I've been reduced to parking in the public lot on the other side of the Chris Hotel – and struggling to find a space at that. It's the fourth day in a row that Michaelis's laundry has been shuttered and even Tassos the butcher is still closed. The outdoor cafes are filled to the brim, wafting fresh cigarette smoke. – largely with people with suitcases killing time before the 2:30 ferry headed toward Rhodes and all the islands along the way. The Athenians do not yet have their suitcases out, but I'm assured most will leave on the midnight Blue Star ferry to Athens. I know Blue Star 1 and 2 have five garage decks capable of transporting hundreds of vehicles including 18-wheelers. Let's hope tonight whichever of the two giant ferries making the run takes enough cars that I can go back to me easy, preferred parking status.
"Tonight they'll get a lot of these cars the hell out of here," a grumpy older German-sounding man in the parking lot says in English to his female companion who ostensibly does not speak the same first language as him. "Then tomorrow we'll have peace again. That will be the best!"
I was instantly ashamed that I had the same thoughts as a grumpy, old German man. However, I like my stay in Cannes in 2010 when Emily went home for two weeks during our year of travel, I came to Patmos not to be a tourist, but to be a temporary local. I may not be Patmian, but I am not the Easter revelers or the cruise ship passengers in awe of the beautiful, overpriced linen clothing at the many boutiques around town. Been there, done that. I am the guy now in a sweat carrying too much laundry from the far away parking lot through town and up the steep steps to Michaelis' laundry only to be defeated once again.
This cannot stand. Did I not put in my time in the cold, with open trenches throughout the roads, patronizing these same establishments when some had only coffee and no food on the menu and the bakeries when few others came to call? Did I not send the goats back to their farmers? Is it so much to ask for a decent parking space to attempt to exchange my dirty laundry for clean? At least in Cannes when the town was overrun by foreigners, it was Diane Keaton I was competing with – and hoards of Warner Brothers executives coming ashore from their cruise-ship size yachts. The competition was respectably formidable.
Panagia at the produce market assures me that since tomorrow is a work day, most people will clear out today.
The other silver lining of this busy time is that Irini and her partner (maybe husband) Alessandro are back at their shop, Nektar, selling traditional Greek foods and oils. They come each year from Athens for the tourism seasons. Their shop is at the juncture of the main "road" or path through Skala and the main side "road" or path leading up to the Kastelli neighborhood where we stayed last time. Being at this pivotal junction in the town traffic flow, Irini and Alessandro act as the hosts of the neighborhood – getting to know locals and longer-stay tourists alike. Alessandro being a tall, cigar smoking black man from Cuba takes advantage of how he stands out to make friends. His job seems to consist primarily of sitting outside the shop and talking to people – sometimes moving up and down the street to visit other proprietors. "Hey, Boy! How are you, Boy?!" Alessandro would call out to Sennen each day. Sennen had impressed him with his inquisitiveness. Anyone who stays a week or more in Skala is likely to know Alessandro, Irini and the perpetual informal social club they run. I was greeted warmly today, caught up on their lives and introduced to others they were chatting with. I then felt less like the grumpy, old German man.
Today marks five weeks here – the half-way point. With the crowds exiting, Irini and Alessandro settling back in, the beaches and their respective tavernas reopened, and the weather warming, the back-half of my Patmos stay is looking up.
The awkward part of this stay is whenever someone who recognizes me – like Irini and Alessandro – inquires about the rest of the family and I let them know I'm here alone. I don't always want to get into why, although sometimes it's necessary. Understandably, there really is no template in people's minds for a guy coming here for a trial separation. Some, like Irina and Alessandro are very respectful about not inquiring too deeply. Others need to know to be able to make sense of things. I don't hold it against them.
In general, solo travelers are atypical and those not traveling with a spouse or partner usually have a friend or family member. Before marrying, I traveled both solo and with friends. They each have their advantages. Traveling alone leaves both the opportunity to do what you want, when you want and to take it easy when that sounds better. After all, not everyone travels well and experience has taught me that traveling solo is always better than traveling with someone who is a maladjusted drag.
Still, for the most part, sharing the experience of travel is more fun and creates the shared experiences that strengthen relationships and become the enjoyable memories and stories later when there is less time for adventure.
I realized recently that to fully untangle all that is my relationship with Emily, I may first need to tackle another relationship with someone I traveled with and had many adventures prior – my former friend Jesiah.
