The road to Utah: a reverse Odyssey
Tuesday morning
Other Hy — my partner for life and chauffeur for the day — is trying to figure out how to make her phone play her brand-new mixtape. My inner monologue demands I tell her to start driving already, and I demand my inner monologue to can it. I want to listen to her work. Besides, there’s plenty of time; it’s 9:55, my flight leaves at 11:40, and the Denver airport is about an hour away by car under normal conditions.
This sort of blind obeisance to calendar-time keeps me comforted until about 11:10, when I peek up from my Pokemon and realize: we’re stuck behind a truck and the airport is nowhere in sight.
“Sorry,” says my other partner Mal from the shotgun seat. “I didn’t realize traffic would be this bad.”
“It’s okay,” I respond, of course. “Me neither.” It's true; as a non-driver I don't know how to estimate these sorts of things. My mind begins to race. What if I miss the conference? What if I never get to present my work on Dominique Christina and objectification? What if I don't get into the good grad schools, all because I didn't look at Google Maps? But, then, I’m sure if I’d booted up Google Maps, it’d have told me the same thing it told my partners. I just wanted some agency in the matter, I suppose.
I spend the next twenty minutes in escalating states of panic, soothed only by the recognition of familiar landmarks from the road to the Denver airport: the Top Golf, the Italian buffet. When I recognize the final such landmark — Blucifer, DEN’s demonic horse statue best known for killing its sculptor — it’s the final song of the mixtape, and it’s 11:25.
“Are we parking or dropping you off?” asks Other Hy.
“Dropping off,” I stammer. In my heart, I know I’ve all but missed my flight. But I’m remembering the words of a classic Magic: the Gathering tournament report, a come-from-behind victory. When you’re losing, it says, in order to win, you have to act entitled. You have to act like God will just give you the win if you do everything right. He could have said “visualize success” like everyone else, of course, but where’s the agon in that? Where’s the dignity, the numinosity — the sacrifice that must be necessary, because it hurts so bad?
“I won’t be able to do a hug goodbye,” I say. I regret it instantly, and I will regret it more and more as time passes. But we all understand. We share our long goodbye as we approach the dropoff, and as soon as the car stops I begin my any% speedrun. Per the app on my phone, I have nine minutes to 11:40, and all I have to do is get through security and take the rail to Gate C27.
Security is packed. I gain a time advantage by listening to the TSA agent and lining up outside Gate 13, while the shuffling masses were content to stand around and wait until the lines immediately before them dissipated. I’d already rehearsed what to say when I inevitably get pulled aside for my mandatory groping session. This time, though, there was a twist — I’m waylaid not merely for my transgender body, but because I’d packed a full-size toothpaste in my carry-on. At 11:41, according to the app, the plane hasn’t taken off yet; nor at 11:42, nor at 11:43. I know, because I have nothing better to do than to watch the time slip away in the light rail to the C wing. Every bone in my body wants to run, rather than take the train; to speedwalk through the airport, to feel like I’m moving. But I quell my primal human urges and save my energy for the sprint to the back of the airport.
At 11:47, as I approach the gate, the app says that the estimated departure time was 11:46, which I figured could mean anything. But the employee outside collapses the ambiguity. Indeed, I’ve missed my flight.
I tear up. He meets my glance not with derision or condescending pity but with detached understanding — one of the perks of booking Southwest. As it becomes clear that I’m not going to demand his manager, the iota of fear in his voice disspates, leaving only the detached scansion of a man who knows he’s doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It’s motivating, or at least heartening. I resolve to keep up my breakneck pace walking to the help desk, just in case it matters.
“Usually, when you miss your flight, you’ll be on standby,” the old lady at the help desk says, in a tone that made my situation seem like a simple cause-and-effect relationship rather than a personal failing.
“When’s the next flight to Utah?”
She taps away at her CRUD software. “I have a flight through Phoenix. The first flight is pretty empty, even, so you’ll get a nice seat.”
