I Regret Nothing: A Memoir

by Jen Lancaster

  “I had no idea,” I admitted, my stomach beginning to twist.

  “And make sure you have your RFID protectors over everything, including your passport. In Europe, they can use radio frequency to steal all your information—they don’t even have to touch you. They can just pass really close by.”

  Panic began to creep in. “Shit.”

  “What about the store thing?” added the classmate sitting across from me. “You can’t touch anything in a shop without permission. I learned that the hard way.”

  “What?”

  What was going to happen to me in a store?

  “It’s rude for you to touch anything without asking. Also, you’d better make sure you greet them when you walk in or they’ll yell at you.”

  “Is that insane? That seems insane considering what portion of their revenue comes from tourism,” I said. The last time I actually left the country (1997, I think?) I remember Cancun feeling extra safe, like there was societal pressure to keep visitors secure to ensure the flow of tourist dollars. The Mexican people we met down there couldn’t have been more solicitous or service-oriented. Maybe they hated us behind closed doors, but they sure were nice to us face-to-face.

  My classmate shrugged. “That’s Rome for you.”

  I began to worry that I’d prepared for the trip all wrong; instead of learning how to ask for directions or how to order in a restaurant, I should have been memorizing phrases such as:

  Andare a farsi fottere, borseggiatore! (Go fuck yourself, pickpocket!)

  Io ti schiaccerà il piccolo capo italiano come un brufolo. (I will pop your tiny Italian head like a zit.)

  Sono una Americana, quindi ho una pistol. (I’m an American, so I have a gun.)

  I figured the statement about the weapon would come across more menacing if I actually spoke it in low tones, so that’s how I practiced.

  Still, even with a semifunctional grasp on Italian profanity, the more I heard about travel dangers, the more I began to worry. I wish that I hadn’t sought out advice, as I was much happier in my ignorance, but once I began to gather information, I couldn’t stop.

  I began cross-examining my friends, too, as they’ve all traveled internationally. (FYI, none of them has ever made Stale Bun Pizza or contemplated whizzing in a bucket. I feel these items may all be related.)

  Tracey warned me of the dangers of pulmonary embolisms in flight, so I had to buy compression socks. Gina cautioned me that I could be deemed an easy mark because I’m too polite. Stacey was the one who issued the direst warning. “No matter what, make sure you pack every piece of clothing you could possibly need. There are no fat Europeans and if you forget your swimsuit, you’re fucked.”

  I was so busy heeding her advice and trying to Tetris-style every conceivable piece of clothing I owned into my luggage that it didn’t even occur to me to wonder why they aren’t fat. How are they not fat, living in the pasta and Buffalo mozzarella capital of the universe?

  I guess I’ll find out soon enough.

  If I don’t implode from anxiety first.

  The few instances that Fletch and I vacationed in Las Vegas over the years, all we had to remember to bring was a credit card, as anything else was available twenty-four/seven in that city. In Vegas, you can literally call any hotel concierge and say, “Can I get a howler monkey wearing a tiny hat delivered to my room immediately?” and they’d be all, “Certainly. Fedora or fez?” And as for our one other vacation, to the Hamptons, that trip entailed nothing more than adopting a smug sense of self-satisfaction, which fit just fine in our carry-on bags.

  So far the only hard part of going to Italy was tracking down my birth certificate. Of course, had Fletch mentioned that he kept a special binder of all our important paperwork BEFORE I tore through every single plastic bin in the basement, I might have been spared some aggravation.

  Then again, I would never have found my name tag from when I worked at the Olive Garden in 1992, so my search wasn’t a total loss.

  I finished packing last night and I was completely taken aback by the profundity of my pretrip jitters. With the number of times I’ve toured promoting my books, I’m no stranger to the logistics of getting from Point A to Point B, and I’m never nonplussed by travel. Aggravated, sure, but not flummoxed. Maybe it’s that a trip to Minneapolis doesn’t feel like A Date with Destiny the way going to Rome feels. (As an added bonus, everyone there is nice and it’s Target’s hometown, so what’s not to love?)

