Kevin Tosca

When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Tourist

Wherever they went life looked the same. Another statue, monument, museum. Another fountain, square, church, building, river, ruin, view. Another park and cemetery. Another craft and custom. Another walk, promenade, ramble, day trip. And then another. And then another.

And the night routine: the hostels and pensions and hotels. The cafés and bars and restaurants and clubs. The next local food. The next local drink.

But the food always came out the same in the morning, and the alcohol always caused the same fatigue, and the cigarettes were all the same, and the same drugs and the same sex, the same music and boys and girls and men and women, the same conversations and beds, the same them them them.

Later in life, when they would try to remember the point of travel—when they would desperately try to recall their trips in all the cities and in all the countries and couldn’t—they would inevitably wind up blaming the wrong things, the things you’ve just read about.

Never did they ask themselves what had been missing.

What they helped erase.