Party Like It's 2044: Finding the Funny in Life and Death

We’ll Never Have Guatemala

Yet again, the conversation turns to Guatemala.

My boyfriend, Helmut, and I are hosting a little dinner party with four friends. We’re seated around the dining table in my condo, located in a small town in Vermont that is 3,559 miles from Guatemala, eating food that has nothing to do with Guatemala, previously discussing some obscure jazz musician I’ve never heard about but am pretty sure never toured in Guatemala. And yet.

We’re thinking about going back to Guatemala next winter, one of our guests, a retired linguist, announces out of nowhere. His wife, a musician, adds, It’s so beautiful there, and flights are unbelievably cheap.

I love Guatemala! enthuses the yoga instructor seated across from me. Did you know it has thirty-seven active volcanoes?

The Guatemalan people are so friendly, the yoga instructor’s date chimes in, instantly earning a strike against him. Oh, come on, I think. How can every single person in a country be friendly? Surely there is at least one curmudgeon in the bunch.

Helmut knows enough to keep his mouth shut. Not because he hasn’t been to Guatemala—he has, twice—but because he knows this is pretty much the only thing I don’t like about him after nine years of togetherness. When Helmut was in his twenties, long before I met him, he left his home in the Black Forest in Germany and traveled extensively, at one point landing in San Cristobal, Mexico. There he met some random young American woman who told him he just had to go to Guatemala.

It’s the most amazing place, she’d exclaimed, probably after they’d had sex, though Helmut never shared this level of detail with me. Regardless, this young American woman clearly had no concern for Helmut’s well-being, or for my need decades later to snag him for a post-divorce, midlife romance. Never mind that Guatemala was experiencing a brutal civil war at the time. Never mind that on the bus Helmut took to Panajachel in the Guatemalan Highlands, gangs of vigilantes body-searched the passengers at regular checkpoints to make sure none of them were guerillas posing as civilians. For all I know, Helmut was a guerilla back then, so one day I asked him what exactly he wanted to do in Guatemala.

Play guitar, he’d answered.

In the middle of a civil war?! In a town with a marketplace where the storefronts were riddled with bullet holes?! If I was his mother back in the Black Forest, I would have killed him.

Here, I want to share for the record that I have nothing personal against Guatemala. In fact, just the opposite. As a first-world homebody who has never traveled there or much of anywhere, I know the country mostly through the lens of headlines about migration and poverty. But I also know that Guatemala’s geography is stunningly beautiful, the country enjoys a thriving tourist industry, and its capital is a hub for entrepreneurs. (You remember our neighbor’s son, Roy, said the retired linguist at our dinner table. Now he’s running a tech start-up in Guatemala City, and it’s really taking off!)

I am happy for Roy. Truly. And I am hopeful for Guatemala, even as this small Central American country, where almost half its population are descendants of the ancient Mayans, continues to suffer the horrors of gang-related violence and other challenges. Similar to how I feel about all the troubled spots in the world, I just want everyone there to be happy and safe, but if that can’t happen, then I want the people there to come here and feel happy and safe. Goodness knows, given the polarized state of America, we could certainly use an influx of an entire country of friendly people.

No, my problem isn’t with the country of Guatemala per se, but rather how all my friends (and their neighbors, and their neighbor’s children) seem to have spent time there and feel compelled to rave about the place at my table. Maybe this is an example of frequency illusion. Once Helmut told me about his Guatemalan adventures—inadvertently making me feel like I had misspent my own young adulthood as a shut-in—Guatemala seemed to pop up in every conversation. Or maybe it’s an example of confirmation bias, where I have become so sensitized to the subject that now I recall conversations in a way that simply affirms my belief that I am the only person in the world who has never traveled to this particular spot on the globe. Whatever the phenomenon, real or imagined, the result is that Guatemala has come to represent one of my most shameful secrets, which is this: I do not want to travel there. Indeed, I do not want to go much of anywhere, neither geographically nor in the realm of time travel, at least to any era before there were toilets.

