A Woman's World Again - True Stories of World Travel

Sample Chapter: Pulling the Trigger on a Trip

by Susan Van Allen

How do you know when to say “Yes”?

“I used to be the kind of person who could make decisions,” I tell my shrink as I stretch out on the stiff gray couch. “I mean shouldn’t a woman in her forties be in a position to easily say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a pop-up ad for an airfare sale to Rome, instead of feeling tormented?” It’s these little things that really drive home the fact that my life has become one big unsalvageable mess.

In the silence that follows my outburst, I know he’s giving me time to look deep inside and answer that question myself. Ouch…the thought of leaving town and saving money on these excruciating weekly sessions—using it for something like a plane ticket—seems very appealing. The poor doctor would probably be relieved to have his Wednesday afternoons free of the monotonous saga of my life’s holding patterns. The dilemma of the moment is that of course I want to leap at this airfare sale, but my leaping mechanism is fouled up by a horrid condition I call Traveler’s Block.

Has all that talk about the rising Euro and advice about how a woman in my age bracket should be focused on saving for retirement seeped in and put my Holly Golightly years behind me? No, it’s more like the TB (Traveler’s Block) is rooted in a slow-simmering “I don’t know what’s going to happen next” panic. As in, a freelance writer who doesn’t know where her next paycheck is coming from cannot simply click-click and fly off to Italy…or can she?…or should she?

I could take my friend Mark’s advice. “Buy a non-refundable ticket,” is what he says to anyone “between jobs” in Los Angeles. According to Mark, who works as a freelance film editor, buying a non-refundable airplane ticket has gotten him work every time.

I call him from the car when I leave the shrink and he urges me to make the leap, rattling away in his bulldozing style: “Just make sure the ticket’s absolutely non-refundable and comes with a fat penalty for changing dates. You’ve gotta treat the L.A. business as though it’s a boyfriend who’s not stepping up to the plate. The minute you make a commitment to date someone else—WHAM! Boyfriend Number One is on his knees begging you to come back with the proposal and the ring. Trust me, it’s the only way.”

I give him back some nice “uh-huhs” while thinking his non-refundable advice absolutely cuckoo. With a nearly maxed out credit card, I am in no position to play Mark’s risky game or to even think about travel.

People who think about travel have life plans, steady incomes, dental plans that fully cover root canals. They have those solid jobs that come with vacation time. They’re people like my friend Pam, who calls to tell me that she and two other couples have booked a villa in Provence for the spring vacation two years from now. I can’t make a decision about what I’m doing in two days, never mind two years. At this point, I get sent into a spin when I’m at the supermarket and the cashier asks, “Paper or plastic?”

All I do know is I’ve got to stick around, write spec upon spec, keep my feelers out, check job-site after job-site on the internet…. Which is what I was doing when the ad zapped on to my screen. “do not click—do not!” screamed my inner killjoy.

After sending out two pitch letters with clips, temptation took hold of my devilish right hand, which shot out to click open that ad. Why did they have to include the most beautiful photographs—the Spanish Steps blanketed by pale magenta azaleas in bloom, gushing fountains all lit up in the Piazza Navona? Why can’t it be a bargain fare to any place else but Rome—la citta eterna that tugs at my heart—where on every visit that deep sense of home shoots through me the moment my plane touches down…Rome!

On the phone with my sister, who calls to offer her support through my down time, I joke about chucking it all and heading off to Italy. She finds the idea hysterical—married with children and no ups and downs in her financial department, my lifestyle offers her constant amusement. I blab away, “Yeah, like I’d just disappear for a while and get inspired by great art and beautiful people who don’t care about plastic surgery—wouldn’t that be just nuts?” There’s an edge to her laugh, as if she’s holding back panic, imagining me showing up on her doorstep, destitute and begging to crash in her basement for the rest of my life.

I hang up and mutter defenses: “I mean, isn’t traveling at the drop of a hat one of the perks of freelancing? Aren’t these life-enriching experiences necessary for a writer?” Then I see sister’s face before me: “Admit it, you’re just trying to escape reality.”

I need to do something with that damn ad. I forward it to my Italophile galfriend, Louise. She instantly e-mails back: “Are you going?” and comes up strong against what she calls my “lame-ass excuses” with: “If you don’t spend the money on that it’ll go to your teeth or your car. Years from now you think you’ll regret it? You think you’ll be sitting in some ratty dive when you’re seventy-five eating cat food, complaining: Oh, if I hadn’t spent that money on that trip to Italy I’d be in much better financial shape now?

Well, maybe if something drops out of the sky before the fare sale deadline on Friday, I could consider it.… I could get an assignment for a couple of months from now and then squeeze this trip in as a little celebratory gift to myself. Who knows what could happen?

Aaaghhh.… Why can’t all of this I shouldn’t go/maybe I should/I can’t/maybe I can just resolve itself? I need some sure sign—a burst of a red light that will keep me confidently in L.A. or a green light that could allow me to move forward with absolute assurance to go ahead and buy that ticket.

Betsy, my old friend from San Francisco, calls while I’m back at the computer. As she fills me in on her latest moneymaking scheme, I multi-task. Just for a laugh, I get back on that airline site and punch in some departure and return dates. I stare at the screen as Betsy, who ran a mega-bucks dot com biz in the late 90s, jabbers on about her plan for a new project that’s sure to revive her company, and somehow I’m zapped to a reservation form. I freeze until my session gets timed out. I get booted off as Betsy switches the topic to a friend of hers I’ve met a couple of times: “Kathy felt a lump…”

I cradle the phone with my shoulder and use both hands to reach under my shirt and do that exam I forget to do every month, as Betsy goes on about the horrors of chemo and shaky diagnoses. Everything feels okay.

Betsy finishes up with: “So you never know what’s going to happen. And how are you?”

“I’m fine,” I tell her. “In fact, I’m going to Italy in a couple of weeks.”

The excitement and relief that rushes over me as I click “submit” is absolutely non-refundable.

* * *

Susan Van Allen is a Los Angeles-based writer who has written for National Public Radio’s Savvy Traveler and Marketplace, CNN.com, newspapers, magazines, web sites, and the television show Everybody Loves Raymond. She travels to Italy as often as possible, to visit relatives, eat and drink well, bike through the countryside, wander through museums, and enjoy the flirtations of those handsome Italian men.



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