still frothing on the surface of your mind.

That night, as I floated in and out of sleep, I dreamed of The City of Light waiting outside my hotel room. The history of Paris is not for the faint-of-heart: the scarlet blood of its kings and queens has trickled along the cobblestones and mingled with sticky redness spilled out of the poorest street urchin. Every few feet one encounters statues of history’s great thinkers. Hundreds of museums hold priceless artistic brilliance, thousands of bookstores cradle the questions of writers and philosophers. Cafés hum with contemplation.

There is nothing frivolous about Paris; it demands to be taken seriously.

The oldest practice is still the best. Take your soul for a stroll.

Every time I stepped out of my hotel, my feet took me to the streets where I greeted overcoated Parisians with a smile and a perky Bonjour. Tree branches were outlined stark against the sky, stone buildings frozen solid. Notre Dame’s stained glass was colored ice, and the clanging of its bells cut through the frigid air.

I let the magnet inside me draw me to the Louvre, where I walked slowly up the staircase, never taking my eyes off Winged Victory. Nike symbolized victory to the ancient Greeksin battle, athletics, lovein all areas of life. The sculpture once stood in an open-air theatre on the Greek island of Samothrace sometime around 190 BC. She was nestled in a niche carved out of a rock, the sky above her blending with sea-blueness on the distant horizon.

Inside her home in Paris, I viewed her from all sides, from afar, and from below among crowds gazing up worshipfully. I knew she had a message for me. I wondered if her head and arms had felt awkward and weighed her down like so much ballast. She was proud without them, her wings spread out behind her. What she had all seemed to fit. I felt suddenly envious.

(Walking) allows time for your soul to catch up.

I winded through worlds of wrought iron, down tiny alleys bordered by fragrant flower shops and miniature markets of colorful fruit. I glided along the quays next to the steely Seine where every so often a bridge would offer itself graciously to be crossed. My eyes stung and my hands were numb, but my core slowly began to thaw.

Repeatedly, an invisible thread pulled me to the Louvre, to the bottom of the stairs where I’d stare up at the goddess of Victory leaning forward on the prow of her ship, the wind plastering her garments against her body. She presented her self to the world so sincerely; I longed to emulate her.

The statue was unearthed in fragments, brought to Paris and reassembled in 1860. More recently, in 1950, her right hand and the tip of her ring finger were discovered on Samothrace, and the rest of this finger and a thumb were found forgotten in a dusty drawer inside a museum in Vienna, Austria. These no-longer-missing pieces rest inside a glass case near her podium.

I walked. My breath, cloudy puffs in the icy air. In the frosty Luxembourg Gardens, the statues of Balzac and Delacroix were unflustered by the weather. The Panthéon cradled in its chilling crypt the long dead heroes of La Belle France. Hurried footsteps slapped the sidewalks as the cold turned bitter.

Uncover what you long for and you will discover who you are.

I peered into a little café where glasses clinked and voices hummed. When the door opened, an aroma of exotic coffee and buttery croissants wafted into the street. I looked in at the people. Their faces … there was something in their faces that reminded me of Winged Victory. Something that challenged me.

A young student wearing round glasses, a scarf slung around his neck, puzzled over something his friend was saying. His forehead scrunched and his eyes darted as his brain twisted and turned.� Here was a relentless thinker who didn’t pretend to know but was comfortable just contemplating.

An old woman with white hair and coral lipstick sat alone and meticulously sipped from a tiny white cup; I could see her inner poise, elegance, and utter lack of pretention. She just sat there quietly, comfortable in her own skin. As I looked through the window I knew that the expression on each face revealed the true spirit inside with the same honesty I’d noticed in Winged Victory’s pose.

My own face wore a smile that suddenly felt very heavy. It was not part of my essence, it was ballast. Slowly, I let go the mask. My brow straightened, my eyes relaxed, my face melted into the serious expression that reflected my own spirit. The muscles in my face felt reassembled into a no-longer-missing me.

We learn by going where we have to go; we arrive when we find ourselves on the road walking toward us.

During the next ten days, the self of the preschool photo emerged right there on the streets of Paris. I welcomed her home bit by bit. I shed heavy layers of wide-toothed smiles and let the quiet observer emerge, watching, pondering, day-dreaming. I mulled over questions rather than eagerly spilling forth answers. I let myself sit quietly, unsmiling, and sip a glass of scarlet Bordeaux. And for the first time that I could remember since the age of four, I was myself with the world. The truth of this was as close as the victorious vein pulsing in my neck.

In sacred travel, every experience is uncanny. No encounter is without meaning.

As my Parisian pilgrimage progressed, the people I encountered showed me exactly how I could be. In a tiny upstairs nook with books crammed in every crevice, a group of reflective young writers recited prose that revealed their cherished wishes and buried heartaches. Michele, an artist who had carefully cultivated her observer’s eye, shared her personal and creative secrets with me; we felt our spirits kindle. A shy Irish poet spoke his thoughts with a quiet confidence inside his lyrical accent. None wore a false mask of frivolity, and when I was with them I didn’t either.

The challenge is to learn how to carry over the quality of the journey into your everyday life.

I am home from Paris and each day I’m faced with the challenge of my pilgrimage: to blend my inner and outer colors. Learning how to do this is an inner journey as meaningful as any trip across land or sea. It involves much excavation of traits I forgot I ever had: curiosity, contemplation, creativity, and seriousness. I am the girl in the preschool photo and the woman who walked the streets of Paris. I am charged with the current that flowed from the statue at the top of the stairs.

A worn postcard on my wall shows golden Winged Victory against a dark background. Inside the Louvre, day turns to night, the crowd empties out, the security systems are activated, and all is still. She stands there, Nike, the goddess who symbolizes the precise moment when victory was granted by the gods to the ancient Greeks … and to me.

by Nancy Middleton

As we boarded the bus outside our hotel in Athens, I took a look at my five students and wondered if we should skip the day trip to Delphi.  We had been touring for seven days straightevery morning an early oneand the boys (yes, they were all boys) were visibly exhausted.  Much of this, I knew, was from staying up too late.  Every night I reminded them what time they had to be ready the next morning, but you can’t take a group of 16- and 17-year-olds to Europe for the first time and expect them to tuck in at a reasonable hour.  (As chaperone, I had learned this the first night.)  And since they were always up, packed, and ready to go at the designated time, I had decided the late nights weren’t a problem.

