Honeymoon

For someone who has a lot of useless knowledge about geography, I had never heard of Fernando de Noronha. Located a few hundred miles off the northeast coast of Brazil, just under the equator, it's a tiny island, seven square miles in size, that's revered by biologists for its delicate ecosystem and treasured by the few tourists that set foot on it.

Noronha is pricey to get to from Brazil. From other countries it's breathtakingly expensive. Flights are only offered from two coastal cities and tickets are easily twice as much as what a 70 minute flight should be.

Once you land, the first order of business is to pay taxes. Because Noronha is such a guarded environmental jewel, humans to have to pay R $40 (US $18) per day as a penalty for being human. There's also the card you have to buy to access some of the select beaches. And, of course, you're on an island, so everything from a bottle of water to a room will run you two or three times what it would on the mainland.

The island will pick you up and shake you by the heels, but it's well worth it. Dani recommended Noronha for our honeymoon and after one Google search, I was hooked. If we were ever going to go, this would be the time. I'm mighty glad we did.

To get to Noronha, you have to fly through the cities of Natal or Recife. Since we had never been to either, we decided to stop and stay a couple of nights (the price issue of Noronha may have also played a role in this decision). We chose Recife because a friend of ours works at a great hotel there.

Recife has to be one of the sadder stories in Brazil today. A gorgeous beachfront city, it's impossible to look up at its high rise hotels lining the water and not think of Miami. Look down from those towers into the surf and Recife takes on an eerie quality. No one is in the water. No one on the beach either. For miles, Recife's platinum sand is an urban ghost town.

It is South Beach meets Detroit.

The problem is that in the early 90s a large seaport was built a few miles down the coast. When shipping traffic picked up, thousands of sharks that called the area home were disrupted. They migrated to the shallow waters edging Recife.

Shark attack numbers spiked. Surfing was outlawed shortly after. Signs were planted in the sand warning the dangers of swimming. Word spread.

In our two days of sunny, warm weather, we saw exactly no swimmers in Recife.

Problems, as you can guess, multiplied from there. When Dani and I stepped out on the beach around sunset to go for a walk and take a picture with the Shark Attack sign, we had to put the camera away because a drug deal was happening behind it. Drug dealing and usage is common on the beach precisely because it's so empty. After a short walk at dusk, Dani and I decided it better we return to the room.

One of many Shark Attack warnings. Our second attempt at a photo.

The next day, less than 90 minutes away, Dani and I stepped off our plane onto the pavement of Noronha's airstrip. We might as well have been on a different planet. The compact island's beauty is strange and immediate. Chunks of igneous rock formations jutted into the sky around us. One of the island's 10,000 photo ops presented itself before we even stepped inside the airport.

Welcome to Fernando de Noronha. There were so few staff at the airport, I'm pretty sure I could have run onto the runway if I wanted.

It's the strangest place I've ever been. Because the government is so conscious of preserving Noronha, the island limits the number of tourists that can be on it at any one time (I think up to 400). The place has only two or three paved roads. Very few cars. The preferred method of transportation is dune buggy.

Dani on the back of a dune buggy taxi. When this guy hit the throttle on the main road, nothing about it felt safe. We loved it.

No McDonald's. No Starbucks. No luxury resorts or five-star restaurants. No stoplights. No crowds. No traffic. Dirt and gravel roads. Roosters wandering around front yards. Water tanks on roofs. 

Fernando de Noronha has positioned itself to continuously appear as if it was discovered in the last two years. Everywhere is quiet. There's no waiting for a restaurant table or an ice cream cone. There's a constant feeling of having the place to yourself. It's hard to tell if Noronhans thrive on tourism or despise it. 

The beaches, of which there are ten or so, are all peaceful. Most of the time, Dani and I found ourselves to be the only ones in sight for hundreds of yards in either direction. Cliffs cradled us from behind. Pure, undisturbed sand padded our feet. Towering crags of rock studded the water in front of us.

 

It's easy to feel like you've got the place to yourself.

Noronha showed itself from the get go to be the place that every middle age woman is imagining when she says she likes long walks on the beach. It's where James Bond takes his girl before her untimely death midway through the film. It will always be the image I think of when I hear the word honeymoon. It was built by God for honeymoons. Dani and I are forever ruined.

Sancho Beach. Trip Advisor's choice as Best Beach in the World.

On our first day, we headed out for Sancho Beach, which was just voted by Trip Advisor as the Best Beach in the World (for my money, I wouldn't put it in the top three on the island, but anyway...). 

Like all places worth going, Sancho is not easy to get to. We took a cab down a bumpy dirt road, followed by a ten minute walk through the woods. We then found ourselves at the edge of a cliff that we had to descend down into via two dicey looking ladders and some unkempt stone staircases. 

We almost turned away in fear, but this is Fernando de Noronha. Where else are you gonna go?

Sancho Beach will make you work for it.

A few minutes later, after a lot of "Take your time, sweetie"-s, our feet touched down into sand. We were on the Best Beach in the World. There were maybe 20 of us there.

The emerald waters of Sancho.

Sancho Beach and the rest of Noronha boasts world-class diving. While we didn't gear up, we did get a good feel for the wildlife.

Standing in calm, waist-deep water, schools of tropical fish swirled around us. One medium-sized blue and yellow striped fish paid particular attention to us. Dani and I tiptoed closer to him hoping we wouldn't scare him away. Instead, he moved closer to us. The fish circled around us a few times, staring at our legs blankly. When we sloshed away towards the shore, he followed, as if to say, "What? You're leaving already?"

