UNFILTERED FOR GREAT TASTE

While preparing to leave for Mexico last August, I made sure to pack a triumvirate of traveling necessities: new socks (because, as everyone knows, nothing beats new socks); several bottles of Purell hand sanitizer; and a slew of unreasonable expectations disguised as a plan.

Now—four months later—I have returned: The socks are lacking their original cushy comfort, and the hand sanitizer was used up long ago, mostly during an unfortunate incident involving an equal number of tamales and stray dogs. The plan, however, remains intact—at least inasmuch as I have still have one, and it is, at its heart, still unreasonable.

As my resume illustrates in a sadly capable fashion, I am not an expert in anything. But having now lived abroad on two separate occasions, I feel confident in pointing out the practical impossibility of anyone undertaking a journey like the one from which I have just returned—that is, one involving a drastic and prolonged change in cultural environment—without harboring any of the heavenly hopes and desires that commonly motivate characters in romantic comedies: a beautiful, slow, simple existence marked by the presence of outdoor cafes and appropriate live music; the purchase of an exotic house—run down but full of character—for an absurdly low price; enough time to work on one’s literary masterpiece, or at least flirt with the improbably attractive waitress who brings the lattes.

It is perhaps fitting that wants of this nature are also the motivating factors for victims in identity-theft thrillers (The Net 2.0) and horror films (Under the Tuscan Sun).

In my case, I was able to relinquish several of my clunking fantasies on the day I arrived. In fact, I shed several of them before I even found the taxi stand at the airport. My disappointments began when no female author tried to pick me up on the airplane. Furthering my frustration was the fact that Winona Ryder wasn’t even on board, and that when I emerged from the aircraft into the daylight-flooded terminal I was greeted neither as a liberator nor a god of handsome-faced sarcasm. Instead, I was regarded with an air of celebrity comparable to that which would normally be reserved for a shipment of baking soda.

That night I thought about everything that directly contradicted my expectations for Mexico: Scotch wasn’t any cheaper. I was still socially awkward, and I still couldn’t afford to remedy that with Scotch. Then there was the newly rented apartment in which I was lamenting all of this: I had hoped for something rustic yet comfortable—a solitary residence that easily proclaimed, “Here lives a person who is, among other things, capable of being a writer.” (I like wordy proclamations, as they give me the most flexibility.) What I got was a bed, a plastic table, a jug of water, and a window with bars on it. As I watched the room’s single, bare light bulb cast sinister shadows on the walls, a different proclamation rushed to mind: “Here lives a prisoner.”

Moments like this are not unique, nor—despite outward appearances—are they bad. The real reason that anyone goes on an extended jaunt to another country (at least anyone whose finances wouldn’t be aptly described as robust) is not so that specific, wonderful things can happen, but so that something can happen: People want to be confronted by new—and therefore (ephemerally) attractive—opportunities, options, and lifestyles. People want the chance to stand back from their homes and towns, countries and cultures, and be able to glimpse themselves unadorned for the first time, naked and frail though they may be. Whatever happens, good or bad, is always in line with the desire to interact with the world without a filter.

But as much as that may be the real reason for electing to pursue a radical lifestyle change, I doubt very much that it is what crosses anyone’s mind when they find a scorpion on the bathroom floor. And so the trick, I think, is to have your expectations in your back pocket: available as a general guide—like a map found on a restaurant placemat—but not relied upon to deliver exact results. Perhaps even for all living, and not just living abroad, you cannot cling to a fantasy with such quixotic fervor that you become a prisoner of fixed ideas; on occasion you have to be elastic enough to fit through the bars.

For sixteen weeks I composed essays about my life in Mexico—some shining with happy excitement, others dripping with annoyance, all reflecting my unfiltered, and therefore successful, time in the country. Much like the experience of living there, writing about Mexico was at once fun, difficult, and occasionally numbed by the consumption of white wine. Now that I am back, the question is: will I keep writing?

I will—because I want to write, and because it’s entirely possible that Winona Ryder fantasizes about junior detectives as much as I think she does.