And now everyone’s going off on vacation, while you’re stuck standing there, looking like a wilted leaf of organic lettuce, breathing in the fumes of melting asphalt in this god awful city. I bet you’re not ready to handle six hundred sultry Instagram poses per minute, play caretaker for all the neighbors’ keys and pets for weeks, or skim through hundreds of articles about the best summer destinations — written by journalists dreaming of places they’ll never be able to visit on their paycheck.
The city will slowly fill up with those pale people who got a sliver of sun on their calf and now look like branded cattle. You’ll spot them instantly. There are two types: one, skinny as a rail, decked out in some adventure brand, looking like they just strangled a lion bare-handed without breaking a sweat; the other, red-faced and hefty, squeezed into a kid-sized t-shirt with their gut hanging out, practically begging you to rest your drink on it. You don’t, though, because one swing from them could send you on an unvaccinated trip to South Africa.
You’d love to tell your friends you’re off to Bali, too — probably to find your lost bonus check — or that you’re craving new experiences, like a Baltic cruise topped with a massive disco where, if you skip the motion sickness pills, you can fake a transatlantic bender without spending a dime on whiskey.
Sure, you’d like to flash a ticket to Cape Town, dance around with it stuck to your forehead like it’s a bachelor party, and snap a grinning airport selfie that, if you wait a couple of days to post, might as well be posthumous. Maybe you’d brag about your upcoming Cuban adventure, where you can enjoy as a tourist what you’d never see as a local — always a boost to the ego, even if it’s kind of gross and pathetic deep down. If it’s about propping up your self-esteem, a luxury apartment in Marbella has its charm. And if you’ve totally lost it, a photo next to those tacky monumental replicas in Dubai will make your tackiest friends’ eyes pop — unless they’re the ones who took the picture.
Here’s the kicker: you travel millions of miles, crossing borders, oceans, and time zones because you’re sick of your neighborhood, desperate to escape it for three weeks without seeing a single neighbor. And guess what you find when you get to Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park? Your next-door neighbor, of course, queuing up at the resort reception. He’s all, “Holy crap, neighbor! Small world! Our hood rules! Let’s celebrate this random meetup — dinner tonight? United, our block’s unstoppable!”
That’s when you remember you’re in the desert, and maybe, just maybe, the stars will align, he’ll leave his window open, and a hyena will take him out during his afternoon nap. But if that happens, the TV crews will track you down, stick you on some morning show to talk about how devastated you are, how bad you feel for your compatriot, and how thrilled you were to bump into him in Uluru — where even Bill Gates lost Wi-Fi — reminiscing about your cherished Sunday strolls through your city’s streets.
Maybe you’re horrified by this whole vacation circus, its parade of bad taste and sacrifices: the traffic jams, the exotic animal bites, the scams at tourist-trap restaurants where you don’t care if they steal your credit card as long as they clarify whether those bits in the rice at lunch were pork or cat. You won’t know until the full moon hits and you catch yourself meowing at the sky from your balcony, at which point no precautions will save the neighbor’s hamster.
But if you truly despise this frenzy for jetting off to far-flung places to mingle with super weird cultures, you can always join my legion of cynics. We’re the ones who swear it’s awesome to skip summer vacations because the city’s empty, and we can commute to work in peace. Yep. It’s great. It’s wonderful. It’s fantastic to have the whole city to yourself while everyone else dives into crystal-clear waters in some country that doesn’t even show up on the map. You won’t even be comforted by the thought that, with any luck, they’ll get chomped up by a crocodile. After all, you and I will probably get swallowed by some damn municipal construction ditch in the middle of the street. Every July and August, I wish the mayor of my city would finally find that damned treasure and stop tearing up the empty streets, trapping us cynics in the trenches.
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