Traveling Light (#packing #possessions #anxiety)

By Lisabet Sarai

One of my life goals is to succeed in packing two week’s worth of stuff in a carry-on bag.

Don’t laugh. I’ve done a lot of traveling, visiting every continent except Australia. On almost every trip, I’ve been weighed down by excess luggage. I recall my first journey to Bali, in the mid-1980s. I’d bought a new soft-sided bag, what seemed like a clever innovation with four small wheels on the bottom and zippers that allowed you to add capacity, in several stages. I wasn’t able to find a picture even on the Internet—that’s how long ago it was!—but imagine something like a vertically expandable rolling backpack. Plenty of space, I figured, plus with the wheels I wouldn’t have to carry it. I stuffed it to the gills. Then I spent hot, miserable hours dragging it behind me along the dirt roads in Legian, looking for a guest house.

In 2000, my husband and I took a dream vacation to Provence. Ten days. Four suitcases, two large and two small. We’d booked an intimate, atmospheric hotel on the harbor in Marseille, quintessentially French. I adored the place—except for the fact that it had no elevator, just lovely spiral staircases. Our room on the fourth floor had a wonderful view. What I recall most vividly, though, is wrestling those heavy bags up to the room, then down again. We had to do that twice each way, since we both arrived and departed from Marseille and stayed in the same hotel both times.

Never again, I swore. I’m going to be really careful on my next trip, taking nothing but the absolute essentials. Just one suitcase for the two of us. It would have to be bigger of course, and would be somewhat heavier, but surely a single bag would be easier to handle than two... That’s a fine theory, I discovered, as long as you’re not traveling by train in France, where many of the smaller stations have no lifts and no elevators. (I was a bit shocked at the lack of concern for handicapped passengers, to be honest.)

Why do I always end up packing so much? There are a number of reasons. For one thing, my travels often combine business and leisure. That means I need both formal and casual clothing, and the shoes to go with them.

Yes, shoes are a major problem. Another one of my life goals is to find a single pair of shoes comfortable and sturdy enough for walking miles, while still fancy enough to go with a suit or a dress. In fact, I can’t walk in any pair of shoes for more than a day. With my seriously pronated arches, I get blisters from any shoes if I wear them consistently. Thus, even for a few days away, I need several changes of footwear.

Another issue is weather. I live in a tropical climate. If I’m on my way to some place more temperate, I have to pack warmer clothing, including bulky outerwear, plus lighter items to wear on the way home.

Excuses, excuses!

Yes, I admit I usually pack more items than I need. I don’t want to have to figure out a week’s wardrobe ahead of time. I like to have a bit of choice about what to wear. Is that a sin?

If it is, it’s one I pay for in backaches and exhaustion.

We had a friend visit, back when I lived in the US, a woman from Scotland who was former stewardess. She’d come for a two week vacation, all the way from the UK, and was traveling across America. All she had in the way of luggage was a rolling suitcase that would easily fit in the bin above an airline seat. Yet she managed to look fabulous during her entire three day stay with us.

I realized after looking at what she carried that one key to traveling light is having the right clothes. You need stuff that is compressible and that won’t wrinkle. Everything needs to follow the same color scheme, so you can mix and match. Plus you need lightweight fabrics that you can wash, preferably by hand. If your destination is chilly, plan to wear layers rather than bringing individual warm but space consuming pieces.

I’m proud to report that I am getting better, though I haven’t yet truly met my goal. Lately my DH and I have been managing with a single medium-sized bag for all our clothing and toiletries, plus two carry ons. Those hold our laptops, tablets, cables, charges and other essentials of the twenty-first century. That’s something I didn’t need to worry about when I went to Bali.

At the end of September I’m off to Europe on business. It will be a relatively short trip, but I’m already stressed about packing. I’m especially concerned because I will likely still need crutches due to my broken leg. Clearly I can’t pull a suitcase behind me.

Some people have nightmares about monsters or murderers. As for me, I have a recurring anxiety dream about packing. The details vary, but it’s always a situation where I have only ten minutes before I leave on a trip. I have to select what to take, often no more than what will fit in a backpack. I race around, frantic, trying to make decisions about what’s essential.

I guess that’s the critical point: deciding what’s essential. For the upcoming trip, I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter what I look like. The main point is surviving the twelve hours in the plane, not freezing to death, and managing to get around while I’m there.

I wonder if I can do that with just a carry-on?

For Equality

Like several other people at Oh Get a Grip, I’ve done a lot of writing for Coming Together, a publisher that produces erotic anthologies that raise money for various charities. Some of the work I’m proudest of has gone into those books, too.

I thought I’d take the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite Coming Together stories, which was in Beth Wylde’s Coming Together: For Equality, a book that benefits Planting Peace Equality House.

My story was called “Risk Rider and Dare Take the Con,” and it’s about cosplay at a geek convention. For those who don’t know, cosplay is the name for dressing up in (often astonishingly detailed) costume in honor of favorite characters from books, movies, comics, and video games.

A couple of years ago (and definitely around the time I wrote this story), there was a lot of vocal controversy around cosplayers. The people who cosplay (often women) began speaking publicly about the harassment they experience at conventions and the ways they are treated as sex objects by attendees. Other people claimed that cosplayers are “fake geek girls” (whatever that means) who are attending these conventions to somehow trick or manipulate “real geeks” (whatever that means).

