I hear him before I see him. The engine revs and then he brakes suddenly so that the tires of the company car screech on the freshly-swept marble driveway. Ram sees me sitting on the marble steps next to security (no matter which hotel I'm at, he knows where to look for me). We make eye contact and I can see him giggle as I let out a laugh that echoes off the marble surrounding me. I grab my bag and sprint to the car before the hotel doorman can open the car door for me. The staff at The Lalit doesn't know me yet, and I don't feel like breaking them in because I'm moving to the Marriott in four days anyway, but Ram ji knows better than to try to open the door for me anymore. It took over 30 hours all said and done for me to get to the hotel, about 45 minutes to put my suitcase down and shower, and in 10 minutes I'll be in the office again. I'm home.
Follow your heart. I say "follow your heart" so much at work that people make fun of me about it. It started as a sarcastic response to people not following directions. Oh, the report is wrong? Well, follow your heart, I guess. But it morphed into meaning "you choose, you be in charge this time. I don't need to explain this to you. There's no right or wrong answer. Just follow your heart.
I celebrated my birthday a little early while I was in India. They bought me a heart-shaped cake.
Hospitality in India makes "southern hospitality" look like garbage. "Guests are gods" is a frequent saying that I hear and while it makes me feel icky, I try to let strangers and friends alike take care of me in a way that is sweet but entirely excessive. I can't drive. I can't speak the language. I'm not allowed to go anywhere by myself. I can't order a simple beer at the hotel bar without having it brought to me on a tray for no reason and presented with great pomp and circumstance, but you know what I can do? I can keep housekeeping out of my room. And they hate it. They catch me in the hallway and ask if everything is okay (it is) if I need more towels (I don't) or if I need my minibar restocked (I do, but I just need one day where I have to go get my own bottled water from downstairs, so no, thank you.) The constant aim to please is nice but the complete lack of independence is suffocating. And one time the housekeeper cleaned out my hairbrush and I still don't know how I feel about that, to be honest.
I threw the bartenders for a huge loop the second time I stayed in Jaipur. I cleared our empty glasses from the table and brought them inside while I was getting another round and they panicked. I tried explaining that I used to bartend and it's no big deal, but they tried explaining that it's their job and they are happy to serve and I don't think we got anywhere, really. I made my Indian Coworkers-Turned-Brothers explain in Hindi that I don't want a glass with my bottled beer, I don't need the over the top service, I just want to have a few drinks with friends and relax. It went okay. Two days later I was at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same single beer and he brought it to me with a glass but sheepishly said, "Boss is watching, ma'am. I must bring glass but please don't use if you don't want to."
Unlearning things is hard, I get it. Especially for a bartender.
Two more days after that, I was sitting outside on the patio (mind you this was back in January, so not heatstroke weather yet, but still warm) and I watched this couple totally berate my favorite Baby Bartender because the champagne glasses weren't chilled enough. Listen, I don't care how hard you chill glasses, they have about 45 seconds OUTSIDE in INDIA before they are melting off the edge of the table, Dali style. But this guy didn't seem to get that. And he was rude to the bartender (not cool) and then was a complete dick and lied about the bartender being rude when the manager came over. I. Lost. My. Shit. Between my limited Hindi and the manager's broken English, I think we both understood that The Couple were awful people and Baby Bartender was "reprimanded" for appearances but let's all calm down and not lose our shit over hot champagne flutes.
Four months later I was back at the same hotel with the same staff and I ordered the same beer and The Manager proudly brought it to me WITHOUT a glass and smiled. "The way you like. We remember." And I was home.
We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember.
Neither one of my parents live in a house where I was raised anymore, but I somehow live in the house I "grew up" in. It's the only house I've ever known for my whole life. It was Grandma's. Then it was Grandad's. Now it is Uncle's, but for a little while longer, it is mine. It is the place that I made a home for two sweet little boys and all that's left of them are a hole in a wall from doorknob during an intense game of hide-and-seek and one orange hula hoop. I've painted and repainted rooms. I've moved furniture and housed different kinds of orphans. And it's weird to live in a place that is home and used to be my home and very shortly will never be home again. But when I get here after long work trips or fun trips or fun work trips, it is nice to be home. (For about three days, and then I get antsy.)