Today, though, I was tempted to grab us all a break.  The list of historic sites already under our belts included:  the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Pantheon, Pompeii, ancient Olympia, Mycenae, Epidarus, and the Parthenon.  It had been marvelousan eye-popping array of ancient history at our feetand we still had a week to go.  Surely we could skip Delphi, a site I was only vaguely familiar with, without causing undo harm to the boys’ education.  I knew they had wished for more time yesterday to hang out in the Plaka district, plus the three-hour drive each way to Delphi and back to Athens sounded grueling.

“Could we just stay here in Athens today “  I asked our guide, careful to stay out of earshot of the boys.  I wasn’t sure what the answer would be.

Paolo frowned.  “Sure,” he said.  “But I think you should go.”

He seemed so disappointed I began to reconsider.  Was Delphi that important   Sure, I knew it was historically significantthe Oracle and allbut I honestly couldn’t see anything in my guidebook that proved it would be much more than a pile of ruins on a hill.  And we’d seen a lifetime of ruins already.  Spectacular ruins like the Coliseum and the Parthenon.  Compared to heavy hitters like these, Delphi seemed, well, so minor league.

I was skeptical.

I also suspected Paolo didn’t want any disruptions.  We were a group of 46 altogether, with students and chaperones from California, Georgia, and Texas in addition to our group from Pennsylvania.  One defection might lead to another and, as our tour guide, it was his job to stick to the plan.

A day off sounded pretty tempting, though, so I decided to plunge ahead with my idea.  A mid-trip break, I rationalized, as I floated the option of staying in town to the boys.  Three of them lit up at the prospect of a day to themselves, but two surprised me by expressing sincere interest in Delphi.

“Ok, then,” I said, sounding a bit too much like a general leading troops to battle.  “We’re going.”  If I had learned nothing else in my role as chaperone it was to be decisive.  I sensed a whiff of disappointment from the three as their free time was snatched from them, but there was no other option.  I couldn’t leave part of the group alone in Athens, and it seemed unfair to deny the interested ones the trek to Delphi.

“It’ll be fine,” I said, trying to convince myself as well as the boys.  “You can sleep on the bus.”

As we drove out of Athens and north toward Mount Parnassos, I thought about the sudden twist of events that had landed me here in Greece.  The tripfor mehad been completely unexpected.  I was not the boys’ teacher, but one of their mothers.  I had only stepped in at the last minute to chaperone when their teacher had fallen ill and couldn’t travel.  Staring out at the magnificent scenery, the cliff-faced hills that began to surround us the further north we traveled, I felt ridiculous for my initial reluctance to take Ann’s place.  I had actually told her “no” when she first asked.  I was behind in my writing, I’d said.  I was also committed to a workshop that started right when the tour did.

“Sorry,” I’d said.  “I’m sure you’ll find somebody else.”

After I hung up, I’d tried to go back to work, but my mind got to weighing the virtues of a trip to Italy and Greece for the mere price of exchanging my name on a plane ticket.  Soon my excuses began to pale, then plain evaporate.  I could do this, I thought.  My passport was current.  Besides, the students had been looking forward to this trip for months.  If someone didn’t step forward, they wouldn’t just lose their trip but also significant money.  True, I didn’t know the boys very wellbut, hey, one of them was my son.  I also knew Ann had offered the trip only to students she believed to be responsible.

As one of my friends put it:  “Ok, chaperoning five teenagers…but Athens “

So, here I was on my way to Delphi:  the navel of the ancient world.

My knowledge of ancient history and mythology was admittedly rusty, so I decided to read up on the place while the boys dozed.

Delphi, I learned, was dubbed “the center of the world” when Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the earth and they met in the sky over Delphi.  For more than 1,000 years, beginning in about 1400 BC, pilgrims traveled to Delphi to consult the Oracle, which was guided by Apollo’s spirit.  Priestesses seated on a tripod in a temple inhaled vapors, fell into a trance, and answered questions posed to them.  From farmers to world leaders, they came seeking advice–but the answers left a lot to interpretation.  King Croesus of Lydia, for example, asked whether he should attack the Persians.  The answer was that if he went to war a great empire would be destroyed.  He forged ahead with war and suffered a horrific defeat.  Yet, the Oracle had told the truth.  A great empire had been destroyed:  his own.

How human, I thought.  To hear what we want to hear.  To stop when we get the answer we’re looking for.

By the time we arrived in the town of Delphi, I was warming to the place.  For one thing, the scenery was spectacular.  The bus parked beside an overlook and our group filed out.  We stood on the edge of a cliff looking down on a valley of olive and cypress trees, and beyond that the blue waters of the Gulf of Corinth.

“I didn’t think it would be thisbeautiful,” I said to no one in particular.  The boys snapped pictures as I stood transfixed by the drama in front of us.

“Yeah.”  One of them agreed.  “I always pictured Greece as grassy hills and sheep.”

Paolo pointed out some gift shops across the street and told us what time to rendezvous at the bus.  The plan was to tour the museum, then meet a local guide who would lead us up the mountain to the temple ruins.

The group dispersed.  I wandered into a shop and purchased a vacuum-sealed packet of olives.  It would make a good gift, I figured, if I didn’t eat them myself.  I’d always loved olives, and total immersion in an olive-loving culture had only fueled my passion.  “We eat them like you Americans eat peanuts,” our guide at Mycenae had told us.  “One after the other while we’re watching the ball game.”

There was still time to kill, so I crossed back to the overlook.  As I gazed down at the river of olive trees, I was overcome by a feeling that was pretty much extinct in my normal life, and it was this:  I had no expectations.  I was simply existing here in Delphi, accepting what was laid before me with no idea what was coming next.

And the best part of this   I loved it.

Funny, I thought, as I joined the others for the short ride to the museum, to find myself in a place famed for its answers just as I embraced the joy of not knowing.

After touring the museum, we met our local guide.  She led us up the Sacred Way toward the temple, reminding us, as we walked, of Apollo’s lasting advice:  Know Thyself and Nothing in Excess.

Sound advice, I thought.  Our guide thought so, too.

“Perhaps,” she said, after relating the story of King Croseus, “he would have fared better if he had taken the time to ask the next question:  ‘Which army will be defeated ‘”  She paused and scanned our group for some reaction, but she had lapsed into lecture mode and the students’ discomfort was palpable.  They had been infinitely patient with the numerous dates and facts thrown at them on this trip, but their tolerance for morality lectures had limits.  This was their vacation after all.

Thankfully, she moved on to a geology lesson.

According to our guide, the story of the priestesses breathing vapors emitted from the earth had a logical explanation.  Around 2000, geologists had discovered two faults that intersected directly below the temple of Apollo.  When major earthquakes occurred in ancient times, methane and ethylene gases could have traveled through the permeable rocks of Mount Parnassos and risen.  The enclosed temple where the priestess gave readings could have easily trapped enough gas to induce a trancelike state.

