If at Birth You Don't Succeed (36 page)

One day, I sat in a café for five hours. I had two espressos and half an almond croissant, but I also had the chance to reflect on how long of a journey it had been to get to this beautifully mundane moment. Long before I ever hosted a travel show, all the way back to my Cindy Crawford–chasing days, I had the deep-seated desire not just to travel but to escape. Even when I was at home, life came with baggage that I couldn't shed. I was dependent, disabled, treated differently. By my early twenties, my mind wanted to mature, but my body made it next to impossible for me to be seen as anything other than a child.

There's a lyric in one of Gillian's songs that has always spoken to me. In the third verse of “The Hinterhaus,” she sings, “I know what it is to be half-transformed / still burdened with the evidence / of what you were before.” From my perspective, that feels like a pretty poignant description of what it can be like to go through life with a disability. I've often felt like a half-transformed man, someone who could be truly great if he didn't have so many bullshit problems. I sometimes fantasize about what might be different if I were unencumbered by my condition, the places I'd go if I didn't have the chair, the art I would make if my body would cooperate, and the person I'd be if the simple things weren't so complicated. It's like that magic mirror Harry Potter stares into to see what his life would have been like if his parents were still alive. In my darkest moments, the “what-if”s bury me and the “if only”s keep me from enjoying what
is
.

This faulty thinking led to an oppressive low when I was twenty-three. In 2008 I was living in Austin off Social Security with no money, no job, and no direction. I was stuck. I thought that if I could just get away from my environment, I could find out who I actually was, independent of my problems. It was in the midst of this quarter-life crisis that my aunt Marian passed away. We'd always shared a special connection, but I was still surprised when she left me a modest inheritance. I planned to save most of it but also saw an opportunity to finally have an autonomous adventure, hit the Reset button, and chart a new course. My dad told me to invest the money until I figured out what I wanted to do with it, so in September of that year I followed his advice and placed all of my inheritance in mutual funds. One month later, on October 6, the stock market crashed and my nest egg was immediately cut by more than half.

I was luckier than some in that I didn't have a mortgage or a family to support, but judging from all the job interviews I'd ever had, society had also deemed me unemployable and there was no indication I would ever find a career. The generous gift from my aunt also meant that I'd lost my Social Security benefits. As my bank account dwindled, I realized that the money, along with the newfound sense of freedom it had brought, would completely vanish in a few months. Rather than just watch myself slowly go broke, I wanted to do something that could have a lasting impact on my perspective. I couldn't afford to go to Europe anymore, but I needed to go somewhere.

So I hatched a plan that was devoid of any planning. I wouldn't tell my parents, my brother, his girlfriend, or my roommate that I was leaving until I was already gone. I'd pack a bag, bungee my charger to the back of my chair, and take a cab to the airport in the middle of the night. When I got there, I'd have one directive for the ticket agent—“Send me anywhere.” Now, naturally, I assumed that they might have follow-up questions, like “How much can you spend?” “Window or aisle?” and, noting my urgency, “You didn't just murder somebody, did you?” I wouldn't know where I was going, but it didn't really matter. Any place I ended up—Tallahassee, Omaha, Tucson—would be new to me and I'd be new to it. I wouldn't put any pressure on what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to feel; I'd just take the experience for what it was.

So while my roommate was on a date and my brother was in his adjacent apartment with his girlfriend, I started packing, knowing that if I was going to leave unseen, I'd have to move faster than I'd ever moved in my life. I stuffed underwear, socks, and other clothing into the bag, unable to fold them. I was just about to call a cab when my brother walked through the front door and caught me red-handed. I froze.

“Uh, Tenielle just wanted me to stop by and get the pickles we left here. You goin' somewhere?”

“Yeah,” I said, and, not wanting to lie, told him what I was doing.

“Well, first, don't order a taxi—I can take ya; cabs are expensive. I like your idea, but it's gonna cost a fortune if you just show up without a ticket. Let me talk to Tenielle. Her mom has airline miles and travels a lot. She might have some advice so you don't waste all your money.”

And just like that, my spontaneous, incognito getaway morphed into vacation by committee: a budget-conscious and sensible four-day sabbatical in Boulder, Colorado. At Tenielle's suggestion, I had pointed to five different locations on a US map and then she looked up flights and told me which was cheapest. I'd no longer be flying away in the middle of the night but was scheduled to leave at eight in the morning the following Thursday.

“I'll e-mail you a list of hotels in the area,” Tenielle said. “I know you want this to just be time for you, and your brother and I both totally support that. Just text me when you get there and we'll see you when you get back.”

“I think it's great that you're doing this. Should be a really positive thing,” my roommate Jesse assured me the night before I left.

I was now required to have a life-affirming, transformative experience. I was still excited to go to Colorado, sure, but everyone else was excited for me too. They had expectations, opinions, and suggestions. I hoped that when I got there I'd be able to block out all the noise and find something for myself. It was overwhelming.
But at least I'm going
, I thought. And then, I didn't go.

As we pulled up alongside the departures curb at the airport and I got into my wheelchair, a look of panic came over my brother's face.

“Um,” he said, “I don't think your bag is here.”

“What?” I said, horrified.

“I don't know how this happened, but I think we just left your bag outside the van back at the apartment. Let me see how fast I can run back and get it.”

