Someone asked me yesterday why I'm not taking vacation time this summer. I told them that the Red Death had ruined everyone's vacation plans, so that I might wait 'til fall. I think I also implied that my finances weren't up to a vacation right now. That last part is certainly true, but it's not the key reason why I'm not going anywhere this year.
I'm a gentleman of a certain age, yes. A vacation for me would require certain amenities. At my age, I'm not going camping or whitewater rafting or rock-climbing. I'm usually bored at the beach, and I have no interest in any place like, say, Las Vegas.
My idea of a vacation can be urban. It can be about spending a week wandering streets in Manhattan or Montreal. Or I suppose it could be about renting something like one of the Pure Pod cabins my friend in New Zealand told me about. It could even be about sailing somewhere, though it could never be about being on a cruise. But whatever sort of vacation it would be, it would require a lovely young companion to be with me.
I have been on vacations alone. I've ridden trains alone across Central Europe and wandered solo through towns in Slovenia and Hungary. Those things happened long ago, and while they're good memories, these days I have no interest in vacationing or traveling alone. I need a young companion to be there with me. I see no purpose, no purpose at all, in travel without a lover.
A vacation of any kind is expensive, and I live in genteel poverty. But a vacation should also be a romantic adventure, a time spent together with someone with whom you share passion and wickedness and dreams of creating stories. Right now I have no one in my life, and I have no destination in mind.
A city, a Pure Pod, a sailboat... Those things mean nothing to me in and of themselves. They're settings--- stage settings ---only. A hotel rooftop pool, a sailboat deck at twilight, a Pure Pod deck--- those things have value as stage sets for sex and romance. Settings matter. Settings are the stuff underlying stories--- sneaking into the alleyway behind the bistro, watching a lovely companion swim naked off a moored sailboat, watching the city skyline from a hotel bed. The settings matter. You might think that you can have amazing sex in any ordinary bed in any ordinary room in any banal town or city. But it's not the physical act itself that matters. It's the setting, it's doing it in someplace out of the ordinary, it's collecting stories to be remembered years later.
I can't begin to imagine going anywhere without a lovely young companion who'll help me christen locations and create stories for later. I can't go anywhere without adventures and encounters that will match or out-point things girlfriends have done in their lives before me. I want to be able to say that the stories and locations and adventures they're having with me are as good as those they've had with other men.
Financial limits are always are good excuse. Right now I can't afford an extended weekend in Savannah or Vancouver. But the real difficulty is that I have no lover in my life right now. And I'm not going any place where we won't be christening risky or stylish or amazingly visual spots together. I can't travel without a leggy, literary girl who'll see a vacation as a chance to create erotica together.
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