The Taco Traveler

At least I made her smile. It was a decent day in San Diego – nice and getting nicer, and I was out for a big weekend bike ride from my marina downtown to my favorite coffee shop in La Jolla. It’s a twelve mile bike ride each way – a long way for coffee, but it’s also the exercise, the sunshine, the ocean and sometimes, occasionally, a girl like her. She was just sitting there alone on the sea wall, Pacific Beach, either waiting for someone or contemplating something very deep and important. As I saw her I slowed my pace, trying to decide if I should say something, if she looked like she wanted to talk or maybe just needed a smile.

The night before my bike ride, I'd gotten an email from my dad. I’m not generally a fan of huge email attachments with the crazy stuff that makes its way around the Internet, carrying viruses or at least building a big list of emails for spammers to harvest (clip the previous recipients before forwarding!). This was a huge download and something that’s been around for years – a PowerPoint document often called “Life is Beautiful.PPS” (the virus-free version) with inspirational quotes and suggestions – little things that make each day a better day, and if done in bulk – by everyone – would make the world a much better place. One of those slides flickered into my conscience as I saw the girl on the boardwalk, and the words grew clearer as I passed her by: “Make three people smile today.” That’s what I tried to keep in my head as I turned my bike around.

For many men, it’s not easy to approach women we don’t know. Though I’m not shy, in many ways I’m the anti Tucker Max. Despite the biological imperative and the acknowledgment that a relationship has to start from something, I always feel a little bit disgusted with myself when I start talking to a girl where the premise of the conversation is just simply to meet so that a conversation or two later we may be having drinks, a date, maybe more. It's as if I feel like a relationship has to start with real feelings already in place. I’m so the opposite of Tucker Max that I actually wrote an “I Saw You” entry that re-imagined his meeting with Miss Vermont – one of his more famous / infamous stories. I know how my writing voice sounds. How soft and sappy my prose feels when I try to write about what it’s like to see beauty in a moment or in a subtle interaction. It feels like I’m from another time; pack me in a capsule and send me to the 1700’s and I’ll write an epistolary novel. Sometimes I’d like to write stronger, more arrogantly, more macho. I’ve considered Tucker Max and his success, and the (usually) misogynistic hilarity of his odd and fascinating life. Would it be fun to re-write his stories, to completely change how he depicts the events and instead to write those events like I see them? Probably not, but I once gave it a try for a few paragraphs of his Miss Vermont story, anyway:

I Saw You: The Girl at The Athletic Club, Boca Raton

I was just working out, not looking to meet anyone necessarily, and in that place you stood out for the spandex you weren’t wearing. You didn’t look like the rest of the girls at the place; where they treat the gym as an opportunity to flaunt everything, you seemed to be hiding your beauty, as if you were really there to work out: your hat pulled down low so I could barely see your eyes, loose t-shirt, loose-fitting basketball shorts....

Because I went to Duke for law, the logo on your shorts opened an avenue to conversation, and when you were between sets I approached. I don’t remember what I said because the words didn’t matter; what was important was your face, your smile, the way you brushed back a few strands of hair and tucked them behind your ear....
“You hungry,” I asked?

It’s far from the “Dude, let me tell you about this chick from last night” voice of Tucker Max. It’s a long way from the “hills were purple in the distance and Greta looked at Jack in a way that said he would be better off if he were fishing or wrestling or running with the bulls like he’d talked about earlier that summer as they sat at the café on the Rue Montparnasse” Hemingway brand. But I think I write in the same way I see the world. I’d much rather be someone who, seeing the girl on the boardwalk, so beautiful and yet so sad sitting all alone looking out at the ocean, thinks first about whether there was anything he could do to help rather than seeing her sadness as an opportunity. So I approached her. I rolled up slowly on my bike and removed my sunglasses. Though I was right in front of her, I’d almost stopped before she even realized I was there.

“Hi,” I said, simply.

“Oh, hi.” She was a little surprised. She forced a shy smile.

“Are you okay?” I asked. “I’m sorry to bug you... you just looked like you have something very heavy...”

Like many men, I’m slightly red-green colorblind, so subtle shades are sometimes lost on me. A dark purple from a dark red, say. But it was clear that she blushed, and I knew right away that either she was completely fine and just a little hung over or otherwise not quite herself that morning, or she was embarrassed that her sadness was so obvious a stranger would ask if she’s okay. She may have even bit a little mad. I helped her get rid of me as she started to explain she was fine – “Just meditating,” I joked, suggesting it as her excuse. I smiled and she smiled back, however forced. I told her to have a great day, then turned and slowly pedaled off down the boardwalk.

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like it’s going around, this resurgence of caring. This interest in making things better for people whose body language seems to say that a minute of friendly conversation or a true, honest smile could help them through their day. The last time I left the States for Mexico I’d just left my two little boys behind in Florida after being with them for about five straight weeks. And as I sat there at a bus station in Phoenix waiting for the Tufesa bus to Guaymas, a Mexican man - a worker at the bus line - approached me and asked how I was doing. “Todo bien?” he asked, with a slight look of concern. “Si, si. Todo bien, gracias.” We talked a few more minutes but I didn’t go into any details. More than anything it bothered me that my sadness was so obvious, so I resolved to fix my outward appearance on that trip even if I was hurting inside, missing my boys and wondering how long I’d be away. A few hours later on that bus ride I helped some new friends get their tourist visas at the border and get safely and officially down to Guaymas / San Carlos. In return, they offered their couch for the night since it was three in the morning and my boat was in the middle of the harbor with no dinghy at the dock. Far from the guy on the bus depot bench who looked like he needed a kind word, I’d become, once again, the helpful one, and I was helped right back.

Nobody needs any reminders that times are difficult; we see them every day. But somehow it feels like a better, more hopeful sort of bad lately. It can’t just be the presidential changeover, can it? I don’t know, but we've all seen how an entire company can take on the personality of its CEO. It’s brought us down in the past, but this time, in this case, I think people should get used to being confronted when they're sad. The world really seems different – like a nicer, better place already since a more caring president has taken office. It’s okay to listen, now. Okay to be conciliatory. Okay to admit mistakes and failings. More than anything, as he and his family say with everything they do and everything they are to each other, it’s okay to feel. And certainly, it’s okay to ask a stranger if there’s anything you can do to help, even if all they need is a smile.