Transit
On solo travel, dating apps, millennial anxiety and coffee. And naturally on home and belonging too. I write to remember.
My flight landed half an hour early and I’m out of the airport fast enough. I’m carrying a large dark-blue suitcase that’s relatively empty. My mom got me this suitcase when I left for college 9 years ago and it’s still as good as new. I plan to fill it up with memorabilia of all kinds. I got 2 tattoos yesterday and even the softest of fabrics chafes my tender skin. I’ve rolled up my sleeves to minimize contact with my jacket but mostly to show off my new ink. It’s my first time in London in ages. I mean, I’ve had to transit through Heathrow a number of times in the last decade but this is my first time setting foot in the city in a hot minute. During my teens it was an obligatory pit stop every few years, so much so that I didn’t think I’d have anything new to see here anymore. But my eyes are different now. I don’t care about Claire’s and Subway. I care about getting tattooed by Antoine Larrey at Sang Bleu Tattoo, exploring vintage stores in Notting Hill and people-watching in Shoreditch.
I head to the city before heading to the flat I’m staying at. Only for a short while, then I fly out to Spain. I scoped out the internet for interesting restaurants in Central London and find myself in front of BAO Soho. There’s a bit of a line which gets me excited. Montreal and New York have ritualized line-standing for me. I’ve waited an hour to get into Kazu more times than I can count. I’ve waited in lines that go around the block at Kem Coba to snag an end-of-summer seasonal swirl. In New York, it was 4 hours for sushi at Sugarfish when it first opened. Similar waits for Tim Ho Wan and Paulie Gee’s. Queueing is middle-class millennial code for delicious. I eventually get in and as a solo traveler, I often get to skip ahead of the line because I don’t need a table. Put me at the bar, in a corner, I don’t care. I order two sets of buns. Pork and fried chicken. I sit down and put my bags on the floor, my jacket on the counter. I turn on Netflix and put on Gilmore Girls while I wait for my order. It’s here fast. They’re tiny and not that good. Epicerie Hao’s pork buns have spoiled me and nothing will ever come close. I enjoy sitting here and observe my own behavior with contentment. Not so long ago, I would never have been able to sit in a foreign city, alone, in a busy restaurant filled with cool-looking twentysomethings, and feel adequate, feel like I belong, not feel conspicuously out of place. Something about race, about identity, about my skin failing to conceal my incomplete assimilation. I will never read to them as Canadian unless I speak and even then, it might raise an eyebrow. I’m not hot or cool enough that I transcend race. I’m a Brown girl in a big city and I don’t belong, at least not entirely. And yet, as I eat these mediocre buns, with my earphones plugged in, watching Netflix and laughing louder than what’s demure, I don’t care what I pass as. I’m in transit.
*
Two nights later, spring is showing face and I’m in Barcelona. I’m staying in cool El Born. I get here at night and the drive from the airport to the Airbnb is wonderful. At night, everything takes on an accentuated charm. The boulevards are long and wide, people are walking hand in hand and warm lights illuminate the insides of roadside cafés. My Uber driver makes a sharp left turn and cement suddenly gives way to cobblestone. Everything feels closer and tighter. It’s late but I can already spot a place or two I want to return to in the morning. I get off and look up a huge wooden door, the code for which my host sent me in one of our earliest email exchanges. I can’t find it fast enough so I message her. She buzzes me in and I go up a couple of flights of stairs and reach her apartment. She greets me and I can’t help but notice that she’s not wearing a bra under a sheer shirt. The confidence. I blush a little. She’s Russian and welcomes me in. She sits me down in the kitchen and tells me where everything is. She opens a map of the city and gives me recommendations of sights to see, museums and bars. I tell her I’m mostly here for the food and she recommends having breakfast at Alsur Café across the street. I remember seeing this name in a guidebook or two and make a mental note to write it down in my travel diary. There are 3 guest rooms in the house, one bathroom, a gigantic kitchen. She says I’m the only guest tonight but that an American couple is arriving tomorrow. She takes me to my room and it’s small but neat. A single bed, a couple of bedsheets and one pillow. First things first, I empty my heavy backpack into the wardrobe. There’s barely any time difference between London and here but I feel something I can only call jet lag. I change into my sleep clothes and go brush my teeth. On my way back, I spot a giant leaning mirror in the corridor. I’ll be taking a number of selfies here.
The next morning, I wake up with a strange giggle in my heart. Is this what happy feels like? I have a food tour planned in the evening in Poble Sec but the day is all mine. Coffee. I need coffee. I walk out the big door straight into Alsur Café. I order a latte and a croissant and realize I miss my mom so I call her and tell her hey, I miss you, wish you were here. She tells me she wishes she was too. She took Spanish in college and always wanted to visit Spain but never did. I tell her the few words I’ve picked up on and describe everything I’ve seen so far. I don’t tell her I have 2 new tattoos and am plotting the next one. This morning is warm and wonderful. Is this what happy feels like? From inside the café I see people walking up and down the street, each person more attractive than the previous. Across the street, a man presses his lover against the wall, holds her by the waist and kisses her vigorously. Her skirt flutters in the wind, her hands hold his face. I’m in a movie. I sip my coffee and tell myself I could use another, but from some place else. There’s so much to see and eat I couldn’t possibly have two coffees here.