Jesiah and I met my junior year of college when I was Opinion Editor on The Daily of the University of Washington and he was recruited to design and lay out the weekly Arts section. Being this semi-autonomous red-headed stepchild of a weekly publication within a daily one, it was easy to not even notice or cross paths much with the Arts graphic designers who didn't even work on the same computers as the rest of the design team. Yet one day, a few weeks after Jesiah started, I happened to be at my desk earlier than usual and noticed a particularly tall guy I didn't recognize over in the Arts enclave. I decided to go over both to make sure he legitimately worked there (every now and then some staff member's friend walked in and started using a computer when they shouldn't) and introduce myself if he did. As happened to me more often in those days, I immediately clicked with Jesiah and felt like we could be real friends.
It took a few weeks, but we started taking food breaks (because what classified as lunch or dinner was very hazy when you work until 2 am everyday) together and despite very different backgrounds, upbringings and interests, we connected and became fast friends. We subsequently talked as he navigated his tumultuous relationship with Darcy the Copy Editor, hung out a little the following and although he graduated that Spring, we managed to still get together periodically the next school year. Because Jesiah had moved home to his parents' house in suburban Kent while he job searched, he longed to get away to Seattle to see friends and have fun. I became Editor-In-Chief my Senior year and was barely in my apartment – sleeping too many nights on one of the newsroom sofas. So Jesiah was welcome to use my apartment when he wanted – and sometimes on weekends, we would hang out.
When I think back on what exactly was it that created a bond with a graphic designer and artist with little clarity about his life direction that came from a very Christian family of contractors, it's hard to put it together based on the apparent facts. But a few things bound us. Jesiah had an open curious mind and read all kinds of thinkers and ideas. He was interested to explore how the world worked and not at all hampered by his background. His artistic mind saw things differently and sometimes he offered some very unique and cool perspectives – including spiritual ones. Jesiah wanted to explore life and the world – he had very little fear or trepidation, which spoke to me because I both wanted to explore, but did have anxiety and trepidation – so he offset that nicely. Most significantly, Jesiah could be fully present. When he was interested and engaged, his eyes lit up and he made me feel – as I watched him do with many others over time – that he could really see them and for that time, talking to and knowing me was exactly what he wanted.
That was a powerful thing that people do not so readily give and that to me in particular, was something for which I was hungry. In turn, he was happy to be seen and known too, which was something I happily gave in return. Jesiah knew me deep-down, liked me and wanted to hang out and have adventures – and vice versa. I was happy and he joined the pantheon of my closest friends.
Our relationship was never romantic or sexual in nature, but it did crossover into a space usually left to life partners. The openness and vulnerability of knowing someone deeply – and the high that comes from being mutually seen was there. Originally, Jesiah and I – like most friends – spent time in the fits and bursts that life allows. We had jobs, moved around, sometimes one was unemployed and more available, and other times we were both maxed out with our lives.
About three and a half years after meeting Jesiah, he flew to Thailand to visit during the roughly two months of "summer" vacation I had during my year of teaching there. My friend Todd also joined us and our little group went traveling around Thailand and to Nepal. It was a fun and crazy time. The group – sometimes augmented by my friend Jay – was fun and while three can be an awkward number where sometimes one person feels left out, for us it usually worked well so that if someone wanted to do something the others didn't, that one could go off and do their thing which included everything from time with a girl to spending time doubled over in a bathroom (Nepal – and for the record I was the only one who did not end up this way because I was smart enough not to eat the samosas at a remote bus station).
After Todd headed home, there were still a few more weeks for Jesiah and I to continue traveling and that's when something new happened – the flicker. The feeling of being present and the eyes that saw me sometimes went dull and Jesiah's light flickered or turned off. In retrospect and after years more of knowing him – that was just how he was. He could be present for only so long before he turned inward. And he was moody sometimes. I just hadn't hung out with him long and consistently enough to know that. There were four or five days on Ko Chang where it rained A LOT. All the fun we had imagined was gone. Jesiah became antsy, moody and annoyed. I took it completely personally and felt it must have been me, so instead of shrugging it off, moodiness spread. It lifted with the winds that took away the storm system and life was good again, but it was the precursor of what was to come and more importantly, the first clue in a mystery I didn't even yet understand.