It is embarrassing for me to admit that I am not an eager traveler, even to places where the marketplace is not riddled with bullet holes. Clearly, I was behind the door when God passed out the desire for passport stamps. Maybe this is not a problem for Italian nanas who came from the old country and—once resettled in their Italian neighborhoods in the Bronx—see no reason to learn English or venture much further than their savory-smelling kitchens. But in my social circles, several of which are occupied by folks with advanced degrees and a modicum of disposable income, my lack of wanderlust makes me feel like an outsider and an old fogy. In my day, we didn’t need to go anywhere. Now let me eat my dinner in peace because it’s almost five o’clock! This is why I am overly sensitive when the conversation gets global and why I go to lengths to hide my shameful secret. Some recent examples:

Over lunch the other day, a friend announced that he was moving to Taiwan for a year on a Fulbright Scholarship. You should visit me while I’m there! he said. You’ll have a free place to stay.

The children, I shook my head sadly, as if my two daughters, both in their twenties, still need me at home to fix them macaroni and cheese.

I want to take you to Germany. Helmut has made this generous offer countless times in the past. My mom would love to meet you. The woman lived to be 101, but I always found an excuse.

My best cover though, is the way I have encouraged my kids to travel, which provides the perfect deflection. Go! Go! My urgings have supported their participation in programs that have allowed them to walk the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, build toilets in Nicaragua, cavort with ancient tortoises in the Galápagos Islands … It is like I have Munchausen’s by proxy, only the travel version in which I, the caregiver, garner positive attention for myself by foisting travel adventures on my daughters.

The talk around my dining table has now turned to food, and because it is clearly impossible to exhaust the topic of Guatemala, the conversation loiters around food experienced in that country.

You can’t get authentic chile rellenos in America, not like the ones they make in Guatemala.

"The best grilled robalo I ever ate was from a street vendor in Antigua."

Suddenly, these friends all sound like NPR commentators, pronouncing perfectly Americanized words with a Spanish affectation. I stand abruptly and start refilling wine glasses. The only languages I speak are English and crossword-puzzle Latin. Even worse, I really like the chile rellenos they serve at a café in Burlington, Vermont, which is in America the last time I looked.

I’m going to Montana! I announce. The relief! To have this one travel talking point of my own outweighs any self-consciousness about abruptly changing the subject. I’m going for two weeks in the spring. The trip is still months away, but already I have made my travel arrangements, partly because I am organized, but mostly for accountability. Now that I have paid good money for an airline ticket, I know that I won’t back out.

Why Montana? My friends, good-natured to a one, easily shift their attention to this new topic, and to me.

In my mind’s eye I see a vast night sky, a blackish-purple canopy fractured by a flash of forked lightning. The image became imprinted on my mind over twenty-five years ago, after my former husband and I took a rare vacation out West. We were in some remote town, standing outside during a rainless storm. When the lightning split open the sky, it felt like I was glimpsing the great beyond. I have long wanted to return to that sky, to relive that sense of mystery and awe.

Why Montana? I hesitate before answering. It’s such a beautiful place, I say. I’ve wanted to go back there for years. I don’t mention the specific memory that prompted my travel plans because, truth be told, I am not even sure I was in Montana at the time I witnessed that storm. The geography of those western states is fuzzy in my mind, and the landscape I recall looked a lot like the setting for my favorite Netflix series, Longmire, about a taciturn sheriff in Absaroka County. The problem is, Absaroka County is in Wyoming.

We’re renting a house in Bozeman, I add. I found it through a friend of a friend. I tell everyone about my email exchanges with the homeowner, who lives locally but has this second house across the country. When I had written to her asking about availability and cost, the woman responded with a friendly message that didn’t answer my questions, but did include a photo of her kitchen sink, found on the side of the road, and with a $450 faucet!

I have never been a student of fixtures—they just seem to come with the homes where I have lived—so I had no idea if the mention of a $450 faucet was intended as an apology (Beware, the place is a dump!) or a promise of luxury and a precursor to proffering an exorbitant rental price. (We charge $5,000 a week, and a Keurig is not included!) As it turns out, a Keurig does not come with the house, but the amount the woman and her husband were asking was more than a fair price, and if caffeine became an issue, she assured me I would be able to walk to a nearby café.

