On the flight from
Austin to Dallas, I traveled with a homogeneous group of folk apparently headedfor the Anglo-Saxon Heritage Festival. They contrasted sharply with the other
travelers packed in the Miami airbus, who looked like they were all answering a
casting call for a Benetton ad; shockingly blond Germans with thin lips
squeezed in beside Rastafarians with dreadlocks piled so high on their heads
they kept punching the stewardess call button with their hairdos. Multiple
accidents involving spilled cocktails, complete disregard for the
fasten-seat-belt sign, congestion in the smoking section, and outbursts of song
distracted from the showing of Apollo 13 and the lovely viscous lasagna
we were served. Nothing, however, could distract me from my gnawing discomfort
over the deal I’d made to be on this plane.
I was embarking on a free trip to paradise with more strings attached than to
a 10-legged marionette. When I opened the letter from the marketing agency
inviting me on a press trip to Trinidad and Tobago, I jumped on it so fast I
left my conscience 10 feet behind eating my freeloading dust. I called them
before my conscience could stop sneezing.
“Oh, we’ll be going for the Pan Jazz Festival? (What’s that?) Great!… Yeah,
I write for the Chronicle… Yeah, it’s a big music publication (but I
write home improvement advice)… Oh sure, I can get you a letter of assignment
(as soon as I find out what one is)… Travel writing? Yeah, I’ve done a little
(a 250-word piece for Islands they completely rewrote)”… It’s not like
I have a problem with embellishment. I do it all the time in my writing for
more drama, comedy, or suspense… (or because I can’t remember). I prefer to
think of it as disassembling. But this breed of embellishing — let’s just call
it lying — to obtain things I don’t deserve was miles outside my comfort
level. When my damn conscience caught up with me, she gave me hell. She sounded
like my parents.
I was born a pathological liar, lying as soon as I could talk. I lied to
entertain, like my stories about my daughter, Assie, who was flushed down the
toilet and lived in Buffalo Bayou, or the one about the beady-eyed man who
followed my sister and me everywhere. I lied to protect myself, like swearing I
ate my hamburger patty that was so dry it tore the gums from my teeth when I
really fed it to Sam our dog, or blaming the beady-eyed man when the rabbit
hutch fell over (because I was climbing on it to spy on our neighbors). Maybe
this was cute when I was under three feet tall, maybe not, but as I got older
and my lies became more and more malevolent, my parents determined that lying
wasn’t a good thing and they decided to teach me honesty. They did. Just the
thought of lying coats my tongue with the milky, bitter taste of soap. I don’t
suppose my parents ever thought I might want to be a politician or a used car
salesman or an international spy, career options lost forever when I was cured
of the art of lying.
But I wanted this free trip so badly, my long-suppressed talent re-emerged. I
was surprised at how easily lying came back to me and with it, the comforts of
self-deception. I actually convinced myself I could get something into print
about my trip, that I could remain objective no matter how many free rum
punches were poured down my throat, and even that traveling to this romantic
destination without my true love would be a growing experience.
I beat back any doubts by over-preparing for the trip. I read Trinidadian
author V.S. Naipal. Okay, I didn’t actually read him, but I did do some serious
skimming of The Way in the World. I liked his line about the leaves
being too big in Trinidad so much that I used it often — without attribution.
But when he criticized his earlier writings, noting that the humor depended
“more on words than observation or true feeling,” I took personal offense and
put the book aside: I like funny words and most true feelings aren’t funny at
all. I didn’t want to think about the truth.
I went to the video store and rented Swiss Family Robinson, shot in
Tobago back when Disney movies were sweet enough to induce acute diabetes.
However, the scenery was spectacular, at least what I saw when I could suppress
my automatic gag reflex. I also poured through guidebooks and newspaper
articles about the dual island-nation until I was spouting facts like a tour
guide: “Tobago is home to the oldest forest reserve in the Western Hemisphere”
and “Drumming was banned in Trinidad in the 1800s.” I even tried to read
Voices from the Hills, Despers and Laventille, The Steelband and Its Effects
on Poverty, Stigma and Violence in a Community. Yes, it’s even drier than
its thesis-esque title would suggest, yet I was determined that no casual
tourist would ever visit the island knowing more than me. I hoped this would in
some way make up for my status as a lying interloper.
My carefully crafted facade took some direct hits when I met my traveling
companions at the Miami airport — six women with business cards. Bobbie and
Rebecca worked for the marketing agency hired to arrange the trip, Jayne and
Noelle worked for competing, prestigious travel magazines, Eleanor worked for a
trade journal for the travel industry, Cheryl was a travel agent writing for
AAA, and Sandra was a freelance travel writer with a solid assignment and a big
camera. Suzy was an anxious How-To columnist with ballooning guilt.
We tooled around Trinidad in a warm bus driven by Tony, who had worked for
the T&T tourism department for 18 lifetimes and through countless
government changes. The traffic was so fierce in Port-of-Spain, we spent hours
inching along in the bus, staring at store fronts and dusty houses joyously
askew on their foundations. Later, we wove our way up jungle mountain roads,
confronted with a limitless supply of green. Despite heroic — and often
conflicting — efforts by the marketing girls and the tourism board to make
sure we saw the best the islands had to offer, our travels through this foreign
country were oddly introverted. Tony tried to enlighten us about cocoa
production or the protected status of the giant bamboo as we tooled about
endlessly in the bus, but our gaze was directed inward more and more, towards
each other, like captive monkeys. I liked my fellow primates, but I was
surprised by how indifferent they were to the foreign (and free) world around
them.