  Tired of my pacing and incessant hand-wringing, Fletch finally made me sit down with a glass of wine and Parks and Recreation on my iPad. (I wasn’t sure about the show until the episode where Leslie Knope does the “Parents Just Don’t Understand” rap. After that, I was hooked.) He then issues instructions to “Calm your ass down; you’re making the dogs nervous.”

  So I tried, but as I watched Parks and Rec, I became panicky anew.

  I paused my program and looked over at Fletch, who was busy mapping out an entirely new project to replace the screens on the back porch. “I was worried about you, but now what if I go all Ron Swanson over there?” I asked.

  He knit his brows. “What do you mean?” he replied, glancing up from his graph paper.

  I began to rock back and forth ever so slightly. “Like, what if I hate it there so much and I spend a week stomping around in impotent rage, complaining about socialism and government corruption and not being able to buy a huge soda?”

  “Since when do you care about big sodas? The last time I asked if you wanted a Diet Coke, you said, and I quote, ‘Pellegrino represent, yo.’ Because there’s nothing more gangsta than a middle-aged lady with an e-reader sitting next to a pool. I blame BackSpin.”

  I considered this. “Well, it’s just that I watched an episode where Leslie Knope tries to institute a soda tax and—”

  “Nonsense,” he interrupted, not even willing to entertain my anxiety. “You’re worrying about nonsense from a television show that takes place in a nonexistent town.”

  “Oh, really? Mayor Bloomberg’s fictional now, too?”

  “Let me ask you this: When was the last time you felt compelled to order a dump truck full of Fanta in New York?”

  The fact that the answer is “never” did not negate my point, but I switched tactics anyway. When Fletch gets all logical, it’s very hard to derail him, so I felt like I should play to his emotions and sense of fair play. “What if all the horror stories I’ve recently read online are true and the cabdrivers rob me blind by taking endless loops around the city, thus turning a five-euro ride into a three-hour tour? A three-hour tour.”

  He shrugged, running a hand over his beard. “Then you’ll enjoy seeing a new place from your favorite position—seated.”

  Ooh, had me there.

  As I drank my wine and watched my show, I unclenched a tiny bit, much to everyone’s relief. But now that I’m in the car on the way to the airport, my anxiety is back tenfold.

  “Hey, slow down,” I tell Fletch as we pass a Hyundai.

  He glances at the speedometer. “I’m going the speed limit.”

  “You’re in such a rush! Take your time. Smell the roses. Maybe we could find a more scenic route to O’Hare.”

  Fletch cuts his eyes over to me as he merges into the turnoff lane for the airport. “You’d like me to leave the highway despite our almost being there and then drive, say, twenty miles west, which is how far we’d need to go to get anywhere even remotely scenic.”

  “Yes. I’m not in a hurry.” I fold my hands in my lap to demonstrate how very calm I am.

  “Really? Because I’m in a hurry to get you out of the car at this point.”

  “Fine,” I snap, gazing out the window at the dozens of trucks heading to and from all the cargo holds by the airport. Normally, I loathe driving next to semis with every fiber of my being, having once seen an episode of 20/20 in which
an expert claimed that motorists would be safe to assume that every driver out there was hopped up on goofballs and delirious from having had zero sleep while hauling illegally large loads, one heavy-lidded blink away from jackknifing and causing a thousand-car pileup on the expressway. But today? Today the trucks seem like something I’ll miss desperately while dodging Vespas and navigating the tiny, winding cobblestone streets of Rome.

  “On a scale from one to ten, how likely is it that my flight will be hijacked? One being the least likely and ten being the most? Also, what if someone in Rome tries to sell me into white slavery? Like, this could be another scam the cabbies are running. They’re going to take one look at me and be all, ‘American woman sturdy like ox.’”