What Jesiah gave was what our couples' therapist calls "the bright eyes" – that look we get from someone who loves and cares about us. That feeling that we're seen and matter to someone. Typically, our first bright eyes come from our mothers or whoever else might be our primary caretakers but eventually we find it in certain other relationships. As an adult, it's most common in a romantic-partnered relationship. Everyone wants the bright eyes – but some of us are more driven by them than others. As discussed in my Where Did All The Donkeys Go? post, I am one of them. A flicker or a shut down of the bright eyes can be quite affecting for anyone used to them. Given the bright eyes had always been a standard feature of our time together, the time on Ko Chang felt yucky and left me feeling badly about myself.
After my time in Thailand was up, I decided to go to Taiwan to teach and potentially start recruiting foreign nurses to work in the United States. Jesiah saw what my life was like in Thailand and was looking for a change and adventure – so he wanted to come along. I found us a school willing to take us both and that didn't require a TEFL certification (which I had and he didn't). In January 2003, we took off for an at least one-year contract in Hsinchu, Taiwan where we were roommates, colleagues and friends in a country and culture new to us both.
Taiwan is a country and culture not so easily accessible to a foreigner. At least at that time, outside Taipei, few signs were in English, roads were narrow and criss-crossed in every direction, sidewalks came and went, ways of doing things were different and how things worked was not readily apparent. Eventually, we developed the phrase that Taiwan was a "sink or swim" kind of place and that every new American or Westerner went through a stressful adjustment period that the strong liked to deny. Jesiah and I went through that together and among other things obsessed about how to find items to decorate our very sterile, hard, cold apartment (more his thing) and where to find steamy baskets of dumplings (more mine). In time we succeeded though both proved shockingly difficult and at some points took the aid of a gypsy-cab driver commonly referred to as Tony – whether or not he identified with that name remains unclear.
Jesiah and I were together A LOT. Our social options were fairly limited to a fairly small expat community – the most easily accessible of which were teaching colleagues, most of whom lived in the same school-owned apartment building. And not the most exciting bunch. Jesiah, more than me, needed to diversify his social world, which I understood. He eventually found a local girlfriend and in time, friends from home came to visit and one of his friends who I also liked, Josh, came to also teach.
Every relationship has a feeling of "us". Anyone with whom we establish familiarity, intimacy and depth becomes different than others, the way The Fox wants to be tamed so that the color of wheat will no longer be meaningless to him because it will not remind him of The Little Prince's hair. When I get together with any friend or close family member, we talk about things "between us" – and there is a shared worldview through which our conversations take place. By this point, Jesiah and I had a lot of "us" and for most of the time, it was really fun – and protective in chaotic situation. We had each other's back, got one another, made sense and could help with challenging things like finding halogen light bulbs or buying a WiFi router (in the end, we had the best lighting in the building and ended up providing WiFi to all as a public service).
We may have had too much "us" and with time, I saw Jesiah become moody and flicker off. Which led me to become either anxious or angry – and definitely needy – as I felt he was either unfairly angry or I was just jolted by being disliked for no discernible reason. What I never got what that most of the time, it probably had little to do with me, other than I was just there a lot. And moreover, my emotional shakiness at the disappearance of the bright eyes probably made it feel weird to him – and too much. So we had our "on" and "off" periods where we felt more and less close.
Jesiah and my adventures together went on for a year-and-a-half. During that time we traveled all throughout Taiwan, Thailand again, and to Hong Kong, China and Singapore. We bought motorcycles and rode to a lot of places. We hiked in some less traveled trails, went to hot springs and jumped into water falls and rivers. We partied in Hong Kong for New Year's and traveled to Tsingtao, China to explore doing business with some sketchy people in a situation that deeply confused us and which culminated in Jesiah getting extremely sick from eating poop-drenched conch to avoid offending our strange hosts ( I managed to avoid this by only APPEARING to eat conch and was very surprised he actually ate it). We started our end of a foreign nurse recruitment business and began recruiting suitable candidates around Taiwan and then other countries until we discovered Singapore was our perfect, untapped recruiting location. We added business partners to the list of things our "us" already included.
In business, Jesiah was not very certain of himself. He was primarily an artist and he could pretend to be a teacher fairly well, but while he had all the energy, focus and smarts to go motorcycle camping in the middle of a foreign country and could wire up makeshift motorcycle helmet radios, he was not a focused entrepreneur. When it came to our business, we collaborated on ideas, but I did the bulk of the work. We also bootstrapped our business and since I had saved most of my earnings from the school while Jesiah spent more, it became my money and sometimes airline miles that funded more of the business.
