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Travel Advisor
Reservations, please
Our travel expert gives advice on touring Arizona's Indian reservations, crossing the Rockies by train and poking around Savannah and Charleston.
By Donald D. Groff
[11/04/99]

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In Gabon, a disenchanted journalist embarks on a hallucinogenic tribal rite.
By Daniel Pinchbeck
[11/03/99]

Out of the Blue
The agony of the long-distance commuter
For some flight attendants, three airports and 2,500 miles isn't a major trip -- it's a normal journey to work.
By Elliott Neal Hester
[11/02/99]

Pilgrim of the dead
To get a real dose of the meaning behind Halloween, visit the bone chapels of Europe.
By Summer McStravick
[10/30/99]

Wanderlust
Turning Parisienne
In Paris for our fifth anniversary, all I could think was: What's so seductive about French women? And how can I become one?
By J.A. Getzlaff
[10/29/99]

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Ireland went straight to my head and I wanted desperately to make myself belong. With John, I thought I did. The student union was hung with a thick web of smoke, and the windows were fogged over from body heat. We sat at the bar, both clutching a Guinness, our bodies turned toward the large screen at the front of the room. Packy Bonner and "the lads" were playing Spain to qualify for the World Cup. I was wedged between Irish college students, my lectures completely forgotten. Ireland scored with three minutes remaining and the place erupted. Everyone jumped up with a roar, sloshing beer as they hugged the body, any body, next to them. John downed his pint, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, kissed me hard and nodded toward the door. His mother had gotten us tickets to the Gate Theatre in Dublin and we had plans to hitchhike in. As we hurried across campus, another roar spilled from the union. I was flushed and excited and I wanted us to return to the crowded pub. I had become one of them, if only temporarily, and leaving was like breaking a spell.

But then we were at the Gate Theatre watching "Twelfth Night," a Joe Dowling interpretation set in the 1930s. Although the setting had changed, the ending did not. As with all of Shakespeare's romantic comedies, everyone ended up with his or her true love. It was just that simple -- love prevailed and everyone was happy. It was just that simple.

Coming home that night, John and I sat on the top of a green double-decker bus, the 67a, which took the long way home through Leixlip. As the bus careered through the darkness, large old trees suddenly loomed and scraped their branches against the bus windows as if trying to claw their way in. In the top of the bus we swayed and rocked as it barreled through the twists of that narrow road. It felt like a carnival ride, exhilarating and terrifying, but without the promise of a simple ending. It was a feeling I became accustomed to that year with John.

In Ireland it seemed as if I never slept. I nearly gave up attending lectures, but still felt full with the things I was learning.

In the middle of the night, side by side in the bed, John read Yeats to me and explained the Celtic references, the myths I did not know. "The Song of the Wandering Angus" was my favorite because of this line: "I went into the wood/because a fire was in my head." This was how I felt those days, as if I had a fire in my head. When he read "Adam's Rib" I imagined myself as Maude Gonne sitting in my garden at Coole, calling W.B. Yeats "Willy."

As John read, I would trace the sparse, black hairs on his chest, the two splotchy, brown scars: a result of a childhood fall from a slide.

At dawn, I would go home, smug and full with happiness. Walking with long, sure steps, I'd hum "Rare Ol' Times" as his flat grew smaller behind me. Sparkling dew hung like a halo over the hedgerows. I knew his wounds, I would think, and felt sure there was nothing more than this, this sharing of secrets.

But this is when you should be careful. When you have given into trust and love so completely you no longer own yourself entirely. This is when the other person could suddenly steal off when you least expect it, taking a piece of you with him.

All the men who have ever left me have done it in the same way -- they haven't. They have hedged and hinted, undermining my confidence, until the only way I could preserve my self-respect was to leave them, something that I, for many years, didn't have the guts to do. But John was the first one, the first time, and I didn't know how to interpret the signs. I wasn't willing to see them.

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