Things I Did in Bills
Part 1: Not Ruining the Girlfriend's Birthday
by Charles Graeber
There’s a long version of this story, but who needs it?
Suffice to say, the short version, is that the ur-romantic, intricately-planned (and punishingly expensive) birthday surprise I had arranged for my girlfriend Gabrielle- the fulfillment of my 2 - year old promise to get her passport stamped by the time she turned 30 - turned out instead to be the birthday surprise, at the gate, that my passport had expired and we were done, the end, no flights, refunds or options.
This, after my numerous and subtle lectures on the topic of “how one travels.” There would be no hair driers. No wheeled luggage. I’d been writing about my learned and exotic travels for half my life. “We” pack light. “We” carry our own bag. And sometimes, “We” forget that passports expire every decade.
My first reaction was to sweat through my shirt. Then to root through my deep pockets for a handkerchief, and have a small breakdown in the JFK International Terminal. I couldn't have been more contrite. It was Gabrielle’s 30th birthday, that second. She couldn't take more time off, this was the vacation. I mopped my face and pulled our printed itinerary from my pocket (‘we’ always travel with big pockets). She was excited about the destination, shattered not to go. I begged Gabrielle to go without me. She agreed. Then we decided it was unwise (it was). Then we re-shouldered our beach bags and shuffled back outside into the decidedly non-tropic air of Queens in January.
As it happens, we were able to find an (illegal) taxi from the departures gate. The trunk wouldn't close, so it was flapping and slamming for the entire 45 minutes I emailed and canceled every plan I'd made and tried to get at least half my money back (no dice). So, plan B, we walked on water, told our stories to guards, attendants, information booth ladies, and serious men behind bulletproof glass and, true miracle now, by 12:05 pm I was holding a brand new passport. So, Plan C.
It’s one of those NY moments: only one taxi on the street, strangers crawling into it. Gabrielle (in a personality shift I can only compare to the strength of the mother lifting a Volkswagen off her baby) tells the girls it's her birthday, we need this cab. She doesn’t wait for the answer and we're in- re-altering flights, plans, hotels, rides, cakes, and even work schedules by multiple cell phones, then running to the gate to talk our way onto a standby flight (which had previously not existed) to Puerto Rico, then a standby connection to the north of St. Lucia, where a nice guy and his daughter drove us 1.5 hours across the volcano to the former French Colonial capital-turned wee fishing village of Soufriere, to arrive, at 11:50 pm, at a little room at the beach, sleep the evening then move to my intended spot, in a tree house in the mountains overlooking the great Pitons (which rise in tandem from the sea like some geological Jane Mansfeild-esque brazier), with fine porches and colonial fittings and canopy beds on every floor, and a little private pool and yet another deck and Gabrielle occasionally coming over all giddy holding some new lizard or feral cat or goat baby or giant poisonous beetle. Anyway, it wasn't my plan, I wanted us to travel more first, I wanted to prepare, buy a cracker jack ring at the very least- but she was so good-natured about the whole thing, despite my massive failure and her never having been outside the US in her life that I thought, well, I won't do any better than this, so I asked her if she wanted to marry me and she said ‘Definitely’.
At which point- short version- ‘we’ jumped in the water and went out to raise hell in the rum shacks of Friday night Soufrierre, where, it turns out, much hell may be raised and where, turns out, they love both Calypso and, bizarrely, Tammy Wynette. Not kidding.
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Charles Graeber is a National Magazine Award-nominated writer and Contributing Editor for Wired and National Geographic Adventure magazines. He has also written for The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The New York Times, GQ, Vogue, Outside Magazine, Men's Journal, Boston, among others. His first book, a personal true crime account of a medical serial killer, will be published in Spring 2011. |