The more we dove into the business – especially when we left the school, moved to Taipei and worked on it exclusively – the more challenging things became. Much like my relationship with Emily, an imbalance began. I was fronting more money and work. He was less certain what he could do to help, so he began finding all kinds of other things to do. I became resentful that I was working more, taking more risk and feeling increasingly anxious while he played. He probably felt like the situation had become too weighty and too serious – just too much. Perhaps we bit off more than we could chew. Or more likely, we just weren't the right "us" for the situation. In fairness. he expressed his reservations about what he could do and how he could contribute on several occasions at which I assured him that he had lots he could do and that he would be a good business partner. I should have listened. I should have been secure enough to realize that we would have remained better friends had we not tried to do so much together.
Eventually, my own mood started to deteriorate and I used the excuse of going to Virginia to talk out some business issues with our nurse placement principal (and my cousin) to also get away from Jesiah and the situation. I stayed away for a couple of months. We argued on the phone a few times. Eventually, I shamefully decided to head straight to Singapore and Bali and move on with my life rather than head back to Taipei and close out our apartment and bring a proper finality to the situation. It was not at all my finest moment and I was not in the proper headspace. I have always deeply regretted that choice.
When I look back on my friendship with Jesiah, I see blueprints of the relationship I would later have with Emily. Anything in exchange for the bright eyes, deep hurt when the bright eyes went dim, and imbalance that only compounded the situation with its weight. As I mentioned, Jesiah and I had crossed into a space typically reserved for partners – and that alone probably would have led to our doom. Such a thing was never sustainable. It was a situation that for two straight guys had nowhere to go. We could meet each other's needs to be seen – but being bound too closely together ruined it. Without Taiwan, its intensity and the business, we might still be good friends today. That kind of mutual understanding in the fits and bursts of normal life can be extremely special and a blessing.
I was also not yet diagnosed – much more emotionally unstable. To have the bright eyes flicker on and off was overly impactful. I didn't have a strong enough center to ride above the waves of emotion and to see how another person's thing could have nothing to do with me. I should have been able to see when air was needed and not be ruled by my own insecurities. The more I felt unstable, the more I wanted Jesiah to be there for me, to catch me when I was falling. I'm sure that's exactly what he wanted a break from. My lines about what I could reasonably expect and not expect should have been clearer and cleaner.
As Emily and I went through our year and a half of couples counseling, I never brought up Jesiah – but as I learned more from our therapist, the connection became clearer and clearer. So many of the same elements were there. My part of things in my relationship with Emily was there with Jesiah. Only there is one very clear difference: Emily and I did sign up to be each other's romantic and life partners. We did have a reasonable expectation of being present, bringing the bright eyes and being there for each other emotionally. Unlike with Jesiah – I was in the right place at the right time. Moreover, I have the emotional stability to withstand the blows when things go wrong and keep trying without collapsing. But maybe not the strength to see the flicker and remain alright. I think that's both my thing to work on – and I need to do a better job choosing a relationship where the bright eyes are more consistently present. I should have the patience for the flicker and be able to rely on the bright eyes coming back.
One day around 2007, I passed Jesiah on the street in Pioneer Square in Seattle. He hadn't noticed me, and we were walking opposite one another at a crosswalk. It was one of those moments where I could do nothing and let it slide by or reach across the universe and take fate by the hand. With what felt like work to find my voice, I called his name and he stopped. He looked shocked and then I could see the anger wash over his face. I got to the point and told Jesiah how sorry I was, how immature my decisions were and how I regretted it. I told him that it's not an excuse, but I had since been diagnosed with a mood disorder and wished I had been in a better place when making my decisions. He told me that he was angry for a long time, but he wasn't anymore and he had no reason to forgive me. I told him he didn't need to – I just wanted him to know. He told me if I ever needed to reach him again, I could probably find his number and email online. I told him I didn't need to bother him again, I was just glad to tell him - and we parted ways.
A little more than a decade later, in December 2017, I was on Ko Chang with my family. The last time I had been there was with Jesiah. In a conveniece store, I saw Magnum Bars and chocolate bao – two of our favorite snacks from the time and thought of him (he made up an entire song about how much he loved chocolate bao). I remembered what he said about finding his number and email address online and decided to email him – letting him know I was on Ko Chang and remembering our time there. I told him that I was there with my family, how great they are and how happy I now am. That again, how sorry I was for my choices at the end of our friendship. That I hoped he had found himself the happy life he deserves and that I hoped he had a great new year. I didn't expect anything more – I just felt good sending it. To my surprise, about 20 minutes later an email came back.