“So she was just high on gas ” someone said.  “Not channeling the gods “

“So it seems,” our guide said with a shrug.

There were murmurs of surprise all around as we walked on toward the temple remains, but I didn’t say anything.  As fascinating as all this was, I was crushed that the Oracle could be explained away by science.  Was nothing sacred   I mean, couldn’t there have been some sort of divine presence here on Mount Parnassos   Without realizing it, I had become captivated by the placeand strangely protective of it.  There was a power here, although I couldn’t tell what it was.  Divine   Manmade  Geological

Certainly, the sheer majesty of Mount Parnassos had power.  I stopped and gazed down the winding Sacred Way below me.  With the mountain at my back and the valley below, I understood utterly how the ancients believed this was the center of the world.  I watched the boys continue on the path above me, again feeling the strange joy of not knowing, of having no expectation but to be here on earth.

I walked on.  The path was winding, but gently so, and there were many places to stop along the way.  And every spot provided a different vantage, a new experience.  We stopped outside the temple ruins and sat on the old rock wall and on the remains of columns that now served as stools.  One of the boys reclined on the wall to listen to our guide, and when he stood up his shirt was covered in ancient dust.  Everything was dusty, the rocks turning to sand with time.  Our feet were coated with it.

We walked on.  The path was longer, much longer than I had imagined, and there were surprises everywhere along the way.  Another temple ruin, treasury buildings, column remains.   I stopped and had my picture taken sitting on a rock wall overlooking Apollo’s temple.  Some of our group was ahead of me, some behind.  There wasn’t much talking anymore.  It was as if everyone recognized the significance of the place.

At the top of the site, a small path opened out to an impressive stadium–the site of the Pythian Games, which rivaled only the Olympic Games in prestige for ancient Greeks.  The stadium was enormous, flanked on both sides by bleachers carved out of stone.  We stood and stared, overwhelmed by its size, by its detail, and by the fact that it had stood there since the 5th century B.C.   No one spoke.  It was all moremuch more–than we’d expected.

We lingered there at the top.  It seemed too soon to walk down, but in time we did.  And the hike back down felt different.  On the way up, I had questioned and wondered the whole time.  How much further   What else was there to see   But on the way down, I saw the sky and path more clearly.  The view seemed even more beautiful because I thought to look at it rather than wonder where I was going.  But it was also less exciting, less mysterious.  I had an overwhelming desire, the closer I got to the bottom, to turn around and walk the path again, to have the experience anew, to sit on the dusty rocks and wonder and not know.

I stopped at the bottom of the Sacred Way and waited for our group.  I still couldn’t put my finger on what I was feeling.  I only knew that this place had existed for thousands of years–that all these years others had known about it, but I did notand I was grateful to have seen it.  And to think I almost didn’t come. My feet were covered in ancient dust.  I was hot and thirsty, but felt strangely at home.  Elevated, and yet at ease.

And perhaps this was Delphi’s power, I thought.  There was something shockingly simple about the place.  For all its powerful legacy, it was, at its core, elemental.  Rocks, sky, and earth.  A place of mystery and answers.  Of solid rock and unstable ground.  I thought of all the strange vicissitudes of my lifeof anybody’s lifeand felt its connection to this place.  Who of us hasn’t known certainty only to have the ground shift unexpectedly beneath us   And who of us has not been visited, from time to time, by sudden grace or good fortune   A second chance, forgiveness . . .an unplanned trip to Greece.

This was Delphi’s power.  I watched the boys approach on the path.  I turned and looked up the mountain again.  This was indeed a sacred place.  I felt it.

And, like grace itself, completely unexpected.

by Kathy Comstock

Years ago across France one could set a watch according to the ‘vieille fille’. Dressed in black and with laced shoes supporting a stocky or painfully thin frame, she would secure her front door lock, look right then left, and head off. One withering fist hugging her shawl and the other gripping a straw shopping ‘panier‘, her wobbled gait sometimes made one leg appear shorter than the other. Each morning was not without its trip to market stall for luncheon bread or evening soup vegetables. Before mid-day church bells, she prayed at chapel. Her Saturday post office appearance punctuated a week that terminated in full only after Sunday mass at the same time in the same pew listening to the same priest officiate a service she herself could perform. However mundane others might have considered these activities, the ‘vieille fille’ had long before elevated them to personal sacred ritual.

Exuding grand determination, she strutted, stared, and submitted to conversation only with those she trusted. Depending on who else crossed her path, wariness or confusion evinced from eyes filled with memories real and imagined. Stabilizing her day with equal parts order, predictability, and faith, her taut and unassuming ways left this widow or old maid facing her final decades alone. Resisting change dismissively if not with compliance, she assumed her role as part of society’s backstage. Occasionally releasing herself from a carefully guarded interior world, her valiant or vivid recounts provided clarity and texture to those who might care to listen.

Her once taken-for-granted appearances have thinned over the decades, a result of time and this era’s penchant for acknowledging youth. The rare sight of a ‘vieille fille‘ conjures my own faded days and I grow nostalgic for lost opportunities to better understand and appreciate this somber, nearly extinct poster child of anachronism.

Madame from Grenoble was the first and as it turned out only ‘vieille fille’ I had the opportunity to know.

During my 1970s semester abroad in that Alpine town and contrary to fellow students, my friend Rachel and I chose not to rent a room in a restrictive convent school or a pricey hotel. These options seemed to us tailored for the timid or wealthy and we were neither. So, days after our arrival in the strange city, we separated from our colleagues and took to pounding the pavement. An entry in a newspaper advertising two rooms for rent in the same apartment caught our attention. Following directions, we found three high-rise dwellings that had housed the 1968 Olympic athletes. Twenty stories of freshly painted cement walls, plentiful windows, and walk-out balconies oozed luxury in this land stubbornly post-war when it came to creature comforts. We marched up marble stairs through glass doors to a gleaming hallway and finally to the first floor apartment.

As I raised hand to knock, Madame swung open the door.

“Bonjour, mes filles,” she said in a throat-scratched voice.

Mellow hazel eyes watered behind black-rimmed glasses and a smile hinted on pencil-thin lips. Wearing plain skirt, cuffed shirt, and black apron, her thick wide belt both protected and contained a ponderous bust. A crucifix hung around a silver chain at her neck. Silver and brown hair pulled into a tiny bun at the nape of her neck. Her sliver of a mouth absorbed me as she evaluated my brown fake-leather coat over jeans and Rachel’s furry-collared corduroy one. Rachel’s French was better back then so she did the talking which included few words because Madame had things to ask first.

