Letter to a lecturer.
August 25, 2014
Bratislava
Well R, it was fairly abysmal, your Cuban bar…
Still, the cigar was a perfect pleasure (exquisite, and leaves one unsatisfied) and the rum was impeccable. I let the bartender choose it for me. Nothing quite satisfies their sense of pride than a customer deferring to his/her superior taste and you, seasoned drinking vagabond, must know the benefit of having the bartender like you. Perhaps that is manipulative; perhaps it’s just common sense (it was a lovely choice and I wouldn’t have picked it myself). In any case, it’s the sort of thing that earns me my first, and oftentimes only, ally in a place. Something I take into consideration as a solo traveller.
Speaking of solo travel, I’m reminded of an instance, the latest in a not inconsiderable history of them. Early in the evening, long before sunset, as I was writing and drinking my vino tinto, two men who had taken the table next to me said something in Slovakian as I walked (hobbled) back to my seat. I said I didn’t understand and so they asked in English were I was from (the obligatory first question). The next question was, as it invariably is…
“You are travelling alone?”
Let me properly restate that.
“You are travelling alone?”
To me, this goes without saying; I travel alone as a rule.
“Yyyyep.”
“Really? A beautiful woman, travelling by herself?”
(Even plain ladies are beautiful to lonely men).
Perhaps there is a correct response to this dubious sort of compliment, but after years of wandering, I still don’t know what it is. My own replies tend to oscillate between the bland and the acerbic. The easiest question to deal with is, “You have a boyfriend?”
I’ve found the best answer is, “Oh yeah. Several.”
Either they don’t believe me and think (correctly) I am trying to put them off, which is just as well. Mission accomplished. Or they think I am taken and they stop their advances. (Annoying that only belonging to someone else gets them to stop, but if it works, it works.) Or they are disgusted by my polyamorous ways and are no longer interested.
Or I can answer “no,” but that brings on yet more insulting surprise and unwanted interest.
Why the astonishment that a woman should travel alone?
I ask you, Richard Gwyn, in all your years of vagabondage, did you ever get the incredulous interrogative, “You’re travelling alone?”
If you have, then I’m satisfied. If not… I’m afraid you must prepare yourself for a feminist rant (what joy is yours).
Why should it matter that a woman, beautiful or not, travels alone?
Actually, let’s skip the rant and treat that as a genuine question. You must have met dozens of female travellers in your wanders; why is the woman traveller exoticised (and eroticised)? Is it because she is seen as being out of context? But a male traveller is simply a man exercising his freedom to go where he chooses?
Perhaps it is unfair to make that distinction. Literature shows that the male traveller can be romanticised (by himself if no one else). And I suppose he can be sexualised, in a byronic way.
(Book recommendations, fiction and other, on how narratives of the male traveller differs from the female are welcome. And while we’re at it, add to that any examples of byronic heroines that you can think. Sadly, I come up with nothing and I feel a fresh research project approaching.)
I think that being a woman traveller encompasses no more or less risk or appeal than simply being a woman… wherever she may be. Though it means being stigmatised as a ‘foreigner’ even in the country of your own birth. (Alistair Reid, and all that. Does he mention sexualisation of the foreigner in Whereabouts?) Is there something inherently ‘flingsome’ that suggests itself upon encountering a solo traveller? Is that it? Because that has been my (and many women’s) experience. The reaction to the female traveller ranges from confusion, to sexual interest, to mistrust, often all three at once, especially the more religious countries (no matter which religion). Does this apply to male travellers as well? And let us simplify the matter by not involving political suspicion of solo travellers, because we can both attest that political suspicion can hinder travellers of either gender. I mean on a social level. Did your travelling alone consistently baffle those you met? Did they question your decision to be where you were? Or was there acceptance?
Though I imagine that being a vagabond has its own social stigmatism separate from being a foreigner. Perhaps indigence and vagrancy widens the gap too much to fruitfully compare experiences.
But given the lack of understanding of the female foreigner, I might argue: Viajar sola es más solo que solo.
To travel alone as a woman is more isolating than to travel alone as a man.
There. You have more pages of this moleskin than necessary, but that is beside the point. I must end this letter. My penmanship has become atrocious.
~K
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