14 Days To Dudes: "Patience" (Outtake from Wherever You Are)

Somewhere Around Regensburg, Germany, January, 2002: You are riding on a regional bus traversing the Teutonic countryside. It looks exactly like Indiana in December, endless fields blanketed with snow, occasional golden spears of dead grain defiantly shooting up through the cover. It is one of those fairly dreary European days when life seems ordinary no matter where you are and no one can muster the energy to speak English to you. You could have picked up a few phrases before you arrived, Dumbkopf. Auschlau.

The bus stops in a small village that seems like as good a place as any to disembark. You have sworn to yourself that you will not repeat the mistakes of previous solo vacations during which you neglected to venture out enough, to get a taste of the place on your own terms. Now you are in a village you cannot pronounce the name of. Now you are speaking pidgin German to a kind-faced bar maid. Now you are opening the small notebook you have brought along in order to capture these Moments Of European Inspiration. You take a sip of the hilariously tall Weissbeer in front of you and write something in the notebook. It appears to be Uninspired. You finish the Weissbeer and order another.

You remember a few nights ago in Paris. Things got heated between your friends and you over the timing of a meal; your blood sugar was dropping like a rock and you lost control of yourself. You broke off from the group when you saw a crepe stand. The hash you’d reluctantly partook of back at the apartment really kicked in about this time and you found yourself hideously stoned, devouring a cheese and ham crepe on a street, a street in France, which happened to look a lot like a street in Covington, Kentucky, at least when you were really high and incredibly hungry.

By the time the crepe was gone, so were your friends. You didn’t know how it happened. You attempted to appear indignant while hailing a taxi, barking out the hotel address to the driver, as if it were all his fault. Perhaps it was, in a roundabout way.

A few days later you are standing in the snow in a village you cannot pronounce the name of. Now you are examining the timetable on the side of the bus shelter, attempting to figure out when the bus might depart. You are not concerned with its time of arrival, for you are not certain what the name of your destination city is and, even if you were, would not be able to pronounce it correctly, anyway. There is an old man in a fur cap and earmuffs standing a few feet away from you, smiling in your direction. He rubs his hands together and blows into them.

“You,” he points. ”Patience.”