I remember staring past her to the wall mirror and table under which stood an oversized wood trunk decorated with labels from round the worldGreek symbols, French airline tags, stickers in Spanish.

“Vous êtes Américaines?”

Unbeknownst to us at that time, she rented only to Americans, having remained enamored of the Allies saving her city and especially GIs stationed in Grenoble during the war. Ready to get out of the chilly hall, we nodded eagerly. The door shut behind us and she took my elbow.

“Winter approaches,” she said releasing me.  I nodded and smiled, a helpless comportment I had assumed in recent weeks. French barely under my command, the thickly incoherent Alpine constructions contrasted greatly with the speed and clip of Parisian to which I had only recently adjusted. Smiles helped.

Her next question took us aback.  ”Vous êtes catholiques?”

Jewish Rachel shook her head.  ”Juive, moi.  Kathy, elle est catholique.”

To my discomfort, a conspiratorial smile in my direction both singled me out and commenced a dubious association the ramifications of which I was yet to discover. She thought a moment, perhaps about the Jewish half of us, then opened arms and led us to her living room. She indicated what would, à la parochial school, become our assigned seats–a crimson upholstered chair for me and one end of a fine wood-trim couch for Rachel. Madame took a hard-back chair beside the low mahogany chest holding a small black and white television. The fall daylight filtered past sheer linen drapes that would be covered by thick maroon ones come evening.

Administrative details were few and addressed promptlyamount of rent owed, when to pay, choice of payment by check or cash. She led us down the hall. Though Madame did not point out the bathroom, Rachel and I paused to peer past its half-open door. Yellow tub with shower and large sink plus toilet proved wondrous sights after days washing in cold water bidets. Each bedroom had a single bed covered with white Swiss down comforter and walk-out balcony overlooking the snow-tipped Vercors Mountain range. The entire place was clean and free of that sour-damp smell we had encountered at convent schools and, best of all, warmer. We signed up. She led us to the entryway remarking that Americans were her favorite. I gazed at the trunk one more time but was unable to glean hints of her past life. Had she traveled far prior to settling here? Had she relocated from another part of France? Madame revealed only what she wished: she was a retired teacher, long-time resident of the area, and lived alone.

Outside we hugged each other, happy with our find and glad to see the modern appliances in the kitchen and bath. Rachel was ready to move in that instant, to wash her hair once and for all. But we had agreed to wait until the next day.

My mother was overjoyed because my letters assured her I was safe and sound, something that in her mind was impossible to do in such a faraway and foreign place. The letters included lavish description of how Madame was watching over us and making us feel right at home, anything to assuage concern that her daughter risked her life living overseas. Hadn’t I reached adulthood? When would she let go?

This complaint was to repeat itself with Madame, sooner with Rachel than with me. For the time being however we were content to share the apartment with someone who made herself invisible. Or so we thought.

We soon discovered her bedroom was the kitchen, a not uncommon practice amongst area landlords of frugal nature. This ‘kitchen life’ caused lengthy exterior conversations between Rachel and me.

“Rachel, I saw the cot! Everything in that 4 by 10 spacebookcases, a rack of black clothes, her boots! Imagine, constrained within her two bedroom apartment.”

“Figures,” Rachel said with an exasperated sigh.

She seemed more clued in on Madame than me but offered no further explanation. I assumed her knowledge had to do with Rachel’s mother being French, that Rachel was more aware of idiosyncrasies of the culture than me. I did however begin to wonder was Rachel ticked off by Madame’s religious question our first meeting.

Stranger still, Madame never appeared to use the facilities. We thought she might wash in the bathroom when we were at school during the day but there were never any cluesstray hairs, damp towels, toothpaste in the cabinet. As the days progressed, her lifestyle became a topic of imaginings that occupied us while walking to or from campus.

“She washes in the kitchen sink then.”

“Gross. That means she never takes a bath.”

“No bidets in that kitchen from what I can see.”

“Double gross.”

“She doesn’t smell.”

“She’s too loaded down in black. She’s probably never seen herself naked. Takes a sponge to her face and armpits once a week before mass.”

Our American routines of daily shower and regular hair washing soon clashed with Madame’s lack of same.  First however we were to learn about degrees of warmth. One particularly wintry night a few days into our stay, we woke up freezing. I tiptoed in to use the bathroom and found it refrigerator cold. The ceiling vent was closed so I stood on the toilet, jiggled and fought with the tiny metal flap opener. Finally the vent banged open.  Warm air covered my face but weakened quickly. It was certainly not enough to fill the hallway down to our bedrooms. Back with Rachel, who moaned over this unanticipated discomfort, we figured Madame turned the heat completely off.

“Typical French. They barely use utilities, especially at night. Too expensive.”

“But we’re freezing!� We should say something tomorrow,” I suggested, already forming the phrases in my head for fear Rachel would refuse.

The next day we figured we’d catch her unaware when she exited to market. In proper wool coat and gripping straw panier, she halted and gave a long stare.

“Pas d’école aujourd’hui, Mesdemoiselles?” (no school today?) she asked.

In deferentially formal French I’d not yet heard from my friend, Rachel explained that we were very cold the night before and could the heat have been turned off.

For perhaps ten seconds she stared past us then promptly turned and left the apartment.

“What was that?” I asked, shaking from nerves or the cold I wasn’t sure.

Rachel rolled eyes, a surly look deepening behind them. She waved her hand. “Let’s go.”

“But you were very polite! Why doesn’t she say something?”

With a shrug, she said, “The old bag will do exactly what she wants.”

We decided to outsmart her.  Or so we thought. During one of my nightly visits I discovered that the vent, open prior to my retiring, was shut tight. Wobbling again on the toilet seat I stretched and threw the vent latch to heat that quickly evaporated into the cool air like the last time. It did no good. Subsequent nights without fail Madame managed to get in there to close it. So I took it upon myself to open it afterwards, however menial the results.

Mornings she never brought the fact up that the vent was open nor did she admit to closing it sometime during the night. Like a dysfunctional family, we never raised the topic. The charade continued for weeks. Every now and then when away from the place, Rachel and I giggled uncontrolled but usually the incident was cause for annoyed recall.

As opposed to my dry thick curls, Rachel’s longer straight hair required daily washing so she would luxuriate in the bathroom for hours at a time. This indulgence in hot water, however, was nipped in less than a week.

One day when Rachel exited her bath, Madame appeared in the hallway. With broad swipes of her dish towel, she cleared away the steam while announcing, “Pas de grandes toilettes tous les jours, Mademoiselle.” (”No big cleanups each day.”)  Hair whipped up in a white towel, Rachel glared then passed by her in the same way Madame had turned heels on us.