Promising. “When’s it leave?”
“It’s boarding in five minutes.” She gives me a smirk. “You can do it, you’re still young. You best hoof it, though.”
She hands me the tickets, and I retrace my previous dash through the airport, then continue — past the shoe-shiners, past the Voodoo Donuts, past the hawkers of Robbins and Gladwell, all the way to the other side of the C wing. This time, I get there as Boarding Group 1 begins to congregate. I give myself a pat on the back for saving all the time I did, although I note that I had plenty of time for two goodbye hugs. Only once I’m on the plane does the relief set in, crashing all at once. Despite my incompetence, I’m finally on the plane to the Modern Language Association.
Tuesday afternoon
I don’t mind my new flights at all. Sure, it’ll take a little longer, but if there’s one thing I can do it’s entertain myself. Plus, I get the stone-cold nuts on flight #1: an extra-legroom window seat with no immediate neighbor. There’s no Wi-Fi, of course, and I do wish I could put the finishing touches on my presentation for the conference. But then, the chance to relax and read a physical book is nice, too. I lean back, inhale my ginger ale and bougie pretzels, and immerse myself in the world of Walter Benjamin.
I don’t like airports or flights, necessarily, but neither do I hate them, and I admit I like the way they make me appreciate the gift of time. On a plane I can ponder and ponder for so much subjective time per hour. I spent a lot of time looking out the window, thinking about how strange it is to see a “bird’s eye view” of a city, a sort of natural map. Just meditating on it. Is this the fabled map that corresponds one-to-one with the territory? Would an ancient Greek peasant be unable to fully appreciate a video game that depends on the bird’s eye view, or would they get it fine? (It’s easy to underestimate how alien technology is — but, like, they had maps back then.) What would Walter Benjamin, lover of architecture and tiny things, think of this view of Phoenix?
As I disembark, there’s a hole in my stomach from not getting a goodbye hug earlier. I'm tempted to fill it with an $8 sandwich composed of a stale roll and a couple wisps of turkey. Instead, I wait in the refreshingly normal-sized Phoenix Skyharbor next to a man who, it seems, has a Southwest Rapid Rewards status instead of a personality. He refers to himself and the girl he’s chatting up as “ALPs” (that is, “A-List Preferred members”) multiple times. Thankfully, I don’t see any more of him. Instead, I get yet another window seat with no neighbor. I read a little more Benjamin, have another round of the best pretzels in land and sky, and gaze longingly out the window.
The airports are starting to blend together a little. SLC is nice, but the "GROUND TRANSPORT" signs seem only to mention where you can pick up an Uber, or perhaps a Lyft. I blindly follow Google Maps and end up in the belly of a megalithic parking lot. The Hertz rental guy I ask for directions has the audacity to say he doesn’t know where the train is, but to let him know if I need a car. I decline and begin trawling toward the little blue dot on my phone. With the size of SUVs nowadays, there's a hedge-maze quality to it.
Eventually I reach the train platform — or, more accurately, I reach a level where I can see that the train platform is, inexplicably, inaccessible from where I am. But one trip back through the airport and I'm there. When I reach the kiosk I put in a twenty for a day pass; it spits out my ticket and, inexplicably, fifteen Sacagawea dollars. I awkwardly stuff my gold doubloons into my tiny purse and embark once more, onto the first of the three trains to my hotel room.
My first criticism of Utah is that there shouldn’t be two stops on the Green Line that are variations on “North Temple Avenue”. My second is that the doors to the train close faster than a human can get up from their seat and amble to them. Thankfully, these flaws cancelled each other out, and I didn’t get off at the wrong stop. Instead, two light rails and one trolley-ass trolley later, at 7:15, I was standing outside my hotel in Ogden, Utah.
