Fantasy: My partner Jacob and I moved to a remote location. It was so cheap we could easily live off our savings for at least a year. There is no cell phone signal and preferably no internet. We rented a cabin in the middle of the woods and wrote all day. There’s a weekly farmers market and a restaurant full of local charm for when we’re bored. We finally had the time, peace, and space to write the way we wanted. Our lives revolve around simple actions; making coffee in the morning, picking basil for dinner, making a fire, kissing shoulder blades, punching out a paragraph.
If my escape fantasy sounds like your nightmare, know that there are many more places to come from: I lived on a cheap island and finally became fluent in Spanish; we moved to Berlin and I was on the streets all day Hanging out, taking notes, looking sexy and mysterious in cafes; I took off without Jacob, tried other men and women around the world, and finally came back to him once and for all with the best-selling Memoir material.
Jacob is more practical. He also dreams of writing full-time, but those are his only requirements: a quiet room, time, a yoga class, and seeing friends a few times a week. It took some convincing to let him live in the sun. So I came up with an alternative: Let me live out my fantasy for a weekend. We could go to upstate New York, agree to turn off our phones and Wi-Fi, and just write. Jacob told me that it would be pointless and impossible to actually test something like this in a weekend. I told him he was just scared of not having his phone, not because I thought so, but because I expected him to want to prove me wrong.
As he drove us into the Catskill Mountains, a female robot gave us directions in German that only Jacob could understand. With only an hour left on the trip, I decided to do some future dreaming, one of my favorite escapist pastimes. I told him how much I wanted to keep traveling and eventually build a career where I could get paid to document my experiences and explore the world.
"But if you're always traveling, you can never focus on writing. The only way to improve your writing is to do it every day and make it a habit. So it depends on what you want. Would you rather travel all the time, or write one day a book?"
"I don't know. It ends up being both."
"Well, that takes a commitment." Jacob has written two novels and reads more books in a week than I do in a month. He already lived in Berlin. At my age, he had been married and divorced. His seven years of experience with me made one thing oddly clear from the start: He chose me. After 20 years of dating, he realized that commitment was the only way to find the meaning he was looking for in a relationship and in life. He earned his PhD by studying the makeup of sexual desire, and he was confident in his calculations that we were compatible in the long run.
In 100 Fuesse befindet sich Ihr Ziel auf der linken Seite. We pulled into the North Branch Inn parking lot and when we entered our room I was pleased to see that it lived up to my escape fantasy standards. Rustic, but clean and upscale, with wooden floors, calm blue walls, a king-size bed, and an old-fashioned bathtub in the corner of the room. To my own surprise, I was eager to start writing.
I sat in the common area of the hotel, close to the damp window, forcing myself to write about my experience at a nude swingers resort in Jamaica the week before. When it came out, it felt like vomiting: it was a relief to get it out of my system, but I didn't want anyone else to see it. I pounded away, adding to the sound of the rain as Jacob read in the room. A few hours later, I wrote 10 disjointed, single-spaced pages.
"This is too bad," I breathed. "But at least I did it. It was a draft." Jacob insisted that we celebrate before dinner, and as I looked in the large mirror next to my bed, I saw a man who had somehow managed to straddle the line between my fantasies and The line between reality. I can't explain exactly how he did it, except that he always gave me complete freedom to explore whoever or future I wanted. He never limited me, but he was all in. The only rule is that there are no secrets, not even unfulfilled wishes. I had just returned from making out naked in a hot tub in Jamaica with another man, who was happy to edit my story, eager to get to know me again. Whenever I get a chance to test my loyalty, I'm like a dog that runs away, only to get back in time for dinner. Rather than saying that he is my master, it is better to say that he is my home.
We went to the hotel for dinner, sipping local cider and admiring the surprisingly cosmopolitan crowds. An average-looking man named Brad Pitt who sings folk hits in the style of John Mellencamp erases our imaginations by reporting on Van Morrison Suspect. When we ordered seconds of homemade pasta with roasted ramps and carrots, I felt lighthearted, dreamy, and excited.
I leaned forward and put my fist under my chin. "So, what do you think of this lifestyle?"
"Well, there's nothing to say about that."
"Do you think we could live in a place like this? Look how it made me write today. I mean, it sucks, but I do it."
"You don't need to live in the middle of nowhere to write. You just need time and discipline." he lines up, and stick to it. Looking at a child wearing glasses and eating pasta from a bowl brings the conversation to children and whether we want to have them. I am more conflicted than ever.
"You have kids and you can say goodbye to all the traveling," Jacob said.
"Maybe. Some people travel with kids."
