What gives it away - #26
A slogan, a tell, a plea.
In 1977, the Peter Paul Candy company paid Leo Corday and Leon Carr to write a jingle for two of their candy bars at once, Almond Joy and Mounds. The jingle would play for decades to come, and decades longer in my head: Sometimes you feel like a nut… sometimes you don’t.
I sing this jingle all the time. It is, in many ways, my guiding mantra. Sometimes you feel like climbing the mountain, diving in head first, being the absolute best version of yourself, and sometimes… you uh, don’t. The past couple weeks, I was on the “don’t” end of the spectrum. And I timed it pretty well — hopefully this newsletter goes out as planned on Sunday morning, because I’ll be on day 2 of a two-week vacation.
But just because I don’t feel like a nut doesn’t mean my body doesn’t. In its typical fashion, it is crumbling at an exponential rate as I approach vacation. Like work ethic diminishes on a Friday afternoon, so too does my body’s ability to care for itself the closer it gets to actually being able to enjoy itself. Back pain, fatigue, phantom fevers, I am laid up on the couch wishing I had finished packing instead of just writing an incomplete packing list. It’s unclear if any of this is real. I took my temperature. It’s 97.7°F. Could the back pain be from hunching over my laptop, Gollum’ing my way to freedom, my precious vacation? Could the fatigue be from, you know, working four jobs?
This is not the image projected. This is, after all, an alpine paradise. When I’ve just skinned up the mountain at dawn so I can catch the first lines of powder and then the first chair, and I hop on the lift with a stranger while I sip from my thermos of hot cocoa, it looks enviable. From the ability to get up at 5am to the freedom to spend that time skiing, what’s not to like?
Well, you know, the rest of life?
But this isn’t the first time my life has intersected with the false fairy tales of a resort town.
In 2008, I was sitting on a dock with a friend in the starlight as waves lapped against the pilings. We were waiting on a dinghy from a neighboring island to come fetch us so we could ride the waves to the party in the dark. And then Batman asked us a question.
“Excuse me, is this where we can catch the boat to Necker Island?”
It was Christian Bale and his wife.
“It is, there should be a dinghy here shortly.” It was the dinghy we were waiting for, but we knew the deal. Guests always took precedence. We’d be here another 30 minutes waiting for our friends to deliver the anointed and spin back around.
“Great life you guys have here.”
“Sure is.” We smiled, agreeing while preparing to get mind-numbingly drunk after a week of being verbally abused by our bosses.
I wondered then what gave us away. Was it the casual feet dangling off the dock with beers in our hands? Was it the skin cancer tans? Or was it the sweatshirts on a 75 degree night?
Christian Bale isn’t a method actor, but he obviously knows how to investigate a human with a level of depth that enables him to perfectly emulate them. Maybe he’s seen enough locals to tell a local anywhere. But even if you can’t tell a local overnight, the tells will always show themselves. One of the biggest ones here and maybe anywhere is being alone. And I am almost always alone when I ski into the singles’ line at the chairlift.
Several times a week, I have brief conversations with strangers because every week, I am skiing by myself and hopping onto lifts with whoever will have me.
I love talking to people when they’re on vacation. It’s like meeting someone on a Friday night — they’ve got the whole weekend, seemingly their whole lives, ahead of them. They’re the loosest versions of themselves. These conversations have all the joy of meeting someone on a plane, but with none of the panic that you’ll be stuck talking to someone terrible for three plus hours. It’s only ever for the next 13 minutes.
I met a teenage girl on vacation with her dad, his desperation to seem cool to her nearing levels of such unbearable uncoolness that I could feel the pre-written struggles of their relationship through the thin, cold air. I met a woman from LA, but also from Boston, but sort of living in Canada, but maybe all three. She wanted to know where the “hard stuff” was. I met three Texans who called masks chin diapers and said out loud that COVID only kills you if you “can’t handle it” and then proceeded to ask me some of the dumbest questions about skiing I’ve ever heard. Another woman laughed with her friend at someone struggling below, “god, if you can’t ski it, stay off it.” I turned to her, every inch of my face covered and said blankly, “they’re learning.”
