University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2014 What You Leave Behind: A Collection of Travel Essays Madison Bernath University of Central Florida Part of the Creative Writing Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Bernath, Madison, "What You Leave Behind: A Collection of Travel Essays" (2014). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 4852. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/4852 WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND: A COLLECTION OF TRAVEL ESSAYS by MADISON BERNATH B.A. University of Central Florida, 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term 2014 © 2014 Madison Bernath ii ABSTRACT What You Leave Behind is a collection of essays framed by the theme of travel. The essays seek to understand the changeability and the consistency of the self when exposed to new cultures and new environments. They also explore what travel tells us about varying world perspectives, and how much of those varying world perspectives people can hope to understand. Lastly, these true-life stories and ruminations explore how travel shapes relationships: familial, romantic, and platonic. At its core, this thesis strives to reveal how traveling can inform the way people understand themselves, the world around them, and the relationships they have with others, both at home and abroad. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to acknowledge the following people for supporting me creatively and emotionally: Lisa Roney, Sean Ironman, Darlin’ Neal, Jocelyn Bartkevicius, David James Poissant, Laurie Uttich, Terry Ann Thaxton, Rick Schell, Scott Joseph, Phillip Lopate, Allie Pinkerton, Dianne Turgeon Richardson, Brendon Barnes, Eric Fershtman, Bethany DuVall, Leslie Salas, Ted Greenberg, Rachel Kolman, my attentive peers in workshop, Dawn Marlan, Dusty Mondy, and, of course, my parents, Penny and Peter Bernath. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS I. CAMBRIDGE ......................................................................................................1 WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND ......................................................................... 2 PROCESS OF ELIMINATION ........................................................................ 24 MUSCLE MEMORY ....................................................................................... 40 THE EIGHT WONDERS OF WYCOMBE ..................................................... 57 REVERSE CULTURE SHOCK ....................................................................... 76 II. FAMILY ON THE RUN...................................................................................86 A HISTORY OF RIVERS AND ROCKS ........................................................ 87 BLACK COFFEE ............................................................................................. 99 DANGER BOX .............................................................................................. 119 HOW TO BE A BROTHER ........................................................................... 131 FIVE STAGES OF TRAVEL ......................................................................... 143 III. FINAL NOTE ................................................................................................154 AGAINST TRAVEL ...................................................................................... 155 APPENDIX: READING lIST..............................................................................164 v I. CAMBRIDGE 1 WHAT YOU LEAVE BEHIND I was in high school, and my grandmother barreled down the road. “Grandma!” She skidded over a median in the street. “Honey, you’re a teenager. Live a little.” She was supposed to take me thrift store shopping, but I began to doubt we’d ever reach our destination. I held my breath as she drove in the opposite direction of traffic, using the turning lane as a regular lane. “Grandma, you know that you’re going in the wrong direction, don’t you?” She flipped a bird out the window at a passing honker and shook her head. “The road’s a road, dear.” I wondered if she drove so recklessly because she was old, if she didn’t care if she died sooner or later. “Now what were you telling me, honey?” “About that Nanny 911 show. You should see those kids. They’re so annoying.” My grandmother shook her head and sighed as she veered into the right lane without checking if it was clear. A car swerved out of the way and onto the shoulder. “You know, when your mother was little, a woman in our neighborhood drowned her two kids in the bathtub.” “Oh my God.” “I know. They were young. Elementary school, maybe?” She sped through a red light and placed a cold hand on my arm. “But Maddy . .” “Uh huh.” Picking up speed, her purple Eclipse raced down the black road. “I understood.” I stopped watching the death trap out the window and snapped my head around to see if she was serious. Her mouth gave no hint of a smile, and her eyes were calm and focused. It was 2 the first time I ever understood that my grandmother was not simply the crazy and exciting woman she presented herself to be. There was a darker side. A part of her she’d hidden from me. *** After that joy ride, I thought my grandmother had it in her mind that men, marriage, and babies were the plagues every woman wanted to avoid. I thought it a mercy she didn’t drown my mother and my two aunts. Amazingly, she let them live, and sent them away to school, and then off to marriage. When she found out I had a boyfriend while I was far away getting a degree she was paying for, she called to make sure I wasn’t dropping out of school. Apparently, one can either have romance or ambition, not both at the same time. Even my parents phoned me in a slight state of panic. I told them that as strange as it may seem, girls have boyfriends and go to class all at the same time. In fact, there are thousands of girls like that—millions. It took them a while to believe me. *** The first time I hung out with my now boyfriend, Dusty, we caravanned to a “rock star/porn star party” that a somewhat distant friend of mine was throwing. Dusty brought a car full of boys, and I came equipped with my roommates. As soon as we walked in, I felt uncomfortable. On a regular night, my two roommates and I either hung out at a coffee shop or drank at home and played UNO until the sun came up. We were the only girls not dressed in lingerie—my Eddie Vedder costume not a popular choice. I exchanged glances with my girls. “Want to grab a twenty-four pack and head to my place for some games instead?” I asked Dusty. Dusty, conveniently, had two friends with him as well, perfect for making our own little party. 3 His tight smile relaxed. “Definitely.” Evidently, this was not his scene either. Back at the house, we brought out Apples to Apples, a game during which I am a furious debater. After I engaged in an especially heated argument with Dusty’s friend, Dusty (the judge of the round) chose my card as the winner. “You’re not trying to win the game.” His friend threw his card back on the table. “You’re trying to win the girl.” Dusty blushed, and that’s when I knew the attraction was reciprocated. Despite this fact, I maintain I won that round due to my extraordinary debating skills. *** Once, my grandmother saw a sheer black string thong with tasteless rhinestones I’d recently purchased at Macy’s. I was in high school, a place where nobody wore regular underwear. How absolutely embarrassing that would be. My grandmother picked it up by its string side and turned to my mother, “We’ve got to keep this girl off her back.” At the time, I was actually so sexually inexperienced I hadn’t understood the remark until much later in the day, after hours of thinking about it and trying to dissect it. I looked at thongs more along the lines of a private fashion statement than as sex clothes—and if one of the rhinestoned strings happened to peek out of my pants by accident, then I would be safe from that granny panties mocking I heard some of the other girls endure. My grandmother, though, knew a little more about sex in her day than I did in mine. She later told me that she and my Papa “almost made it” in the back of his boxy clunk of a car (the car he shared with his three other siblings). They were necking real good and Nat King Cole was on the radio—her absolute favorite singer, and later her absolute favorite love-making music (a 4 fact I deeply regret being privy to). The windows were getting steamy. The seats stuck to the back of her arms. Papa had his hands in her hair. It was definitely going down. Until. Tap. Tap. Tap. Her own mother stared at her through the fog, making sure her daughter kept off her back. *** Of course, I eventually did make it on my back and learned many other positions as well. When Dusty and I began sleeping together, it was like living in a warm, little story book. We were painted on the paper with plenty of skin and smiles. On this page there was no thought of the future. “Pssst, Madison.” I felt someone nudge my arm and squinted through my crusty eyelids at a blurry Dusty. “Mmm, morning,” I murmured as I groped the side table for my glasses. “I have some chocolate coffee for you,” Dusty said as he held the brim of the cup under my nose, as if the mere scent would send caffeine to my brain. I sat up in bed and propped the pillows, so I could sit in a sort of half-lying down way. I took the coffee from his hand and beckoned for him to nestle up to me. He crawled into bed, and we sipped from the same cup. “Why are you up so early? You got work?” I asked.