Nomad Coffee is extremely cool. I walk in and as I size up the place, I feel myself being sized up back. Is there something about me that screams foreign? And if there is, does it scream the good kind of foreign?
“¿Hola que tal? I’ll have a nitro cold brew please. With soy milk.”
I have no idea what this means but it’s a buzz word in the coffee world and it seems like the right thing to order. I pull my camera out to take a picture, after a few moments of shyness have passed. I know that the key to not feeling awkward is to play the part and act like you belong but there’s always a short buffer. An interval between my being me and my posturing as who I ought to be to do what I want to do. Eventually, I take a picture. Then I take out my travel diary, and scribble a few things down. I’ve come to realize that recording my daily whereabouts is therapeutic, fodder for future nostalgia and also a clever device to always seem to the outside world as though I’m busy and about it. Sure it’s something of an anxiety mechanism, but it works in at least three ways. I cross out Alsur and Nomad Coffee Lab from my list. There are a number of other coffee shops I want to try. Espai Joliu. Satan’s Coffee Corner. I’m in love with this city already.
In the afternoon, I go back to the apartment for a rest. I’m swiping Tinder and the options never seem to end. I’ve matched with a bunch of people in hopes of abating the aloneness. Solo travel is the bees knees until you’re hit with a panic attack and need grounding. Which is why touching base with mom on the regular is necessary. And mindless swiping. There’s only so much excitement I can stomach. I’ve had a few interesting matches, including one whose first message was a long, presumably templated Spanish wall of text which, once put into Google Translate, alluded to a threesome with an older woman. There’s something for everyone but this was not for me. On the other hand, I matched with this kind, quirky Indian dude who hasn’t made any problematic comments and hasn’t been too forward. The bar is low. He instantly feels trustworthy. Maybe because I’ve met a guy back home and he’s Indian and trustworthy and so this is a natural extension. Maybe because I have greater trust in those whose ethnic background I share. Maybe because as a Brown woman, I find myself at less of a racial disadvantage than I would with say, a white man? Maybe because he’s not a local either and it’s neutral turf for both of us? Maybe it’s all of it together. He asks to meet the same night but I tell him about the food tour. We agree to meet for drinks the next day. I tell him I’m not looking for hookups, just for someone to hang out with. He replies with a witty jab and I feel safe. Safety can be elusive.
The food tour is a trip. We have all manner of pintxos and all manner of wine. A white American couple joins the host and I an hour late so the first part of the tour feels like a drunken conversation with an old friend. In the first restaurant, there’s food and drinks for 4 but only 2 of us. At 5 PM we’re both flush and laughing at each other’s anecdotes. I’m enjoying this. I don’t know this feeling. Meeting someone and my walls falling right away. It’s less to do with her and more to do with me being away from everything real and continuous in my life. Like I can put my anxiety on hold and just exist. My inhibitions are lower, my appreciation for life, within reach, and my openness to people uncharacteristic. The tour guide is a treat of a human and the food tastes better than anything I ever remember having. I’m giggling. This evening is a caress. When the couple joins us, we’re at the second food joint and our orders are in. Deep fried green tomatoes, spinach dough balls, pimientos de padron, deep fried camembert. 6 types of dessert including tarte tatin, milk, hazelnut and chocolate ice cream, dessert wine. I’m inebriated, making bad jokes confidently. They laugh and I feel self-assured. I text quirky Indian guy pictures of my food. Someone needs to witness these swigs of happiness otherwise I might not believe they ever happened. That one time back from a trip to Mauritius, my SD card got corrupted and I lost all my vacation photos. I panicked and couldn’t tell if I’d actually gone or made it all up. This kind of stuff will fuck with you. And so tonight, he bears witness. That my body is in a strange place downing spicy food and cava is beyond what I could have imagined just a year ago. My whole world is beyond what I could have imagined a year ago. There’s beauty to behold. In spades.
Towards the end of the night, the American woman, who called me young and pretty, which I happily accept, decides she’s gonna revamp my Tinder to find me a hot date. She’s shocked when I tell her I haven’t gone out on a date yet, that I’m so young and so hot I should be banging a new guy every other night. She browses through my phone, rewrites my bio, changes my display picture. She says I looked hot on pictures I really did not think I look hot on but I’m too chicken to say anything and somewhere probably feel that the blonde American girl knows a thing or two about being hot. So I humor her. Her boyfriend stands there awkwardly gawking and smiling as his girlfriend swipes on my behalf and calls this guy and that guy ridiculously attractive. He’s a bit of a reacher. When she lands on a very average looking Brown guy, she shrieks with excitement. She seems to assume I should too.
