The vaguely menacing charm of vintage postcards.

When on vacation, I am a social snob. It breaks down this way: If you are a resident of where I’m vacationing or its surrounding area, I’ll love to talk with you. Whether banal chit-chat, deep, psychological explorations, or wildly unfounded and ignorant political positioning, I love hob-knobbing with a local of Anytown, Planet Earth.

However, if you are a tourist like me, every second I spend in your presence is like chalk being scrapped down my gutted and exposed spine. Ever seen the movie Somewhere in Time? There’s a moment where the hero discovers a reminder of where he comes from, and it shatters the paradise he’s discovered. That’s what another tourist’s face is to me: a shinny penny sucking me into a loveless present where the only escape is death.

“What do I do for a living? Apparently, I suffer fools gladly. And you?”

Make no mistake: I am not proud of this. It doesn’t come from a sense of elitism, rather, a jealous and desperate need for freedom from the burden of self-identification. I am often exhausted being me, and vacationing offers a rare moment where I get to be a different fellow. If I’m constantly having to re-establish myself to others as “a writer from Los Angeles,” etcetera, it won’t matter that I’m fiendishly clever and dashingly handsome – I’ll still be sick of my effing face.

The boyfriend doesn’t have this problem. Though technically an introvert, according to the Keirsey Temperament Scale, he can navigate most any social situation with aplomb. A master at multi-tasking, he’s capable of satisfying endless rounds of small talk by using them as an opportunity to gather useful information and think about what he needs to do at the office the next day. I, on the other hand, am locked into whatever conversation I’m having, heart and soul – so if it’s small talk, I start to suffer from claustrophobia.

Okay.

“I wonder what the poor people are doing?” I mused to myself, thrilled at having played the word adz on a triple word score.

This question was answered when I ventured to the ship’s port side, which revealed a congested, smoldering-oil-scented labyrinth of tarnished industrial structures. The smog was enough to make L.A. seem like a beach on Oahu.

“Oh!” I said.

YOU WERE HERE

We had docked at Mazatlán. While the sight of such a gritty urban landscape was intimidating and caused one to question whether the most “green” thing to do was simply encourage the extinction of the human race, I was hopeful. As stated before, I’m a poor audience for the show of safe, tourist-friendly spectacles cruises contrive, and seeing some real estate that was teeming with real people (sorry, employees of Cabo Wabo) made me eager to disembark and explore.

I’m grumpy. Not hella grumpy, mind you, just regular grumpy. I suppose it’s from a week of drinking booze and eating varieties of delicious, weird, snack food that Trader Joe’s is always inventing, getting you hooked on, then discontinuing. (“Dark chocolate covered, rosemary-seasoned aspirin, anyone?”)

Maybe it’s because the weather just became truly warm here in L.A.; the kind of warm that makes you hate wearing shirts and leaves you wanting to bear-hug an electric fan. Most folks here love this weather – in fact, many moved here specifically for it. I am not those people. I like the north aspect to North America. And if it is going to get hot, I want it to smell like baked oak trees and wild grasses – not car exhaust and Beyoncé’s Heat.

No amount of orange juice makes this stuff taste good, FYI.