“The children became rootless and restless.”
"Look, I grew up walking back and forth between two houses that were only a mile apart every two days. I was more or less fine. What's more important is that your parents loved each other—or at least did. You - they're happy."
"Yes, but your parents are lucky to have you."
"It's true. Look, it's not a commitment I'm prepared to make for a long time, if ever. I can see it going either way, honestly. But if we do, I hope It became something we did to further our relationship, build a family, and it was a life experience that we decided to stay together, but not because we—"
"—not because we're bored."
"correct."
After dinner, we went back to the room and soaked in the bathtub together. I fell asleep holding him in my arms, and when I woke up, I heard heavier rain falling outside the window. Jacob stood up, and for a moment, I hoped he would go back on his word and check his phone. Instead, he grabbed the New Yorker and crawled back into bed. I rested my cheek against his chest hair, listening to his heartbeat mix with the pouring rain. This is sacred. This moment is sacred and that's what I want . We woke up again two hours later, still tangled together, the magazine tossed aside. I remained motionless, afraid of ending the fulfillment of my fantasy.
I forced myself to sit at my desk and revise what I had written. it hurts. The disconnect between what I wanted to say and what I knew how to say was painful, but there was no choice but to hold on unless I gave up. I sat down and forced myself to review, and three hours later I emerged, exhaling from my lips like a horse. Jacob looked up from his book Death and Desire .
"This still sucks," I said.
"Why does it suck?"
"It is. But at least I did it. At least I'm doing it." He nodded.
We went to the Arnold House for lunch and sat by the fire. Alone, except for a middle-aged couple drinking cocktails, my thoughts again turned to the future.
“What do you imagine your old age will be like?”
"I know better than to try and imagine something like this. It all depends on my health, whether I have a family, what my career looks like."
"Yeah, but, like, when do you retire? What do you want it to look like?"
"I don't know if I'll be able to do it." Even though Philip Roth is retiring, I have a feeling Jacob will never rest and will always need to keep learning and growing. That's why I love him, but suddenly I feel claustrophobic in an empty room. I think of him agonizing over his novel when he was 75, both of us poor and spent our lives pursuing a craft that we ultimately found mediocre. He must have seen my face fall.
"I mean, we would travel, but as you get older you realize you don't have to escape much to be content. You've been there, done that, and it's not that different everywhere, It’s about similarity. Ultimately what matters is building depth in your relationships and your work.” I felt like I was on the verge of tears. I stood up and stood by the fire. He held my hand and asked me what was wrong.
My malice surprised me. "A future with you sounds boring, restrictive, and claustrophobic." I hope he knows I don't mean it.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not done exploring yet and probably never will be. I want to experience it all. I mean, what are we doing? If the dream is to write, then why don't we move to a place like here to do it ?”
"We still need to work to live here. It's not actually that cheap."
"Okay, let's go to another country."
"Do you really want to move to a place where you don't speak the language or know anyone? Do you know how isolating that is?"
"I don't care! I'm not afraid of anything as long as you're here. I want to experience it all. I don't want us to feel intimidated about our lives."
"We're not, and we won't be," he said, putting his arm around my waist. "I promise."
On the way home, I looked at the damp forest and dark sky and began to cry quietly. I don't want to go back to the city. I wanted to run away and start a new life in a cabin. But there are other considerations. Well done to me, good man. The promise was closing in on the fantasy around me. Jacob pulled over, grabbed my chin with his hand, and looked me straight in the face.
"You ask me how I envision our future? Well, I envision us growing old together. I want to build a life with you, a life in which we are happy. A life full of adventure and meaning. Think of all the places Have we had our adventure yet?"
I smiled and nodded with tears in my eyes. It felt good to feel that feeling, even if I wasn't sure what it was.
"Look at you, your little head fits in my hand. I love that little head." He pushed my chin forward and kissed me. "What are you angry about, hmm? Are you upset about that beautiful creek over there? Or are you upset about this house that overlooks the beautiful creek? Are you upset about the beauty of those trees?" Me Taking a closer look and seeing that they didn't match my real city life at all, I realized that, yes, that's why I was crying.
I closed my eyes as Jacob drove us home through the driving rain and fog. I decided to trust him to get us there safely, even though I could barely see the car in front of me. Closing my eyes, I thought of him squinting, alert, navigating us both. The least I could do was open my eyes.
"It's not easy. You're a good driver."
"Really? Do you like the way your man drives?"
"I do." I listened to music all the way home and felt relieved when the fog lifted.
Some names in this article have been changed to protect the privacy of mentioners.
Image: North Branch Inn ; Rachel Krantz/Hustle
