Truth and Business Travel

Young, at the awkward intersection of nascent and precocious, spending inordinate amounts of time playing dress up with my Barbie dolls and imagining them in more adult and more precarious positions, the notion of business travel was exotic and fabulous. My father flew around the world, and back again, regularly, a feat which was endlessly fascinating and unfamiliar. He drove us to soccer and basketball and lacrosse practice, sometimes prepared us meals of sugary canned spaghetti sauce and chunks of ground beef; fathoming him, alone and a stranger in far away lands, was impossible and thrilling. Other friends, other young girls, sometimes accompanied their parents to such destinations, returned to share and gloat in the glory.

When I began packing away my rolling suitcase for my first business travels, I harbored ludicrous visions of glamorous jet-setting. One Silver Premier United Flight member later, benefits including slightly less long waiting time and lines, I have painfully deduced that the only glamorous business travel that occurs is when one whisks away with their dreadfully and dashing successful husband, or wife, or partner-in-crime, literal and metaphorical, and is just along for the ride, expectations to be purely attractive and alluring, to any and all. Or, it occurs when one owns the business, and can indulge in frivolous and superficial displays of glamor as one sees fit. Lugging around inevitably wrinkling and creasing business attire, erupting cosmetics, faced with an economy class cramped seat, political speak for coach, I wave and kiss good-bye, to my beautifully innocent delusions. 

I am extremely fortunate and excited and thankful to have traveled where I have; still, it is my party, and I shall gripe if I want to. An abstract, in a sense, list of ablutions, some frustrating, some frivolous. A scrap of taut fabric pulled, my skirt, ripped, in shame. Warm water. Half of a shower door, hot water to induce a stress release of the topography along my jackets, slippery floors taunting my with seductive steam and screams. A cow killed, years ago, stored, converted, contorted, perverted, made in this mass between the bread; not a hamburger. Lackluster bangs, lackluster and lukewarm air pushed forth by the blow dryer that I cannot even steal, if I wanted it. Neo-Christian taxi cab drivers and their diatribes; the nearest to flattery and a come on in two weeks. An immediate and desperate realization of my reliance on wash clothes; I hate this loufa.     

(image taken from No Good For Me)