I’ve met people who point blank asked me how I could afford to live here, and I point blank tell them about my big corporate job, my freelance gigs, the business I’m trying to build, and that their picture of my life is, without question, inaccurate. At 9am on a chairlift at Telluride, who could blame them for coloring outside the lines?
This “coffee shop” on the lift is my playground. It is a character study and a you-never-know, a dangling metal chair of potential. And I have to talk to them, because if I don’t, I feel my hands wringing the bar through my gloves as my vertigo kicks in, old remnants of panic disorder shaking the insides of their coffins. The conversations keep my brain busy. And so I look for the tell-tale signs of a visitor or not, and I start one of two ways.
Paper tag, rental stickers on the skis, fashion: “where y’all in from?”
Nice skis, backpack, a laissez-faire demeanor: “you local?”
The locals are my favorite. They’re getting a few laps in during their lunch break, they just need some time on the mountain to themselves, or like one woman, she used to visit this town with her husband until he died and then moved here to be as close as she could to the purest memories of their happiness. She had pink skis and a pink jacket and I told her I loved the coordination. She blushed, turning pinker yet.
I’m not a very good skier yet. I have bad habits I never quite shook, and I haven’t quite learned to embrace speed. I’ve only wiped out once this season. I caught an edge, flipped over, spun, slid, and then popped back up at speed. It was during the one lesson I’ve paid for this season. My fellow lesson-taker and I caught up to where the instructor had stopped, waiting for us, and he began delving into the next teaching.
“I’m sorry, I feel like I need to tell you that I just absolutely ate shit,” I told him.
“Well I didn’t see it, so it didn’t happen.”
But isn't that it? If you didn’t see it, if you can’t see it, it’s not happening. You can’t see that I’m leaving the mountain at 9:30am to drive over the speed limit to make it to my desk by 10. And I can’t see that this is your first vacation in years and that you’re afraid to wipe out in front of your friends and that you’re uncomfortable traveling but thought this might be good for you. You can’t see my panic, I can’t see your bills, and sometimes we can’t even see when our own threads are bare.
I’ve been here since the end of June, and as far as I can remember, haven’t left for longer than the two days I took in Utah for tattoos and bikes. We’ve been nesting. The only times I leave the house are to ski or walk Cooper. The rest of the time, I’m here — on this laptop — designing spaces, pitching ideas, building websites, writing, and working. I am abusing myself past my limits so one day I might not have to abuse myself at all.
When I was writing my Tumblr DateByNumbers, having an audience to my life changed the way I lived. Knowing I had to recount my dating tales meant my actions needed to be worth recounting. I need to be brave, demand respect, speak my mind, and in whatever way I knew how, be a role model. This iteration of writing means I need to live. A week recounting a still life on a laptop calls for a better writer than I am to make it interesting. But to spend every week trying to snuff out captivating life tales outside the 50 or so hours of work means you end up like this: laid out on the couch, balancing wine on the couch and a cat on my chest while I try to find a through-line, hoping the HGTV streaming in the background quiets the part of my brain asking if I should be packing.
In the next two weeks, I’ll be trail running in Joshua Tree, visiting friends in LA, going on a writing retreat in Nicaragua, mountain biking in Sedona, and getting in one more ski day before going back to work. Two weeks is the longest vacation I’ve ever taken from work. And before the company I’ve worked for for the last two years merges into one with a notably different culture, I knew I needed a break. Because sometimes you feel like giving things your all, like being the best version of yourself to everyone in your life, like keeping every possible fire lit… and sometimes you don’t.
For those of you curious about a mouth-breathing update, it will come mid-March. But rest assured, I am falling asleep with my mouth taped shut every night. Pretty sexy… if you’re into that kind of thing.
Have fun on your trip! I love the life the world doesn't get to see. It's a fascinating thing to explore!
Another really good piece Kelton. Again all emotions present. Also, empathize with "Because sometimes you feel like giving things your all, like being the best version of yourself to everyone in your life, like keeping every possible fire lit… and sometimes you don’t." But I bet you try even when you don't more often than not......