Germany was the coldest. We'd just come from India, and snow fell onto my messy airplane hair as we walked into the hotel. My dad always tells this funny story about being stationed in Germany and how the windows open out and not up, so I was able to tell my Bestie who loves the cold how to let the snow into his hotel room and I swear to God I've never felt so useful.
Germany was the coldest for other reasons, darker reasons. I've tried to write about them since they happened, failing miserably each time. Here's the gist: I desperately wanted to visit a WWII concentration camp memorial site. I had NO FUCKING CLUE how traumatic it would be, but I knew I wanted to go. Bestie obliged. I think we both felt a duty to go, an obligation to the past but also an acknowledgment of our present, a window of what happens when we forget that those who look or sound or love differently than us are still human beings despite our differences.
For as long as we could, we walked around Neuengamme on the self-guided tour and Bestie watched as my empathy shattered into a thousand teardrops. He stood on the second story of the "welcome center" as I knelt on the first floor staring and weeping at the banners of names that stretched from floor to ceiling and grew exponentially as the years of the war waged on. We looked at the Book of the Dead. We saw the kilns where clay was baked into bricks and the carts that carried those bricks to the banks of the Elbe river. We read about how those kilns and carts later held only bodies.
Bestie is without a doubt one of the closest people to me and I swear to God or whatever semblance of a higher power that I felt no presence of that day, I have never been so far away from someone right goddamn next to me. We looked at each other occasionally, pointing out placards or ducking around a crumbled stone wall to reveal some new monument to tragedy. We walked and read and cried and whispered. I stared at the water for a long time. The wind was creepy. There was no one there but us. We drove through a thriving neighborhood to get there. We traveled so far to get there.
We can learn. We can unlearn. We can remember.
Bestie and I often tell the fun story of driving down the autobahn at 200+ km/hr in a BMW i8 (it's a funny story how we even got that car, actually) when we talk about Germany. And I think we both try to tell our Neuengamme stories in ways that we have found words for. But I think it's important to note how both of those stories happened on the same day, and maybe that's why we drove so fucking fast--to get away from that horrible place. We just wanted to go home.
I called Lover that night from across the world, although I don't know if he was Lover proper at that time (what is time?) but I remember wanting the warmth of his voice above all else. Try as he might, it took me months to warm back up again.
I think Austin, TX was the hottest. I abandoned makeup that weekend because we walked everywhere and it just melted off my face. There were too many mosh pits and crowded sidewalks and steamy bars for me to give a damn what my face looked like. And the only person whose opinion I gave any fucks about was with me and like I said, he gave negative fucks. I remember (vaguely) seeing this fun graffiti saying "the only magic I still believe in is love." Okay, I don't remember seeing it all, but drunk me was so struck by it that even she snapped a fuzzy picture of it. I go back to that picture, that trip, all the time. It was home.
We can remember.
I think Huntsville has always been the warmest. In the darkest months of my entire life I was given shelter from the bitter cold of loss and grief and rejection. Did I want the blankets? Nope, I walked around in shorts and sports bras, just to prove to myself how strong I was. Or maybe I just wanted to be numb. But I was given coffee and whiskey and honest to god conversation, all the best things to warm a broken soul. I was given an India-esque hospitality without a colonial right to it, a German nod to history without any backstory necessary and a familiarity that I haven't felt since the orange hula hoop mattered. I was given bars or the absence of them; the presence of others or the solitude of the backyard; the freedom to wander and the absolute luxury to be lost. I wouldn't hear it for months, and I wouldn't believe it for longer, but I was loved there. I was given the freedom, the chance and the choice to be me again. I wasted a lot of time being someone else.
We can unlearn.
Follow your heart. Home is where the heart is. I guess that's why my house has always been the coldest. My heart hasn't been here in years. So many versions of my heart have shattered into pieces on the tile floor I remember Grandma being so excited about getting. This is where she died. I was here when Ro died. This is where someone I thought I loved tried to kill me. I am watching Sister die. She is going through her own renaissance, for sure, and I envy it because I don't think I have it in me again. Not here, anyway. I am dying again. I am dying here again. I don't know if the next place I end up will be hot or cold. Or if I will be receptive to any temperature at all. It's a choice, I guess. But I am scared.
And when I get this way, I try to remember. I try to unlearn. Because we can learn. And I know the next place has you. And for longer than I know how to admit, you have always been home. I am trying to follow my heart but take my head with me.
I can learn.
Are you still coming? Am I still home?