Following protests both to Madame and even more virulent ones behind her back, Rachel ended up defiantly washing her hair whenever Madame was out and even a few times when she was in.  Yet during those times Madame was present, she never chastised Rachel to her face. More dysfunction.

A monastic aura settled about, not unlike that of a strict boarding school. When we compared notes with colleagues living in convent-style rigidity we found the same frigid nights and restrictive rules in place. Madame, we then figured, differed little in mentality from the unbending Catholic nuns, their breed not unknown in the States but here definitely skewed to the more maniacal and stingy persuasion.

When we described Madame to fellow students who were French, they used the term ‘vieilles filles’, widows or old maids who lived alone and who grew increasingly enclosed within their shrinking world. They described women who refused to adjust to a new decade let alone four or five removed from the days when they were young like us and very much less surrounded with what we considered basic necessities like hot water.

“They’re all the same,” one French girl told me. “All in black, cheap as a flea market, and horribly strict.”

Winter settled thick and for days on end sunshine eluded. A penetrating cold left us reluctant to step out of bed let alone outdoors. To boot, we suffered a frigid apartment and minimal use of the bath. Without fail, that vent snapped shut each night. Rachel’s gloom spread to me and together we decried the injustice of paying rent for services we did not receive.

All this did not prevent Madame from encouraging us to speak French with her and inviting us to share an occasional night by the television. Usually she called us around the tube for historical presentations or documentaries on art hailing from eras we barely supported in school let alone for leisure. In our designated seats, she watched along with us. Saint Louis was her favorite but sometimes she allowed the life story of the debauched Louis XIV to air in order, she claimed, that we could appreciate the architectural splendor of Versailles and works of the King’s court painters. We suffered through these evenings but as soon as the show ended, we excused ourselves to our frigid rooms to do ‘homework’. Those prison nights, we bundled up with blankets and sweaters, settled on Rachel’s balcony (furthest from Madame’s kitchen), and puffed away on cigarettes until fingers froze or our supply was exhausted.

Addressing us as “Mesdemoiselles”, she always spoke French. She never wondered over our bored and distracted gazes but continued to recite the affairs of state or some small historical detail about Grenoble, usually finishing with comments like ‘now you can make notes in your journals.’

What I really wanted to note in my journal was the story behind that hall trunk. Ever visible in her entryway, its iron lock and those tags of far-away cities never suffered from a layer of dust or grime. More than once, I came upon her easing a cloth across its finish, reverently touching as though it were a treasure guarding a part of her soul.  Once she caught me staring and hurried to the kitchen, closing the door without a word. Walking to school without Rachel, who took to truancy with more frequency, I embellished my daydreams with romantic tales about Madame and her trunk.

In one, a train porter helps a much younger Madame and her trunk as she arrives in Paris for the very first time. Fresh and energetic, she is receptive to happenstance and executes life according to whim and fancy rather than protocol and prayer. She is also stunning with brown hair rolled into smart chignon and suit tailored to match her subtle voluptuousness. The war has turned in the Allies’ favor and Paris spills with English-speaking soldiers. Madame meets an American, some Midwestern salt of the earth blonde who readily displays his affections. They fall in love. The trunk is moved to the port of Le Havre in preparation for the sea voyage and eventual nuptials in the States. But the man never joins her. Madame waits for days at a port-side hotel, praying for his arrival but gradually realizes her dreams are dashed. She finally returns to cold gray Grenoble with her trunk.

Plots and climaxes differed depending on the day, my state of mind, and the nearness in time of that vent cruelly slapping shut during the night. Still, and in spite of Rachel having long before written her off, I maintained she was more than what she displayed.

Those evenings she gathered us around her TV to watch dull shows, I would steal glances when she wasn’t aware and wish for her to help me with my daydreams. Was there an American who never made it back to claim you? Some GI who wrote letters but failed to follow through?  Or a handsome Resistance fighter you sheltered for a week?  Did you ever know secure romantic love or did you forever deny it in the name of a ruined heart and too many tears?  As she pressed apron flat on her lap and Rachel inspected polished nails, I snuck peeks at Madame’s smooth sagging skin and fluid regard, begging my bolder side to ask, “Do those stickers represent places where you left pieces of your heart?” “Did he abandon you or did you say no thank you?” “Do you cherish a memory or have they really all gone cold like this apartment?”

When Nixon pulled the U. S. off the gold standard, Americans abroad found that banks would not cash their travelers’ checks. Thrown into the same boat, Rachel and I wondered how we could get funds. To our astonishment, Madame asked us to meet with her in her living room and offered to defer rent payments for a month in hopes the matter would clear by then. We thanked her and again asked about the heat. In the same ways as before, her face blanched. She stood and left the room with nary a nod about the matter.

We stayed away with increasing frequency, even spending nights at convents with friends rather than deal with the flipping vent or Madame’s commentaries on ancient history or current events. One night, we met four French guys who invited us to go dancing. In a small Peugeot we climbed one of the surrounding mountains to a disco where we danced into the wee hours, sneaking back into Madame’s at 3 AM with plans to skip school the next day.

This she did not let pass.

The next morning she entered my room without knocking, shook me awake, and said, “I must speak with you, Mademoiselle, about a Catholic matter.”

Shocked and rubbing sleep from my eyes, I sat up, pulled the covers near, and tried to suppress shivers.

“Where were you last night?” she asked, pacing the room.

Without Rachel, I collapsed under her guilt-producing stare, eyes that penetrated mine with every inch the crabby accusing nun I knew in grade school. Her clothing even smelled of a combination of moth balls and soap like those stateside women of the cloth.

“Dancing,” I whispered. Recalling our fun night, a slow smile spread and I was about to describe more when she snorted.

“You will be attacked staying out that late. You were not with reputable people then.”

“They were students like us,” I said.

“God have mercy on you. If you ever return to this apartment after midnight again, there will be trouble. Please pass the word on to your Jewish friend.”

She made for the door then turned, paused to stare back, her thin line mouth set tight.

“How can you live as you do, with no routine each day?” she asked.

Heat fired up my spine. Under the covers my ankles locked tense so much so they hurt. My breathing went shallow. For all my years of ‘Catholic’, no one had ever wished me God’s mercy. After she closed the door and marched away, I remained a statue in bed until after her departure to market. Hurrying to Rachel’s room, I woke her and babbled over what happened.

Rachel lay against the pillows, groggy but with the pronounced deadpan look she had taken to wearing around Madame, set even more firmly after I mentioned the ‘Jewish friend’ part.