Some good came out of this flurry of blogs, social media posts, and articles. Many conventions improved their policies around harassment and worked to make cosplayers safer. More people recognized the work and devotion that goes into creating these incredible costumes.

I don’t think it’s all solved, though. Despite much tooting of the horn about the accepting nature of geek culture, my experience as a lifelong geek is that it’s accepting in certain ways but quite intolerant in others. For people on the receiving end of sexual harassment, I think geek culture can be particularly dangerous and difficult. Geek culture is typically very accepting of people with poor social skills, a lack of ability to read social cues, and confusion around boundaries. I’m really happy for people with those traits who feel they are able to make friends in geeky places. However, having this set of traits be commonplace can put people in a bind when receiving sexual interest. Behavior that feels creepy can be excused as “person X is just not good at social cues.” Concerns about such behavior can be dismissed as intolerant. Many people fail to see how this shifts the burden onto certain subsets of the community and creates an unwelcoming and intolerant environment for certain people. I think geek culture needs to work out better ways to be accepting of people outside of the social skill mainstream while also being careful of the safety of all members of the community. People are working on this, but there’s still progress to be made.

I’d also point to things like the recent controversy over the movie Ghostbusters, in which a relentless negative campaign against the movie drove one of its stars away from interacting with the public for a while and has likely ensured there will be no sequel. Some people think they own geek culture, and they fail to recognize that lots of people are geeks, too, and have been all along. (I’m glossing over lots of details in this short description. If you’re interested in knowing more, ask me in the comments, or do a few Google searches. Be ready for hours of reading.)

Anyway, when I wrote “Risk Rider and Dare Take the Con,” I was really excited about that story. It’s fun and genuinely sexy, in my humble opinion, but the story also let me express my pent-up anger around the harassing experiences I’ve had at geeky events over the course of my life. As is often the case when I work on charity anthologies, I was the first beneficiary. It was great to get the chance to let out feelings I’d always struggled to express.

I don’t usually do snippets here, but I feel weird talking so much about the story and not giving you a hint of it. It’s one of my favorites ever, so it would be awesome if this inspired a couple more people to pick up For Equality:

They wound up pressed together in a crowded elevator, the smell of leather combined with Dare's clean, hot skin overwhelming any other person's scent. "Dare and Risk Rider, huh?" The guy next to them wore an assessing expression. "You guys realize you got it wrong, right? Dare is the girl." He spoke as if correcting a kindergartener.

"I prefer dressing as Risk Rider," Jamie-Lyn said. She wouldn't normally have engaged, but Dare's body had emboldened her.

Her interlocutor, however, shook his head dismissively. "That's backwards. It's unrealistic to see a girl as Risk Rider. He's got all the martial arts skills, and he's the one who fights people off while Dare works on hacking stuff. Since women's bodies aren't as strong, it just doesn't make sense for the woman to be the physical defender. Sorry." He turned his back.

"She's bigger than me," Dare pointed out, but the guy didn't respond. Jamie-Lyn wasn't sure if she felt irritated or relieved that he'd decided the conversation was over.

The elevator dinged at Jamie-Lyn's floor, and she tugged Dare behind her, doing her best to ignore the sly hands that brushed against the outsides of her breasts or the curves of her ass. She'd dealt with so much at the con already that people trying to cop a feel just felt unfortunately normal. She and Dare stayed silent until Jamie-Lyn let them into her room.

Dare stopped the door before it closed. "Would you feel more comfortable if we propped it open? I know we just met. You don't even know my real name."

Her cheeks heated. Lust and Risk Rider's reflected boldness had led her to take some uncharacteristically reckless actions. She didn't want to stop, though. Gently, she pulled Dare's hand away from the door, allowing it to close. "What's your real name?"

"Louis Rios."

Jamie-Lyn introduced herself, then cut to the chase. "Why did you ask to come to my room?"

"You know why. We both felt it."

"We did," she agreed. Gazing for a moment into his quick, mischievous eyes, Jamie-Lyn decided to take the plunge all the way. Today, with him, she didn't want to pretend to be anything she wasn't. Some of her friends back home might have thought it was ironic for her to feel this way while dressed as a comic book character, but the point had always been that when she dressed as Risk Rider, Jamie-Lyn was expressing her best and truest self. Her bravest self.

She took Dare's hand—Louis's hand—and guided it to her crotch, wrapping it around her soft pack. "I'm not exactly traditional," Jamie-Lyn said. "Do you mind?"

"I like it."

The smile that spread over her face made Jamie-Lyn feel fierce, victorious, and hungry for more. She wrapped an arm around Louis in a grip meant to claim him and kissed him just the same way. She kissed him as a man would kiss, guiding the pace, teasing his mouth open with her tongue, her lips outside his lips, her jaw pressing his open wider, her hands making him submit to her.

And if you’re interested in writing for charity, too, I’m currently taking submissions for my first editing project for Coming Together, Positively Sexy (deadline extended to October 1st). Full details are here. (And I need to work on propagating the deadline extension…)