Julia flew away to India this evening. I had no idea that I felt protective of her until I was waiting for her at a hydrant on Sixth Avenue and Bleecker while she went into the CVS to buy razors and garbage bags for friends living in the north, in Himachal Pradesh, where, unless you have a sharp rock and a hungry goat, you’re shit out of luck on having smooth legs and place to put your trash. (She was going to add the razors and garbage bags to her already hefty collection of gifts: furniture polish, a pumice stone, underwear from the Gap, cheap slippers, a pair of giant men’s boots topped with fur, vitamins, a power cord for a French nun, six wine glasses. and a duffel full of other things I can’t mention or she’ll get mad). Anyway, the thought of her flying across the ocean and landing in Delhi alone suddenly made me nervous and sad—I can’t even go into it. Suffice it to say that the last time Julia flew into Delhi, she ended up calling me from a cardboard box* in the middle of the night, in her sleeping bag, crying, saying something about a lost taxi driver and pigs or cows in the middle of the road, and not being able to get through. Monkeys scare her. And men think she’s hot. (Already a drunk guy tried to pick her up at in the airport in Newark, twice.)
*This is one of those lies I told you about.
(bottom image by Michael Velasco)
thank god for the kingfisher flight or I would be up all night thinking about her (and by her, I mean me) on the good bus to dharmasala. ahhh, the men and their bad smelling feet.
I know. I know. I just added a photo that Michael Velasco took of her last year in Bodhgaya.