“Fuckin’ bitch. What the hell did she mean ‘a Catholic matter’?” she asked.

Easing to the balcony window, she opened it then stuffed a towel into the crack at the bottom of her closed door. Lighting up a Gaulois cigarette she puffed away. I took one too. We remained like that all morning, wondering what gene-mangled crone spirit inhabited these ‘vieilles filles’. Not surprisingly, other than Madame’s ability to produce guilt in me–a sure connection to her cousins of the cloth back home–we were at a loss to conclude on what a ‘Catholic matter’ meant.

In addition to our school and convent companions, we became friends with two women students next door who rented an apartment like ours but ‘Madame free’. At increasing intervals, we joined the company of these fellow Americans. When one took off to travel, the other asked us if we would like to rent the empty bedroom.

It took Rachel one second to make up her mind. For me a longer time elapsed when I reflected on how we could ever extract ourselves from Madame and her expectation that we would be there until May. Something told me she held fast to a deal and that this would hit her hard. In spite of her stingy ways, I could not reconcile walking out on her. Rachel whined that I was too guilt-ridden, to get over it. This I could not dispute as I too wished to continue our friendship with the girls next door who had French-speaking friends with whom my language skills improved daily. I relented. We prepared our speech for Madame.

Rachel would deliver it as I had taken mute with fear of reprisal from my mother who would be disappointed I was no longer under Madame’s care. She had even sent Madame a Christmas card.

We asked for time with her the next day. Settled in her parlor, each in our designated chairs, Rachel began. “After much reflection, we have decided to move next door.”

Madame stared that stare then slipped back into herself, her non-committal mask deepening across her eyes and jaw.

In a hard cold tone she asked, “When?”

“As soon as possible,” Rachel said, with clarity but downcast. I kept my eyes on the floor.

Madame stood and went to the kitchen. Rattled pans.

The day we left, she remained in the kitchen. Rachel bolted but I asked Madame if she wanted to inspect the rooms. Refusing to emerge from her galley space, she did not answer me. A day or two later, I ran into the ‘vieille fille’ who accompanied Madame to daily market.

Snug together in the narrow mailbox space, she could hardly avoid me. She hesitated then whispered, “Madame will never rent to Americans again, you know.”

My questioning eyes did not prompt further explanation on her part and the woman left shaking her head and muttering. For hours after, I couldn’t let go the guilt that succeeded in causing my stomach to throb. I tried to deny that we had been terrible to Madame, in spite of her weirdness over the heat, but succeeded only in feeling rotten about the whole event.  Rachel called me a wimp.

By the next week we were well installed next door. Rachel had already forgotten Madame and even made faces behind her back when we happened to see her in the stairwell. I tried to be polite and say hello but apparently our decision had turned her forever against us. She never acknowledged the hello and went out of her way to avoid us with her eyes and in her body language.

Once school ended, I said good-bye to my friends and left Grenoble to venture elsewhere on my own. The Riviera and especially Nice with her warm breezes, aquamarine Mediterranean, and Latin pace captivated my heart for longer than planned and also helped me soften the recall of raw unforgiving Grenoble and even our unfortunate turn with Madame. But Nice had ‘vieilles filles’ too. No thick winter coats and blue-gray regards here. These thin, brittle women protected angel white hair with sheer black veils and deftly managed tourists and sidewalk bustle all the while studying onlookers like me with unabashed truffle black eyes. Stooped, ever wary, trundling along with their baskets, they brought me to a melancholy place woven in with the sad end to our stay with Madame and a notion of what life becomes with age. These elderly women had become a clique of sorts, joined through religion and aloneness to a place that, for some perhaps, was acceptable if not downright better than the life they knew with youth. At least each day offered minimal upset to their routines.

Much of this portrait remains conjecture though. Save Madame, I never talked with another ‘vieille fille’.

In 2004, I returned to Nice and immediately noticed the absence of ‘vieilles filles’. Elderly women wore smart tailored suits or pastel spring dresses, enhanced their features with makeup, and kept white hair short and perfectly coiffed or twisted into war-era romantic buns. Eyes sparkling, they walked without stoop or burdening market basket having likely promised themselves years before that they would never turn into those black-clad stumpy women of another age.

Madame has crossed the one hundred year mark or is probably dead as are, I suppose, most of her sisters. Perhaps down a Corsican mountain-side or from shadows of interior France, her kind still emerges into the cool dusk. Raising black shawl to protect opaque cheeks, she heads to market. After each meager purchase, she counts her pennies. Nodding good-day to the merchant, she retraces steps down a dirt road, slowly slowly returning to the home she will die in, disappearing for another day back to her shelter, her habits, her quiet. Her Catholic matters.

by Cheryn Flanagan

Deep down I knew I didn’t belong there-I wasn’t at the monastery to live an ascetic life, gain a greater spiritual understanding of the world, or to learn Gung Fu (known to us in the West as Kung Fu). I was simply there because I thought it would make a cool story, and elicit looks of awe and jealousy when I told my friends back home, “Why yes, I am familiar with the martial arts…I studied the Shaolin style when I was in China.”

I learned of the Buddhist monastery from a girl I met at Tiger Leaping Gorge. “This place,” she told me, “is authentic…” But, she warned, “no one speaks English and it’s, well, kind of rustic.” No electricity or hot water, outdoor toilets full of maggots, and rock hard beds. She said it was a true experience of monastic life, and then came the magic words: “You can study Gung Fu with Shaolin trained monks.”

Located in forested mountains on the outskirts of Dali in China’s Yunnan Province, she told me the Wu Wei temple is the kind of place passed on only by word of mouth. What a find! I could impress my friends back home when I told them, “I had the inside track…hardly anyone knows about the place.” But, I would come to find out, a monastery has no room for egotistic fantasies, especially when they revolve around finding the ultimate cocktail party story.

I arrived in the afternoon. Drizzle from low-hanging clouds softened the boundary between the monastery’s buildings and woodland beyond. I was probably only a handful of miles from town, but it felt as if I was in the middle of nowhere…beyond corn fields that doubled as a cemetery and disconnected from civilization-the monastery had no phone lines, power lines, or a common language. My journey there was fairly easy, certainly less grueling than the others who’d arrived by horseback. I came by cab and since most people in Dali don’t know where the Wu Wei temple is, the effort was all in finding a driver who knew the place.

Those who arrived by horseback were told it was the only way in. Although they were perturbed when learning they actually could have come by taxi instead of riding up mountains on the uncomfortable, slow, and shifting saddles of horses-I wished that I, too, had been swindled into traveling in such a spectacularly old-fashioned way. It would have only complemented the story I had brewing in mind, one full of romantic images that should accompany an arrival to a forgotten monastery in the mountains.