At my dining table, the conversation moves on to other topics, mercifully not travel-related, but I continue to ponder the question: Why Montana? It does seem odd that a state renowned for its conservative politics and its strong gun culture would have such a strong pull for someone like me, a liberal who believes, as countless bumper stickers in Vermont can attest, that arms are for hugging. As our gathering winds down, I finish my dinner, grateful for the delicious meal that Helmut has prepared and the good fortune of having these friends with whom to enjoy it. Yet even now, I feel an urge to experience another reality, something beyond these everyday blessings right in front of me at this table.

Why Montana? Maybe I am putting way too much stock in a distant memory. Or maybe Montana will be my Guatemala.

After our friends leave, I sit at my computer and reread emails from the woman whose second home we will be renting in Bozeman. In one, she describes the house as quirky but comfortable. In another, she tells me about the fun she and her husband have riding bikes and cross-country skiing in West Yellowstone. She expresses relief that I don’t want to rent their house until late spring, after which she will be able to see to the place rather than her husband who is currently there for work. I was a little worried about my husband having to set up the house for your visit, she wrote. What if he put the peach sheets on the beds in the yellow room? :).

At the end of her most recent email she writes, I’m looking forward to meeting and handing you the keys.

I shut down the computer and head to bed. For a nontraveler like me, two weeks spent across the country feels like a long time to be away from my life; away from my own quirky but comfortable home. I wonder, will Montana change me? At the least, I suppose, it will help me stop confusing it with Wyoming. Maybe it will help me understand gun culture. It might even give me a greater appreciation of faucets.

Helmut is outside, having a nightcap on our small patio. He often checks out the stars before calling it a night. I try to imagine what goes through his head as he looks at the sky above our little patch of the universe. Is he filled with that sense of mystery and awe that I experienced all those years ago during that rainless storm? Is he thinking about our life together and how lucky he is to live here with me? Or maybe he is feeling regret that he has chosen a partner who doesn’t share his love of travel, his sense of adventure.

We’ll never have Guatemala, I think, feeling my own sense of regret. The line is a riff, of course, from the closing scene of Casablanca, when the two former lovers, Rick and Ilsa, are about to part forever. We’ll always have Paris, Rick tells Ilsa, referring to their brief romance in Paris on the eve of World War II. What he means is that they’ll always be together in those shared memories of that special time and place. But Helmut and I don’t have a Paris, or much worse, we don’t have a Guatemala.

As I wait for Helmut to come to bed, I burrow beneath my comforter and conjure up the memory of that forked lightning, as bright as a billion volts of electricity. A worry crosses my mind: What if I get hit by lightning when I am in Montana? It could happen, I think, with a sky that big. On the other hand, Montana may not be as enticing as a place with thirty-seven active volcanoes, or authentic chile rellenos, or an entire population of friendly people, but if it comes with a shock of electricity, at least metaphorically speaking, maybe that’s just the kind of jolt that I need.

The Other Woman

Not everyone is equipped to work well with people. Truer words, but I never expected anyone to think such a thing about me. Yet those are the exact words shared by a disgruntled former writing client who has written me a single-spaced, three-page letter explaining why she cannot, in good conscience, recommend my services should anyone ask.

Really? I toss the letter on my kitchen counter. I am not equipped to work well with people? I beg to differ. I have taught hundreds of writing students—people who take my workshops again and again or work with me individually, often for the duration of their projects. Many of these people have become good friends. Indeed, in twenty-plus years of teaching I have received lots and lots of thank-yous, lauding me for my insights, my positive attitude, my encouragement and support. Many of these appreciations I have kept in a sunny yellow folder on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. The folder is labeled Nice Things People Have Said about Me.

The signature on the letter is a name I don’t recognize—a name I have changed in this essay to Donna, inspired by a girl I knew in middle school who also made me feel bad about myself but for totally different reasons. (No, middle-school Donna, I cannot do a split, and thank you for pointing that out during cheerleading tryouts.)

But who is this letter-writing Donna who feels the need to disparage me as both a teacher and human being? Just listen to this nonsense she spouts on the page—I value constructive feedback from an expert. This is not about the thickness of my skin. Rather, it’s about the self-awareness, empathy, and social skills that contribute to one’s emotional intelligence, and your seeming lack thereof.

Really, Donna? Thereof?

I Google Donna’s name but nothing pops up. Right there, it seems that should disqualify her from judging me. Maybe she is just a private person, but on the other hand you would think her name would at least be in the minutes of some PTA meeting or public works committee. In attendance: Donna … Oh wait, strike that. Clearly our Donna has no problem ignoring her civic duties so that she can stay at home to compose hate mail.