Tuesday night
I confirm, once again, to the receptionist that I’m at the correct Marriott Courtyard. I tell her I’m here for the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association conference. I give her every possible combination of my transgenderedly many names. I’m just about to try the deadnames when she realizes the problem.
“It’s October 6th,” she says. And then, glancing at her tablet: “Your check-in is at 3:00 on October 7th.”
I look at my phone in disbelief. With all the brightness its 2% battery can muster, it confirms: I’d scheduled my flight for the wrong day, like a buffoon. The Courtyard is fully booked, too, as is the Hilton across the street — yet another way in which my suffering is Christlike. But there’s one more place to stay, across the other street.
My room in the Best Western has visible stains, roaches, a lamp without a shade, old mattresses decaying in the parking lot, and cracked furniture. It does not have Wi-Fi. Somehow I paid $70 for this, because price discrimination works. But at the end of the day, a roof is a roof. I’m not going to sit here and pretend I love the roach situation, or that I'm immune to white middle-class psychodrama regarding “poor-looking buildings”, but I also know how to get over it. I refuse to be picky. And I’m not stupid enough to wander the streets of an unknown city at night until I find a boutique hotel.
I bum a phone charger from the kindly desk clerk; his wall plug doesn’t work, but no matter, I have a laptop. On my phone, I update the girls back home on what happened: I must have mentally applied the “get there the night before” operation twice, once during my hotel selection and once during my flight selection. I feel fucking awful about this. The lingering feeling is that I shouldn’t be left alone without a handler, that I’m incapable of basic abstract thought without a spreadsheet or an intertext.
At least with my phone charged, I can look for food. Ogden is the sort of city where everything closes at 9, so I have to decide quickly. Overpriced Thai is pretty good anywhere, so I order a combination pho for takeout just in the nick of time. I tip with a few gold dollars, which absolutely enchants my server. And with a full belly, it’s easier to count my blessings. I have a roof over my head, and I didn't miss any of the conference. In fact, thank God my presentation isn’t tomorrow — I have a lot to do on my PowerPoint. The other guests are being loud outside, which does proc my nervous system, but at some point I recognize one of them chiding another to “BE SAFE OUT THERE”. For whatever reason, that’s all it takes to convince my unconscious that they aren’t a threat. I'm safe. I can just pop a melatonin and put this day behind me.
Wednesday morning
I wake up at 4:30 and immediately start writing down more notes for my talk. No Wi-Fi, no problem. If I need to type, I have LibreOffice; if I need to reference my notes, I have 5G on my phone. I’d been looking for an example of humanizing objectification, and like the humble troubadour my worldly travels have given me one: the Southwest employees, who reduced me to a row in a pivot table in an egalitarian and compassionate way. I brew a new Pokemon team, too, and write a little poetry. It’s always nice when four hours I would’ve spent languishing in a video game are used in a satisfying way — that’s the power of vacation. Oh yeah, I’m on vacation. I take a shower (without hair conditioner or hot water), and I’m off to roam.
I’d decided the night before that I’d get something from the elotero next to the Best Western for breakfast, but in the cold light of day it appears that they’re not open, and perhaps never will be again. The next best thing is chicken and waffles from one of the many brunchy-type joints on the other side of the Marriott. It’s no horchata, but it’s not bad, and more importantly not nearly as overpriced as I’d feared. My poached egg has marks from a wire spider and tastes of vinegar: the sign of a chef that knows two of the three major egg-poaching life hacks. It wasn’t strained — but today, neither am I. I tip with a couple more golden dollars and begin to walk toward the most interesting-looking building in the skyline.
Just across from the Marriott is a food pantry with a line. I cross the street to avoid construction workers in aposematic vests, replacing a drab trash can with a fun one. Lime green angels heralding the eschaton. My little slice of Downtown Ogden is arm wrestling itself, trying to decide if it wants to be a real city or a theme park for mid-tier credit-card-holders. (My existence here, is unfortunately, a vote for the wrong team.)