And it was everything I imagined a Gung Fu monastery should be, with all the requisite cinematic scenes from movies-a pleasant compound of wooden buildings painted red, with umber tiled rooftops and lanterns hanging from the eaves; decorative designs, painted gold, were carved into blackened doors. The buildings, lined with shadowy rooms, wrapped around a small leafy garden with an old fountain and a stone pathway that led to a temple flanked by huge gong bells. Monks with shaven heads wearing gray pantaloons and tunics with Mandarin collars walked like whispers in the shadows.

It was only later that I let the fantasy image give way to the true appearance of the place: dilapidated, unkempt, and friendless. The garden was overgrown, its stone pathway broken and dangerous; the fountain was broken and jury-rigged with a plastic bottle to keep the water bubbling; and the rooms around the courtyard were filled with dusty, derelict piles of odds-and-ends, from 6-foot swords to broken chairs from decades long forgotten. And the monks…they were disinterested in our presence. They ignored us for hours upon arrival, leaving us alone with our thoughts of neglect as our rears grew numb on the miniature wooden benches we were appointed to with nothing but a thermos of hot water as way of greeting. An uneasy feeling began to blossom in my heart.

I found little in common with the others who joined me in the courtyard that first afternoon: 2 Israeli men who’d been studying Gung Fu elsewhere in China for about a month; a Japanese fellow who spoke little English; and a French man who’d been on the road for more than a year and called himself Peter, although his name was Pierre-he’d come with a Brazilian accomplice who didn’t plan on staying because of his “issues with authority.” He left shortly after he’d arrived, having come only to sightsee.

Stories circulated around the group. Pierre said we wouldn’t be able to bend over to touch our knees by the next day. He’d heard about the rigors of Gung Fu training: 6 hours of exercise every day for one week. I shared what I knew from the girl who told me about the place-that we’d be up at 6:30 a.m. to walk with the monks to a river and return, uphill, carrying rocks on our heads. The Israelis, who had previous experience, looked upon us with the lofty air of those who know something you don’t-they were focused on improving their moves.

Suddenly, an American named Chris entered the compound with all the aplomb and commotion of a long lost son. Eventually we learned he’d studied at this monastery before, spoke fluent Mandarin, and knew all the monks on a first name basis. After a while, Chris approached our group, and bestowed upon us an enigmatic warning, “It’s a good environment to study Gung Fu,” he said, and then after a cryptic pause, “…I’ve chosen my words carefully.” Although his veiled advice put me on edge, we were lucky that Chris arrived; he spoke English. “They’ll show you to your rooms…eventually,” he offered apologetically, and then disappeared.

Another scene erupted as the Master entered the compound, a man who would come to govern every move we made but with whom we had little contact. When he arrived, a thunderstorm broke overhead. An impressive entrance, I thought, and in this small moment my spirits were lifted with the excitement that surrounded him, as young monks of no more than 8 years bowed and took his hands. A smiling face, a barely discernible nod in our direction, and then he was gone, robes trailing the back of his sandaled feet as he moved beyond us without so much as a word.

Time passed and we continued to be ignored. I drifted off into my own world, contemplating an inconsequential existence at the monastery. Watching dusk approach the curved eaves of the temple, I started to pity myself, feeling alone and isolated and tormented by the thought of the week ahead. The boys were eventually shown to their rooms. I, however, was an afterthought. After the dinner bell was rung and the boys had gathered in the dining hall, I was finally led to a rejected building, and up a rickety ladder to a dim and spartan room with two hard beds and cloudy windows overlooking the garden and temple beyond.

I dropped my backpack and joined the other students in the murky concrete hall that doubled as the kitchen. We crowded around a low wooden table upon tiny stools. And while all the monks were there with us, sitting together at several adjoining tables, we waited in silence, taking our cue not to talk from their soundless and patient example. I looked around at the curious faces of my companions, which quickly faded to compliance-and in that moment, when their expressions changed, it was if we’d been tamed. No longer did we bother to question what was going on because we knew our questions could not easily be answered. After some time, the Master entered and took his seat-the silence broke, and bowls overflowing with rice, boiled cabbage, shredded potatoes, and tofu filled the tables.

Chris initiated us to the complex set of rules and hierarchies that govern the monastery. No one may eat until the Shifu, or Master, has taken his first bite and everyone must recite the words “Omito-Fu” (which sound like ah-me-to-fu) before and after every meal, and upon every greeting. Chris told us that the monks practice Pure Land Buddhism, a branch of the Mahayana tradition in which believers aspire to occupy a Land of Bliss, where one gains enlightenment rather than in Nirvana. Pure Land combines the discipline of one’s mind with ardent devotion to a Buddha named Amitabha, which explains the repetitive chanting of the phrase, “Omito-Fo,” meaning, “Homage to the Buddha of Boundless Compassion and Wisdom.”

Chris informed us we had to eat everything in our bowl before we could leave the table. This was in response to the monks’ spirited reaction when one of the Israelis attempted to excuse himself with 5 grains of rice left uneaten. Chris told us stories about students from previous years who’d dropped food on the ground and were ordered to eat from the floor, who spilled soup on the table and had to wipe it back into their bowl and finish it, or who’d stood head to head with the Shifu on the matter, only to find themselves sitting in the dining room after hours, long past dark, over a few bites of boiled cabbage.

And going head to head with the Shifu, I might add, is unwise considering he is a master of Gung Fu and, according to Chris, isn’t shy with administering discipline when necessary-even when it concerns Western Gung Fu students and those, like myself, posing as such. I decided to stick to the rules. This was our last piece of advice from Chris-I presume he wanted to put as much distance between our naive group of interlopers and himself, a bona fide, Mandarin-speaking Gung Fu practitioner who hadn’t the time to baby sit a helpless bunch of babies.