The letter had been enclosed in a sealed envelope with no postage, only my name—Joni B. Cole—handwritten on it. My friend, Frances, with whom I occasionally share an office where I teach writing workshops and where she practices New Age healing, had dropped it off at my house while I was out doing errands. On the outside of the envelope Frances had stuck a Post-it Note—This is for you. Have a beautiful day! As is her habit, she had signed the note with a heart. Because the letter, weirdly enough, bore a date from over a year ago, I assumed it had been accidentally mixed in with Frances’s client notes or divination cards, and she had only recently come across it. Likely, she thought she was doing me a favor, delivering it to my house with a sweet Post-it.

I reread the pages once more, then stuff them back in their envelope, my fingers already anticipating the satisfaction of shoving Donna and her low opinion of me in the trash. This is my usual MO whenever I receive an unpleasant communication on paper or online. Who needs all those rejection letters from editors, polluting my inbox with their negative energy? Doesn’t meet our needs … Didn’t pique our interest … Before submitting, we recommend you subscribe to our publication … Delete! Delete! Don’t bet on it!

Then I change my mind for one particular reason. In the letter, Donna references one of my books for aspiring authors, in which I include what she describes as a mean story about a former workshop participant. Such vitriol, Donna writes, for someone who paid you good money to help, not hurt. Hold on there, I think. Donna had missed the entire point of that story, which ultimately demonstrated how the workshop participant had overcome her defensiveness and learned to listen to feedback and effectively apply it. But now it seems Donna is using that story as context for delivering a not-so-veiled warning—Don’t even think about writing about me in one of your little books.

Ha! Dream on, honey. If I had not already been thinking about Donna as material for a future essay or chapter, I certainly was now. No one has the right to tell me what I can and cannot write, give or take a few libel laws. Which meant Donna’s letter was no longer simply deserving of the garbage can; now it was opposition research.

In war, there exists the concept of the Other. The Other is the enemy, a homologous force that threatens your beliefs, your way of life, your liberties. A soldier’s training often incorporates imagery of the Other, for example shooting at targets outfitted in helmets bearing a Soviet red star or an American flag, depending on the war and whose side you are on. In this way, soldiers are conditioned to view the enemy as an abstraction, a faceless threat, a symbol rather than an individual or fellow human being.

Of course, the concept of the Other extends well beyond war. In religion, one of the hardest things for the faithful to do is to not just tolerate the Other but to love them, without any need to convert them. In politics, as well, one party often capitalizes on the fear of the Other, an unfortunate but usually effective method of campaigning. In life in general, the Other can be defined through myriad perspectives, creating all sorts of fault lines between people with opposing views and different lifestyles. Take, for example, Prius owners, their car being the epitome of the Other for drivers of gas guzzlers who actually have someplace they need to be on their twenty miles per gallon.

As a Prius driver myself, I know what it feels like to be categorically vilified. For this reason, among many more, I like to think I am too evolved a human being to succumb to such divisive conditioning and generalized hate. If I am going to dislike someone, it will be on a case-by-case basis, and not just because that person’s hybrid (MPG: 58 city/53 highway) represents some existential threat to their predilection for fossil fuels. All this to say, never in a million years would I have guessed that I, too, could harbor hostility across a wide swath of humanity. I did not have an Other. Or so I thought, until Donna’s letter arrived on my kitchen counter.

In truth, I would have loved to forget all about Donna and her low opinion of me, yet in the weeks after its arrival I found myself returning to her neatly typed and grammatically anal letter again and again, like a dog working a rawhide even after its gums are bloodied. In addition to her disdain for me, those three single-spaced pages illuminated something else about this woman, which is that either Donna had an echoic memory or had missed her calling as a court reporter.

Like a meticulously prepared prosecution, she starts her argument by replaying our very first phone conversation. In this early November call, Donna recounts how she had asked me if I wanted to delay our meeting until after Thanksgiving, given the busy time of year.

No need to wait, I had told her. In my hazy recollection of this initial exchange, I remember thinking, here is an anxious writer, already getting cold feet about sharing her work, and of course part of my job is to help writers overcome that fear by