Everyone Loves a Traveler
by Jenna Stephens

Everyone loves a traveler. It's the idea of being the Beautiful One passing through town all independent and fierce and wise. It's freedom wrapped up in road maps and a determined body. It's a landlocked wall covered with maps of the sea. It's regions you'll never go to but have proof of. It's always being curious about something. Leaving is easier than staying behind. Adventures await and the place you left is tucked away in your back pocket like sex and parenting and other eternal mysteries that happen everyday. The road metaphor is tired out. It's old and common. The highway has fared the same fate. But still the attraction exists. I am staring at a map right now. I've been staring at it all night long. It sustains me like lovers can't. It draws me in like the most confident seductress and throws me out half-naked, 1400 miles away from where I intended to go, heartbroken and better off and begging for more.

Alaska is like that. She has her working class hands around my waist, grabbing my arm, kicking me in the ass. And I love her. The map is right above my bed. She is to be my latest conquest. I will seduce her like I've seduced no other. Notes of curiously sweet interest will not suffice. I'm thinking of jumping naked into some freezing pool, or fasting on blades of ice and blackberries for a month so show my devotion.

I tried to seduce Key West in a similiar way except that I courted her by turning brown with the sun and scraping my bare feet on shards of shell until they were callused and beautifully ulty. I had to compete with the drag queens for her attention and I was no match. I went topless a lot but how can a bare chest compare to the perfect attention to detail that was their reality? The most I could do was to spike my hair up and tuck my clean, white tank tops into my shorts and get the sand out of my ears. She liked me best when I climbed into her bed all salted and warm, and on those nights she kissed my sunburns away after the moon had risen over the sea and the birds had quieted down.

New York couldn't be seduced. Not by me anyway. It was enough she showed me some secrets in the Lower East Side and let me take naked pictures of her in the dusky afternoons. She laughed and slapped my face and told me to come back when I was in my thirties and had a real job and could treat her right. Because she had other plans, I spent Valentine's Day alone getting blown around by the city-infused wind but I was glad to be single and open and young. She never got jealous and even went so far as to set me up with other girls who were every bit as tough and sweet as I had imagined New York girls to be.

Atlanta fed me butter biscuits and introduced me to all her gorgeous lovers. She asked me to shave my west coast pubic hair and pierce something vulnerable. I was smitten. Even marriage crossed my mind, though everyone involved knew how unlikely that was. She was sun-burnt and rich, spent Friday nights at the museum looking at that huge painting of The Storm, and she always sang to herself while washing dishes. She was always sweaty and sleek. The romance never really wore off but we were both glad to be going our separate ways when the final hour came to close.

Puerto Rico introduced me to a Brazilian transvestite named Freddie who tried to teach me to merengue until we all fell over laughing and exhausted. Celibacy struck a deal with me that season and though the warmth of sand and sea were beyond conducive to all kinds of seducing, I spent my nights alone in a red t-shirt and boys' underwear, sweating with all the windows open.

And now Alaska is on my mind. I fantasize about her while I'm at work and getting dressed in the mornings. I've been taking cold-watered baths in preparation for the fierce, forest rendezvous I'm envisioning with her. Alone in my truck named Atticus, I'll be departing soon from Portland, heading north for a date with Canada, on my way to find out if Alaska likes me like I like her. Like that. Everyone loves a traveler.

For more information about the writer, contact:
Jenna Scout Stephens
jennafoo8@hotmail