But the further I get from this cluster of hotels, the more the real city pokes through. Two punk kids, furry tails clipped to their jeans, sitting down outside City Hall with a guitar. A sign that says “FRESH PRODUCE IS GOOD, BUT BOTOX IS BETTER” (in relation to a farmer’s market and an aesthetician, respectively). A sticker war on a lamppost, with the current king of the hill being “FREE PALESTINE”. And, of course, the expected Utahn trappings. Deseret this, Deseret that — it’s nice to walk through a city with a favorite hapax legomenon. Hell, it’s nice to just walk through a city.
Eventually I route back to my hotel, where I execute my finest maneuver yet. My Best Western checkout is at 11, but my check-in at the Marriott begins at 3. Thankfully, there’s one place in every city where (in principle) you can show up with whatever literal baggage you have, shut up, and type for a few hours, even if you’re a broke wannabe grad student. And Ogden’s library is a mere twenty-minute walk away. I get there in twelve, counting the time it took to return my key and the charger, and bask in the bourgeois decadence. Air conditioning. Water that tastes good. And, perhaps most important of all, Wi-Fi. Oh, how I’ve missed typing on a physical keyboard. Oh spreadsheets, oh email, oh Alt+Tab, I never want to leave you again. It’s been nice ignoring my inner iPad baby for a while, but mommy has a handout to typeset.
But first! There are things to look up, now that typing is an extension of my body again. Whose tournament report was I thinking about yesterday? (Can’t find it.) Do philosophers agree on the relationship between dehumanization and objectification? (Of course not.) What was Walter Benjamin’s yortzayt? (23 Tishrei — last Sunday. Just missed it.) My library adventure continues much like this for the next four hours.
Wednesday evening
I feel pretty good that I’m able to get from the library to the True Hotel without Google Maps, although I don’t love that my phone is dangerously low again. I feel like I haven’t earned the privilege of checking into this hotel as if nothing happened. I start mentally calculating how much money I could have saved by booking the Best Western and just walking across the street for the conference, and then I realize I don’t want to know.
The thought leaves my mind entirely as I step into my hotel bathroom, which is twice the size of my bathroom at home. The first order of business is a shower. It's the best water has ever felt, and the conditioner makes my hair so soft and fun to touch. I even find it in me to moisturize. Skin care is a lot more fun when the mysterious gels are free.
My hotel room is so big and swanky, and yet so roach-free — a wonderful place to lay down, if I want to. Not yet, though. I’m tired, sure, but now that I’m not dragging around my little purple roller bag, I want to go exploring. I saw food trucks setting up on my walk from the library, and the very smell of it has put menudo on my mind.
My appetite is a fickle mistress, though, because a slightly closer food truck has dollar tacos. Everyone else in front of me orders in Spanish. Inexplicably, my brain enters "monkey see, monkey do" mode and follows suit; even more inexplicably, for the life of me I can only think of Turkish numbers. Embarrassing on multiple levels. No matter; I’ve paid three dollars for three tacos, complete with a little fixings bar, and I’ve even broken my other twenty into small bills. Now when I give someone a golden dollar, it’s because I mean it.
The ecstasy of wandering around is addicting. I poke my nose into an art gallery, which has some cool snowflake photography. I’m excited to see a bookshop — I do love purchasing poetry on trips — but it only sells romantasy. I walk through a fun little alley, site of another graffiti battle ("BETTER DEAD THAN RED" versus "BETTER RED THAN DEAD" — "everything that's true rhymes" cuts both ways!). I even text my partners about it (who have promised double the goodbye hugs when I return).
Eventually, though, my ecstasy subsides. And, now that I'm all tuckered out, the couch is calling. I put on a Pokemon stream on the hotel TV and drift away.
Wednesday night
Menudo, or avocado BLT? On the one hand, the BLT is downstairs and quick-service, and my legs hurt. On the other hand, menudo. The online interface settles the debate for me; the menudo place is closed despite Google Maps’ insistence.