There was less than an hour until my tightly scheduled flight. I knew that there was no way he'd make it back in time. On the surface, it seemed like this catastrophe was perfectly in line with the spirit in which I'd conceived the expedition. But there was one problem. My wheelchair charger was in that bag. I would have been fine buying a whole new wardrobe of souvenir T-shirts with either the Rocky Mountains or cannabis on them, but even I had to accept that if I'd be immobile once I got to Colorado, there was really no point in flying there.

As my brother made the futile race home to retrieve my luggage (which was hopefully still standing in the parking lot), I tried to convince the ticket agent that my wheelchair was malfunctioning so that she would rebook my flight without charging me the two-hundred-dollar change fee. But I wouldn't be able to get to Boulder that day, or even the next day. Rather than stay true to my own mantra and just roll with it, I simply gave up.

I went home defeated and spent the next few days in my bedroom banging my head against the wall. I felt like my identity was comprised solely of the echoes of a world that assumed I couldn't or wouldn't amount to much. To their credit, my family and friends never gave up on me, but there were years when their faith clung to the abstract of my potential, in the absence of any hard evidence that I would succeed.

And now, here I was in Germany, with a croissant's worth of crumbs in my lap and no one to tell me I was putting too much sugar in my espresso.
Wunderbar
. I'd gone from being nobody to being somebody, and for the first time I felt I could be anonymous without being invisible. As the week progressed, I started to warm up to Berlin when I stopped blaming it for how cold and gloomy it was. I made a conscious decision to find things about Berlin I appreciated, without necessarily having to like the city. For one thing, the fact that I could stare out a window for five hours in a café and not be hustled out the door was an approach to hospitality I admired.

Contrary to the assumptions I'd made before arriving, Berlin is a very relaxed place, now that all the Nazis, Communists, and citywide walls are gone. The entire population, including the dogs, are free to roam the streets and not be bothered. Normally, if you told me there was a city where four-legged friends walk beside humans as equals, tethered not by leashes but by trust and devotion, I would have laughed at you and then immediately been terrified of being attacked and eaten by a pack of wild dogs. (It only takes one Cujo to spoil the bunch.) But these pups were civilized. The dogs in Berlin do not have owners, they have partners. Every canine confidently trots beside its human counterpart, sharing an unspoken agreement.

I love you, but zis is a bond zat ve've built on mutual respect and admiration for each other. I vill vait for you outside ze shop vhile you get your cigarettes, but I do not approve of your choices. Vhy is it zat you can put cancer in your body, but I cannot eat a shoe, ja?

On the rare occasion that someone like me who's not yet found their doggie soul mate can steal their focus, it is only for a fleeting moment.

Ja, guten Tag! How are you? Ja, I love you, but not as much as I love zat man. He's ze best man in zeh vorld. He seems to be rounding the corner now, so I'm afraid ve must cut zis affectionate exchange short. Auf Wiedersehen!

And just like that, they're bolting down the street and out of your life, determined to get back to the one they truly love above all others. Like its dogs, Berlin's humans were friendly without being nosy. They were accommodating but not patronizing. But what really won me over about Berlin was not the people, or the dogs, but the McDonald's.

I found my way to the golden arches after what had been a generally crappy morning. I'd lost my ticket for the U-Bahn and couldn't find the street market Gillian had given me detailed directions to before she'd rushed off to yet another rehearsal. It was raining, again, and to top it off, I really had to pee. I went inside the shopping mall at Shönehauser Allee, found my way to the bathroom, didn't tip the bathroom attendant because I didn't know that was a thing, and then, as I was getting onto the toilet, the seat moved, and I slipped, submerging my arm in the water. Even I could admit this was funny, but you can only fall in so many toilets before it starts to weigh on your self-esteem. I said to myself,
You know what? I'm not very happy, but I am very hungry.
So I found the most American solution to both problems and went to McDonald's for a Happy Meal.

I could write an entire chapter of this book on how extraordinary German McDonald's are. In the US, the only art you see at Mickey D's is generally either crayon-based or penis-shaped. People who aren't in middle school don't enjoy themselves. In America, you go to McDonald's as an adult because everything else is closed, you're stoned, or you just finalized the divorce and your husband is getting the boat (or in my case, you've just fallen into a toilet). But in Germany, McDonald's is THE destination for amazing service and culture. I'm not kidding you! There were pieces of art on the wall. There was a whole series of Jack Vettriano reproductions, and it wouldn't have felt out of place to have fountains with doves and an on-staff masseuse who'd rub your back with french fry oil.

I didn't get some crappy plastic toy with my Happy Meal, I got a BOOK! Not a pamphlet, but an actual hardcover book with full-color illustrations called
SUPER TIER
about the world's most amazing animals.
I'm lookin' at art, learnin' about nature, and eatin' organic chicken McNuggets! I'm lovin' it!
I thought,
Oh, that's where that comes from! They were referring to the GERMAN McDonald's!
All it took was one trip to the golden arches and I was completely convinced that I had to come back to Berlin. That, plus the bonus of my girlfriend living there.

Now that I was ready to experience Germany with an open heart and an open mind, I needed somebody to show me a more authentic side of the city. And since my girlfriend was busy, who better than my girlfriend's roommate's boyfriend to take me out on the town? Carl was every bit the girlfriend Gillian is. We made the most of our sausage fest by getting bratwurst, and in Germany, bratwurst is sold on every corner. Every time I turned away for a moment, as soon as I glanced back Carl would be munching on a new one. Since it was Oktoberfest and neither of us was a big drinker, we shared a
bier
, and then continued the day at the two most romantic spots in Berlin: the Brandenburg Gate and the Jewish History Museum. All in all, it was a pretty solid first date.