When we visited the rainforest, for instance, half the group chose to stay at
the lodge and watch a nature video rather than hike the jungle trails with a
well-trained guide. Of the four of us that did hike, only Jayne and I seemed
interested in the mot-mots, bell birds, and jewel-colored tanagers our guide
stopped to point out. The other two “power walked” in and out of this primal
forest like they were navigating a loop around a suburban football field.
Many of my traveling companions seemed alternately as bored or frightened by
the swarming crowds on the city streets as they were by the birds, bats, and
bugs in the jungle. Rather than shop along the frenetic Frederick’s Street,
where bootlegged tapes blare from tiny kiosks and old men carve calabash fruits
into odd purses, some of the women preferred a sterile mall on the outskirts of
town.
It took us hours to eat meals in restaurants so anxious to impress us that
they served us everything on the menu. And while we ate, the things I thought
were worth writing about whirled by with every passing minute. Like the Pan
Jazz Festival, which I was ostensibly covering for the Chronicle. I
missed the first night entirely and half of the second evening’s performances.
I did catch most of the show the last night: I took notes, I danced, I
interviewed a woman who’d played pan steel drums for 25 years, and I watched
the audience — the most intensely listening audience I’d ever seen. But when I
looked over my notes the next morning, I saw no way to stretch my cryptic
insights into an article on pan steel drums and jazz. Still, I deluded myself
into believing a travel piece would come from this trip; I looked to Tobago to
save me.
Jayne and I had both added two days to our itinerary and I planned to immerse
myself the island’s wildlife once we’d ditched the group: I’d swim with the
manta rays, I’d hike the forest preserve, I’d save a sloth. Then I’d write the
quintessential nature article about the island and sell it consecutively to
every slick travel magazine and the Sunday Times.
We arrived in Tobago mid-afternoon on Sunday. We spent the afternoon in a
new, warm bus touring Scarborough and various fort-like spots. We checked into
a hotel whose best features are a world-renowned golf course and a waggish
manager. We toured the facilities and in an effort to find something upbeat to
say about the $150-500-a-night rooms, Sandy managed to come up with “lovely
amenities,” which is travel writer talk for “soap and shampoo.” I stole her
line the next morning as we toured other resort hotels, whose rate cards
($400-900 a night) and lack of spatial sensitivity left me blathering “lovely
amenities, lovely.” One manager touted his establishment as “an eco-tourism
destination” right before he pointed out the enormous new dining room with the
solid teak ceiling and the handmade solid teak furniture in every
room. I tried to help him out by asking if the teak came from Tobago’s
sustainable forest. He just blinked and asked, “Sustainable? Sustainable?…
Oh… yeah.”
When Jayne and I waved good-bye to our fellow bus mates on Monday evening, the
next two days stretched before me like a promise of redemption. Now, I could
plunge into the island’s culture and wildlife, then burst out the other side
with a thousand enchanting tales. So what did I do? I went straight to bed and
slept for 12 hours, exhausted by my deception. Later, left on my own, I managed
to waste more time, flitting across tiny Tobago like a rabid hummingbird,
urging our driver to stop at Argle Falls, at the Richmond Great House, at
Englishman’s Bay, at Jemma’s, and on and on and on (the detour to the soccer
field where he would be playing that evening was his idea) until Jayne and I
reached our destination at the north end of the island, a tranquil inn on a
postcard-perfect crescent of white sand, with the steep hills of the rainforest
rising behind us and the emerald surf pounding at the shore. Every grain of
sand, every star that burned in the blackest sky, every warm breeze reminded me
of my sweetheart back at home. It was so romantic I stayed awake all night
kissing my pillow.
The next morning we were up and off across the island again, with a solemn
driver whose greatest interest was the annual goat races on Tobago. We dashed
about with no time for manta rays, sloths, or jungle walks. We flew back to
Port-of-Spain, spent the night, and flew out early the following morning for
home.
I boarded the plane heavy with useless memories: of the free breakfast buffets
at the Hilton, the wild hairdo of one of the band members we’d dubbed “Squid
Boy,” the enormous amount of water T & T toilets use in one flush, the tray
of tall, sticky cocktails a waitress dropped down the front of Sandy’s
sundress, and feeding pigs’ knuckles to the stray dogs on Tobago. Not exactly
Travel and Leisure material. Hell, not even material for the Sunday
“Travel” section in the Statesman.
Fortunately, airplane rides provide the perfect delusional atmosphere. Any
thinking person knows that slicing through the sky in a metal bird is the
ultimate experiment in suspended disbelief; it’s only possible because every
person aboard truly believes in the lunacy of flight. Within this illusionary
cocoon, all other personal misconceptions become more tangible, even the
whoppers I’d been telling myself and others for weeks about this trip. As we
soared across the ocean and I ate my omelet (are these real eggs?) and sipped
my coffee (did she really serve me decaf?), the fires of deception were
rekindled within me: I would write about my adventures; I would remain
objective; I hadn’t missed my husband. Just as long as we never landed. n
This article appears in January 26 • 1996 and January 26 • 1996 (Cover).