In the hotel restaurant, I try to outwardly perform the role of an RMMLA member in the hopes that some lonely professor or another will start a conversation with me. No dice. I thought for sure the lady in the pantsuit with an old-fashioned was glancing at my performatively placed book, but alas, she was actually a lawyer. I use my post-nap zip of energy to finalize my schedule spreadsheet and eat my shockingly good sandwich in silence.
That leaves only one task for tonight: preparation for my talk. In my head I was doing "finishing touches", but in the cold light of my laptop I had much more to do than I'd thought. There's a logical leap to be interrogated, a source to be excised... wait, just moved around, massaged... no...
As I chisel away at the Powerpoint, the pieces fall into place all over again. It's my favorite structure: a deductive argument, centered around an Eulerian leap in logic that unveils a hyperobject between textual analysis and broader philosophy. My inner mathematician is showing a bit, and I don't mind, because I'm firing on all cylinders. I glance at the Simone Weil sticker on my waterbottle, and suddenly I've inherited her piercing urgency.
When I'm released from my latest ecstasy I've somehow spent six hours hammering away at this. It's 12 AM, and my plan is to wake up at 7. Unfortunate, because there's more to do. If I don't print out my notes and handouts now, I may never get to. A shame, because the business center printer seems to have unmoored itself from the hotel's Wifi.
Enter Noelle, the patron saint of weary travelers and scrambling grad students. Noelle is behind the lobby counter as I approach, with a smile more genuine than should be expected of any graveyard shift employee. She explains that, indeed, the printers just don't print anymore — you know how it is. but if I emailed her my PDFs she'd be more than happy to print whatever I needed. She'd also be happy to cut my handouts, which I'd printed two-to-a-page; in fact, it'd be her pleasure, she never gets to use the paper cutter. She even lets me borrow a phone charger; as befits an angel, it's supernaturally fast.
As my hero Noelle re-enters, four pages of notes in one hand, twenty-four handouts in the other, she asks me: What, exactly, is this "RMMLA" everybody's here for?
A good question. "So the MLA is the Modern Language Association. You know how your ninth grade teacher made you use MLA formatting? It's the same MLA." I realize that, although I've gone into this spiel before, this is the first time I've used "we" instead of "they".
"So what's the conference for?"
"Well, mostly we discuss our research. Read our papers, that sort of thing."
"That sounds hard."
I chuckle. "It's kind of an academic vacation," I say. "Especially if you're, like, an established professor. Your school pays for you to stay at a nice hotel with all your academia friends." I decide not to say anything about my case: being pre-grad and having that dog in you.
"Are you an established professor?"
"One day," I reply. "I'm working on it. That's why I'm here."
She wishes me good luck, I thank her for everything, and we part ways — she to the standing desk, I to my room. I can't stop yawning. It's long past the hour where I can responsibly take a melatonin gummy, but I'm long last the point where I'd need one.
When Odysseus finally makes it home, his wife Penelope doesn't believe it's him. She prepares a trap: she asks Odysseus to tell their servant to move their wedding bed. Odysseus, passing her test, interjects — it would be impossible to move the bed, because it's heavy and well-made and physically built around an olive tree. He describes how he built the rest of the house out concentrically from it, how it simply wouldn't be possible to move it. Odysseus has more to do in the public sphere — he did just kill a bunch of people, after all — but first, to complete his return home, he must visit its center, its cornerstone.
I've been on a reverse Odyssey. My long, journey, more complicated (polytropos) than it should have been, was the opposite of a homecoming. But it was also a voyage to a promised private sphere — a sailing toward this moment, when I could flop onto a sturdy bed. Tomorrow, I'll face my greatest challenges yet: giving my talk, surviving the Q&A, and performing basic social interaction. But tonight, at long last, it's time to consecrate my journey. I'm finally Away.