Day 8: A Familiar Hate

Today was fairly uneventful. I woke up well rested and my burns had mostly turned into tans. I went outside for tea and saw the Indian woman I’d been talking to here and there along with a mystery man who was new. The Indian woman’s English is good but her conversation is weird and she smiles too much and when I make a joke she looks confused. The man turned out to be an American, finally I’ve found my people. At first glance he was very quiet and carried himself in a high profile manner, he was a bit older than us maybe in his fifties. He kind of came off as one of those sex tourists that goes to Thailand to have sex with little boys, but he was fairly good looking and definitely had a gym membership. I got to talking to him and he was friendly enough. He told me he’d worked at Pfizer and slipped into an early retirement, meaning the man is loaded. He worked at their old location on Flushing avenue which I know well from my Brooklyn days. He moved to Puerto Rico when the company moved and has been there since. Then the conversation got way too American and way too familiar. He told me about how he owned some property in New York, can you believe he bought in Ridgewood before it was cool?, as well as some other places and had bought some up in Puerto Rico too and was doing just fine collecting rent and all. Then he told me about how he’s quite experienced traveling in Asia and that I should have gotten a sim card before talking to any of these travel agencies or agreeing to go trekking so I could check the going rates against what they were offering. It’s really just like an American, and a rich American at that, to make you feel bad for falling victim to a scam. This is who we are. Never tell an American how much money you spent on something because they will ridicule you and brag about how they got something better for way less. I’m painting him to be an asshole but he actually was very kind and sweet about all of those things and even left me his information should I ever want to contact him. He was leaving to do the same trek I had but through another cheaper service. Isn’t it just like the rich to find the good deals? To make matters worse the man was from Ohio. He probably pulled himself up by the bootstraps and everything. He told me that my generation has gotten the raw end of the American dream regarding home ownership, but if I wait maybe the economy will go down and I can still enter the market. In fact, he was sure I still had a chance. One day. Conversations like this take me right back to the cursed place I ran away from. And you can’t run away from America. You can’t run away from New York. They will follow you and chase you down anywhere you dare escape on this lonely rock and they’ll punish you for thinking you could get away in the first place. And that’s because you can’t run away from money. Money is everything, the message has been screaming at my face since I touched down and ironically it was this very message in New York that I was trying to run away from in the first place. This man was living his dream life because of money. Because at some point he started making the right decisions with money, and then he made more good decisions with money, and then he got to stop working pretty early and now he’s in Kashmir telling me about how he owns property and showing me his vibram soled Danner shoes that are worth a little over 200 dollars but they’re really good shoes and totally worth it. And I’m here because of money too. I’m here because I put a little money away and wanted to take advantage of a country where my money would go further and I could live comfortably. Money.

After the man left I shot the shit a little with the house boat owner. He told me that I should consider going to Pakistan instead of Ladakh. I told him that’d be marvelous and maybe Id go to Afghanistan after. He said that’s a great idea. He wasn’t joking. According to him Afghanistan is very much on the table as a travel destination. As soon as I can find internet access I’ll be looking into this. Even if it is ruled by the  murderous fanatic Taliban, I bet there isn’t a predatory tourism industry installed there with a bunch of sad eyed scroungers begging me for tips. All I want is just a shred of authenticity and to forget money exists, and maybe Afghanistan can give me that. 

I spent the rest of the day finishing Shantaram. I’m glad to be done with it. The author was starting to irritate me with all the unnecessary metaphors fattening up his prose. It was a good book though, and very sad, just how I like it. As I read, the management invaded my houseboat saying there was a plumbing issue. It got to the point where I had to move to the much nicer house boat next door, and I didn’t put up a fight. I sat outside as the sun set and it was really gorgeous actually. Just as I was enjoying the moment, a man pulled up to my dock with a big old happy grin and I greeted him. Of course he wanted to sell me some handicraft bullshit. This time it was papier maché boxes. Will these people every produce something actually useful or in demand? We carried out the same ritual as the man with the jewelry. I told him up front I wouldn’t buy anything. He showed me anyway, ruining the precious minutes where the sun vanished into the horizon, minutes for which I could have been in peace. I maintained I wouldn’t buy. He talked about my mother or girlfriend etc… I said I wouldn’t buy. He looked at me sad and confused, as if surely I didn’t understand that all I needed in life was a papier maché box. And then he left, giving me one last glance with those same sad black holes in his eyes. My heart grows colder and stonier with each of these rejections.