“This guy! This guy is so hot! Swipe, swipe! Oh it’s a match, text him!”
I’m confused. Is it one of those things where the white person thinks to themselves that the two Brown people are a good match just by virtue of them being Brown? Like when a straight person meets a gay person and tells them they have a gay friend they might hit it off with? I remember one night a few years ago, going out to my white Quebecois ex-boyfriend’s birthday party and meeting a lot of his (mostly white) colleagues for the first time. That situation is anxiety fest to begin with. We were getting drinks and playing pool at Fitzroy on Mont Royal. One of his colleagues shows up late and loud and screams when she sees him. I’ve heard about her before and already dislike her. She’s tall with pin straight blonde hair and runs up to hug him and wish him a happy birthday. She then turns to me, a gigantic vapid smile across her face.
“And this is my girlfriend, Nastassia”, he says as he introduces me.
“Oh yes! I’ve heard so much about you - nice to meet you!” She hugs me, still sporting that awful smile. “This is so cool! My fiancé is Brown too! He’s from Bangladesh! Where are you from?”
It’s just poor social etiquette really. Like I’m some ethnic project someone has taken on. Like taste in me is explained by the color of my skin. Now I need to get into this whole explanation about how I’m actually from here but risk being asked where I’m ‘really’ from which no one ever wants to hear. Someone needs to tell white people to stop acting this way. Beyond being hurtful, ignorant and alienating, it’s outright embarrassing.
So when American blondie over here got so excited over nothing, I can't help but be thrown back into unease. Brown Tinder dude looks like an uncle type to me. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but I’m not yet an aunty type myself. Besides, I don’t often think of myself as a Brown woman. At least not first and foremost. I think of myself as a Montrealer, then a Canadian, a Mauritian, a photographer, a foodie, a daughter, an aspiring drummer, then, maybe, and only maybe as a person of Indian origin. That’s how far back I have to go. So this excitement strikes me as mistaken. To the white person, I’ll always be Brown first and me later. I do have a date with an Indian man tomorrow but strategically gloss over it. She’s excited and so I humor her. She tells me that now that she’s overhauled my profile, I’ll get all sorts of good matches. There are hundreds of attractive men I’ve matched with already but let’s gloss over that too.
*
It’s day two and the world is fuzzy. My body aches a beautiful ache of having lived too hard. I blame it on yesterday’s boozy evening.
Quirky Indian guy and I decide to meet after dinner. I tried to plug a paella dinner but it felt really intimate. Most restaurants only serve paella for two, which makes sense, but that would be skipping too many bases. We meet at Placa de Catalunya. He tells me he’s staying in a hostel with a bunch of people he doesn’t know and I suddenly feel very uncool and a tad bourgeois for having booked something sheltered and expensive in comparison. When we meet, he’s shorter and skinnier than what I imagined. If shit goes down, I can take him. We walk around La Rambla in search of a place to settle down and have some drinks. We sit down at a random bar and get to talking. I order sangria and a side of bravas. They’re both subpar. He has a bite and tells me how ridiculously bad it is. How can you seriously be eating that he says. He can’t eat anything that isn’t spicy he says. I tell him I’ve heard this line before, that I can’t do spice. He laughs and asks me what kind of Brown girl can’t do spice. I think about how odd it is to feel looked down on by something of my own kind. I’m tempted to look down on him for being a walking cliché with his engineering degree and the occasional head bobbles. But in another way, he’s from the mother ship, and his quick dismissal forestalls any potential claims to authenticity I could make.
I say nothing confrontational and have glass after glass of sangria. I have other selves to be. La Camisa Negra starts to play and I aggressively mouth the words I know. After that, it’s La Bamba. He’s surprised at my apparent fluency, asks me how I know so much Spanish. The only reason I know the words to La Bamba is because of TF1’s Star Academy but how would I even begin to explain that. There’s always so much explaining to do, gosh. About why I can’t do spice, why I speak French, why I know some Spanish, why I’m not that into average Brown guys, why I don’t relate to Bangladesh. No matter where I am, I can’t get away from my skin and the stories it tells.
The next morning I head to Satan’s Coffee Corner, a few blocks away from the flat. It’s another one of those uber cool cafés that sells tote bags and whose baristas are eccentric and get away with poorly drawn tattoos. I order my soy latte and take a seat. I don’t feel brave enough to whip my camera out today but this place is beautiful. I call mom. She tells me about her morning and I relax into the familiarity of small-town gossip. We speak in a blend of English, French and Kreol that doesn’t need explaining. I’m an alien in transit but not until I hang up.