  “Why will they have Russian accents in Rome?” Fletch asks.

  Ignoring him, I continue. “They’ll be all, ‘Many buckets she could haul!’ I fear my strong back will be my downfall.”

  Fletch inadvertently scrunches up his face in a manner that I call Muppet Mouth because it reminds me of a sock puppet tasting something sour and subsequently folding its lips back into its head. This happens only when he’s simultaneously flabbergasted and frustrated by something extremely challenging. The last time I saw this look was when he discovered he’d measured all the screens wrong on this first iteration of the back porch project, after he’d already torn down the old ones.

  (Sidebar: It’s possible he went all Muppet Mouth because I’d said, “Wow, that seems like kind of a rookie mistake,” as we surveyed the massive, gaping holes.)

  Very deliberately, he takes a bracing sip of his iced coffee before telling me, “You must chill. Understand me? You. Must. Chill.”

  Yet. I. Can. Not. Chill.

  “What if they lose my luggage and I can’t buy a fat-girl swimsuit? What if the dogs miss me, or what if Hambone figures out how to scale the fence at the kennel? She has a four-foot vertical jump from a standing-still position! Remember when we found her on the counter that day eating hot dog buns? It’s totally possible! What if someone really awesome dies while I’m gone, like Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island, and I never hear about it until well after the fact because the Italian news stations don’t report it and then I’ll be all upset because I won’t have realized she’d already been gone for years? I hate that! What if there’s an issue with the plane while we’re in the middle of the Atlantic and we go down and, provided we don’t go kablammo on impact, no one can find us? You always used to promise me that planes can’t just disappear, but a whole bunch of Malaysians would beg to differ. Planes can just disappear now. It’s a thing. What about that, huh? WHAT ABOUT THAT?”

  Fletch patted my hand. “Stop it, Jen. I mean it. I love you, but you sound like a lunatic. All is well, okay? Stop trying to ruin this for yourself. Remember that you’ve looked forward to this trip every single day since you walked into your first Italian class in college. When was that, like 1994? This has been your dream for twenty years. You’ve plotted, you’ve planned, and I’ve no doubt you’re going to surprise yourself at how well you do once you get there. So please do me a favor and take a deep, calming breath before I accidentally drive us into an embankment.”

  I process everything he’s said and I try to get a grip on myself. He truly is my rock, my touchstone, my port in the storm.

  “What if the Wi-Fi is as spotty as everyone says it is and I can’t download episodes of Parks and—”

  Fletch pulls up to the skycap in front of American Airlines. “Oh, look, we’ve arrived. I’ll miss you very much but you should go now. Here, lemme help you with your luggage.” He hops out of the car, after barely having put it in park, sprinting to the hatch. He kisses me good-bye and I keep him locked in a hug for long enough to attract the TSA’s attention. “Time to go. You’ll be great. Go eat gelato and get the lay of the land and I’ll see you in a few days. Love you.”

  I reply, “I love you, too. But what if—”

  Fletch tells the skycap, “She’s all yours! Have a safe trip and stop worrying!”

  And with that, he gets in the car and pulls away and I suddenly want to cry.

  “Where to today, ma’am?” the skycap asks as I hand over my bags and my ID.

  I tell him, “I’m going to Rome by myself like a big girl and I’m so nervous I think I may barf in my handbag.”

  He has the courtesy to not laugh at me and with a completely straight face, he replies, “Young lady (!!), that sounds like quite an adventure, so I’ll make extra sure your bag is waiting for you at the other end. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  And with that, for the first time in weeks, I feel a tiny bit less tense.

  • • •

  All the guidebooks say to arrive at the airport early for an international flight, which is why I find myself with almost three hours to kill before boarding. I think the early-arriving rule must apply only on the way back to America, as there was nothing different about going through security. Because I have the Pre-Check, I was through security in less than five minutes and I didn’t even have to remove my shoes. Plus, my flight’s leaving from the regular terminal, not the international one, so essentially this feels no different from flying to Minnesota.