After dinner, we were called to a candle lit room to pay for our stay ($50.00 for the week) and sign a document that felt more like a vow than a registration form. A laminated sheet of rules, printed in broken English, was passed out. It stated, “This is not a hotel…” and went on to explain that we have come to a working monastery to study martial arts and work hard every day. We were asked to devote ourselves to this purpose for the full week and it was suggested that if we couldn’t fulfill the obligation, we should leave…immediately. It felt as if this last line was written just for me, or people like me, people who came for the cocktail story rather than a truer purpose…and it troubled me. In addition to the rules Chris told us about, there was an odd collection of admonitions:

- We must store our food bowl and chopsticks in our rooms, and bring them with us to each meal

- There is no smoking, drinking, drugs, or playing cards allowed

- We must keep garbage in our room and take it with us when we leave

- Men and women are not to enter the others’ building and should have no physical contact

- We must stay in the locked temple compound at night

- We should not wear sandals or open shoes at night because of poisonous snakes

The daily schedule was also listed:

6:30 - 8:00 am = morning exercise

8:00 - 9:00 am = breakfast

9:00 - 12:00 pm = training

12:00 - 1:00 pm = lunch

Free time until 4 pm

4:00 - 6:00 pm = training

6:00 - 7:00 pm = dinner

Free time until bedtime (note: with no electricity, bedtime comes just after dinner)

Later, in my room, with nothing but the light from a single, skinny flame from a candle stub left behind by some other inhabitant, I got ready for bed hoping I would not have to make the 5-minute trek to the maggot-ridden toilets in a forest full of poisonous snakes in the middle of the night (the battery in my flash light immediately died on arrival at the monastery). I drifted into a restless sleep to the sound of the monks chanting to a clashing gong, wondering if my choice to come to the monastery was a terrible mistake.

In the morning, one of us was gone.

He departed in the muted light of sunrise without saying goodbye. Like many of the others, I’d woken late, too late to join the monks for their journey to carry river rocks back to the temple on their heads (and I was disappointed for this, because in my mind, this was to be an interesting turning point in the story I would impress my friends with: one where I’d come to recognize the benefits of self-inflicted travail and the ensuing misery that magically turns into an earth-shattering awareness of something bigger than one’s self).

But I rose early enough to see the Japanese student disappear into the cloistering mist that lay like an ocean beyond the walls of the compound. His departure only added to my state of unease. Such departures break the strength of individuals who, having come together by chance, will carry on if only for the sake of appearances-no one likes to be the first when it comes to quitting. His retreat was not a good sign-he made it easier for the rest of us. More specifically, he made it easier for me. I, too, had an impulse to flee. Secretly, I was envious of him.

But it was too early to quit. I’d only spent one night there and training hadn’t even started. Over breakfast, the rest of us discussed his departure with quiet, furtive voices.

“How do you suppose he’s getting back to town?”

“Walking.”

“Why do you think he left?”

“Take a look around.”

There were rats scurrying about in the shadows. The only water for showering was freezing cold-not an attractive proposition in the chilly May temperatures…besides that, the communal shower room was devoid of soap and full of huge spiders and muddy floors and walls. The only drinking water available was boiled for tea and steaming hot, and the monks and women who worked at the monastery continued to ignore us.

Several days passed…days full of Gong Fu training punctuated only by a repetitive schedule of increasingly similar meals and the ongoing feeling of being an outsider. My fantasies of cocktail party fodder started to fade-my listeners’ sighs of admiration were no longer audible when I would say, “It was a strict vegetarian diet of cabbage and potatoes, but they used interesting spices and besides, meat was but a tiny sacrifice.”

Even within my small group of compatriots I found no company-there were too many opportunities to do or say something wrong that we often sat together in silence at meals and during free time, stock-still for the fear of performing some faux pas that would fan the monks’ seeming distaste for us-or worse-punishment delivered in the form of an acrobatic, flying kick delivered from the Shifu. We made ourselves invisible and inoffensive, and in doing so, further isolated ourselves from any normal sort of existence.

My memories of Gung Fu instruction consist of this: the training area in a dilapidated temple under the clouds of moody, rainy days; the broken brick floor that pressed painfully into my back in a dozen different directions as I lay upon it breathless and despondent from endless rounds of sit-ups; the walls lined with chipped bigger-than-life-sized statues of Buddha that gazed, serenely, into empty space because they did not have to do Gung Fu; the silhouettes of monks against the huge wooden temple doors that opened to a clinging mist that had come to be so familiar to me in China.

They were bored with us, the monks-we were unable to understand our training that came in the form of a frustrated foreign tongue, or successfully complete the tasks involved. After the first few sessions of faking our way through rotating kicks and flying somersaults (I could barely do one on the ground), the monks began to give us more breaks, and eventually, forgot us altogether after subjecting us to a never-ending “warm up” round of push-ups and lunging squats.

The only thing I could rely upon was the ringing of the dinner bell, meals spent in strained silence, and that at night, I would barely be able to reach my room up the steep flight of stairs, upon which my sore muscles cramped and twitched and seized with each step. I was lonely, especially as the only female in our group, but too tired to talk to anyone even if I’d had a roommate. I wasn’t learning anything, I’d tired of the repetitious vegetarian meals, and I’d become increasingly ambivalent about living in a real monastery-the true travel experience that would make me the interesting person at a party back home. It was worlds apart from the made-for-tourist imitations that I’d always sought to escape, but I wondered what the point of it was-and even if I could discover it, I mused, was the story even worth it? I was disappointed with myself…disappointed that I couldn’t look beyond my discomfort to appreciate the experience. I wondered: what the hell am I doing here?

And then, on a morning like the first, another of us decided to leave. I’d woken to the optimistic songs of birds and the sound of vegetables being chopped; the sun lit the sky for the first time in days; the mellifluous sound of monks chanting morning prayers drifted with the breeze and roosters announced the start of a new day. A new day, I thought. Perhaps I could carry on. But with the news of another departure, my conviction faltered. I was miserable and dirty and sore; my heart was not in it and after fighting with myself about the principles of self-discipline and commitment, I gave in to weakness; I decided to leave. Once the decision was made, there was no turning back. I didn’t want to fail yet again.

I retreated quietly, embarrassed, hating that I didn’t finish what I started. I hoisted my pack upon my back, wishing I were invisible, with aching muscles quivering under the weight of my pack. I cast my eyes upon a nun-her bald head gleaming under an errant beam of sun, her white robes resting quietly in folds as she sat motionless upon a small wooden bench, the same one I occupied upon arrival. A troop of fat, annoying black flies wheeled around her head, but she took no notice. She was at peace. She looked happy.

As I watched her, time slowed and motion stopped-and then came the “ah ha” moment. The answer to all my questions and discomfort, it seemed, was to not care about them in the first place. Like the nun ignoring the flies in orbit around her face (she didn’t lift a finger to shoo them away), serenity is achieved by just not giving a shit. I smiled at the nun, she nodded her head in reply, and I walked into the wet forest unable to shake her image from my mind. Perhaps I should go back, I mused, and try again with my newfound wisdom…but no, I didn’t belong there.

“There is a measure of wisdom that resides in defeat,” I imagined telling my friends back home, “…and I learned that at the Wu Wei temple, while studying Gung Fu with Shaolin trained monks.”