  I sit at the bar in the Admirals Club and order a grilled cheese and a small ginger ale (I guess I really don’t need to worry about suddenly wanting big sodas?) and I begin to think about my friend Angie. A couple of years ago, she traveled to China alone for two months to take a summer teaching position. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by how very courageous she was, considering I’m shaking in my boots about being by myself for three days in a place where I already know I love the food and I sort of speak the language. I’m staying in a pretty hotel with a rooftop pool and I don’t have to worry about setting up a household or navigating a new job or, most important, dealing with the feeling of loss from being away from my children. I make a note to buy her something nice while I’m there, because bravery like that merits a reward.

  The bartender who serves me has the most spectacular eyebrows I’ve ever seen, all clean lines and dramatic arches. He’s also wearing glittery foundation and has long, black, perfectly manicured nails, which causes the cowboy-types sitting next to me to giggle every time he turns his back. Really, assholes? You’re drinking vodka-and-Diet-Coke and you have the nerve to laugh at anyone else? Not cool. I make sure to compliment the bartender on his whole look before leaving an extra-large tip.

  After I finish my lunch, I settle in by the window to watch a few more episodes of Parks and Rec before boarding. I don’t know if it’s the dulcet tones of Ron Swanson/Duke Silver’s saxophone, the kind skycap, the distraction of directing my roiling disgust toward those in shit-stained boots, the knowledge that I packed every item I could conceivably need, or possibly the two Ativan I swallowed, but I’m now finally a tiny bit relaxed and a whole lot excited.

  Bucket list, I’m about to TREAT YO-SELF to the kind of check that new carpeting simply can’t deliver.

  16.

  Sorry I’m Not Sorry

  You know all those assholes who crowd the gate at the airport?

  I can’t mock them because I happen to be them.

  I may even be their leader.

  I’m fairly unapologetic about it, too.

  I believe everyone’s allowed one tiny aspect of their life where they’re not on their best behavior. Maybe you’re the finest person in America, tithing extra to your church, volunteering at a soup kitchen every single week, taking care of your elderly neighbor because he has no one else, and sending your kids to school with lunches that are both healthy and delicious, yet you still can’t stop yourself from stealing People magazine at your dentist’s office whenever Angelina’s on the cover.

  I think that’s okay.

  Or maybe you put your Ivy League law degree to work at Legal Aid, toiling eighty hours a week, choosing not to get rich, and instead concentrat
ing on bringing justice to those in need. No one’s going to judge you too harshly if you bring Tupperware to stash extra bacon at the all-you-can-eat brunch place.

  For me, I’m beyond polite the entire year, save for those ten-minute increments leading up to boarding a flight. I mean, I’m all about thank-you notes and unexpected gifts. I let everyone cut in front of me at the grocery store, even when they’re clearly violating the fifteen-items-or-less sign. I wipe pee off of whatever public toilet I’ve used, even what was there before I went. If there’s ever a debate over who gets the parking space, I always defer to the other driver and God help us all if I wind up at a four-way stop with the like-minded because we’ll be there all day, waving each other on.

  I don’t even yell at strangers anymore. (Much.)

  Should I be nominated for sainthood given the above? Of course not, because it’s all part and parcel of being a decent human being. No one gives out Congratulations on Not Being a Douche-Canoe medals, because good behavior is part of the social contract. I’m just saying that when presented with the opportunity, I do the right thing.

  Except at the airport gate.

  My rationale is that I’m an anxious flyer and being first at the gate helps me feel like I have a modicum of control.

  Okay, this is mostly a lie.

  Rather, I’m this way because I almost never check a bag, so it’s very important for me to get on the plane before everyone else hogs up all the overhead compartments with bullshit that doesn’t deserve space and can be sat upon or with, such as puffy parkas and pillows. (People, we are flying to New York City—I guarantee you they have pillows there. You needn’t bring your own.)