Same thing with a big booby-looking bird I saw land in the middle of a group of tourists and eat a tiny fish right out of someone's hand. Once he realized they were only taking pictures and not supplying anymore treats, he waddled across the sand up to us. I stood there looking down at him as he stared right back at me. He was maybe eight inches away. Both of us just passing the afternoon. 

Many of the island's rocks are covered in crabs. This is terrifying at first, but after a little while you realize that, unlike the fish or birds, they want nothing to do with humans. Their sole purpose is to pinch tiny fish from the waves that wash over them. We saw a few strike it big.

Jackpot.

There were also the countless lizards we encountered combing the rocks, the dolphins popping their heads up out on the horizon, and then there was this curious little cliff dweller.

Island squirrel.

There are basically no hotels on the island. Most lodging is in the form of "pousadas," which is their version of a bed and breakfast.

This was the worst part of the trip. All Dani and I wanted out of our room was a place to get some sleep. That was nearly an impossibility for three reasons:

1. Our air conditioner only worked for a few minutes at a time before emitting this high-pitched frequency sound like an alien trying to escape from inside it. Noronha was 85 degrees every day and 77 degrees every night. The humidity was like a blanket. I'm used to living with no A/C, but this was a new ballgame. We sweated and shivered each night.

2. Roosters. There were like a dozen of them surrounding our pousada. Every morning, two of them would go off, back and forth, every ten seconds from 4:00 am to 7:00 am.

3. And this one is almost too funny to be true. Like, if this was a writer's room for a sitcom episode about a bad place to stay and someone pitched this, I would say the audience won't believe it...Somewhere else in our pousada, someone in another room was learning to play the trumpet. 

Horrible. Just horrible. Two or three notes at a time that sounded as clear and lovely as a pubescent boy belting out an aria. One particular morning, little Miles Davis broke that bad boy out at 8:30, just after the roosters finished their shift. Unreal.

It didn't help that Dani's skin broke out in a rash just after arriving. As it crawled up her chest and neck towards her face, we decided to go to the local hospital. She got an IV of cortisol and a pill  to take. It cleared right up.

Funny enough, Dani's hospital visit was the only free thing on the trip.

Every morning I was miserable. I trudged down our dirt street after breakfast, sleepy-eyed, heavy headed, Dani beside me trying to cheer me up. I was always ready to come home. 

Then a few minutes later, our feet hit sand and I looked around at another spectacular beach setting, this one somehow even more beautiful than the day before. And part of me didn't ever want to leave.

I put my arm around Dani and we walked out across the sand to whatever spot we wanted. Barely anyone else in sight. All of nature's truest wonders on private display for us. The three of us there, alone.

Play the Part

I'm finding as I get older that a tremendous amount of life's successes and failures teeter on one's ability to appear comfortable under pressure. Playing the part of the person with all the answers, despite all the questions and doubts circulating in his head. Acting like you've been in a room before when it's only your first time.

Some time ago, after watching two or three ripe years go by that only yielded a sliver of the success I wanted to have with the opposite sex, I forced myself to play the part. Be the guy that goes up to the group of four girls on the other side of the room, smile and introduce myself. Try to string a joke together. Restrain myself from embracing any initial interest they showed me.

Things started to turn around, but it never got easy for me. Every time was a steep hill I made myself climb. Standing there, crossing off opening lines in my head before finally just gritting my teeth and stepping forward. Like a stunt driver, staring at a brick wall that he's been hired to drive straight into, life is about ignoring the old familiar voice in your head that exists to warn you: "This will hurt."

It turns out that at the top of one of those hills one Saturday afternoon I found a group of friends, all of them new in town, out celebrating a holiday with some drinks. One of them with a head of hair I couldn't take my hands out of and a shoulder I couldn't keep my arm off of.

At the top of another hill a few weeks later, a conversation about whether she would stay in my country for a second year or go home to hers. Another about her future. Then my future. Then our future. Another when I told her I wanted to follow her wherever she goes.

And the latest of them all, a yearlong climb up the marital aisle. An aisle covered in flower petals and to do lists, swooshing around from the wind tunnel of cash simultaneously sucking out of our bank accounts. The grandest stage show in life.

I was out of Brazil for most of the month leading up to the wedding. My job called on me for back-to-back work trips to Virginia. I was thrilled. After six months away from the States, I don't think I've ever been more excited to go somewhere. It was a euphoria at first, made of Five Guys burgers and nights with old friends. But as the tenth, eleventh and twelfth days ticked by, the mounting responsibilities awaiting me south of the equator had me desperate to escape the Land of the Free.

Even broader than that was the realization, for the first time since moving, that this wasn't my world anymore. After six months in São Paulo, I had finally relocated there.

I played the part in Reagan Airport, smiling, leaning over the the US Airways customer service counter, using every language tactic I had learned from this book and that to coax a woman named Sarah into upgrading me to first class all the way to Brazil (for the second time in a month). When I told her I was going for my wedding, she smiled and her printer spit out a new white ticket with my name on it.

I flipped through a few movies, pushed away the remains of my half-decent steak and reclined my seat all the way flat into a bed. The sun disappeared outside the window. I pulled down my complimentary eye mask and went to sleep--the chaos quietly waiting for me beyond the curve of the Earth.

Dani handled the lion's share of our wedding planning as brides often do. My main job on a countless numbers of days was to walk to the local ATM and withdraw the daily max of R$1,000 (US $450) to pay for this and that. I hadn't really been stressed at any point in the process and didn't expect I would be. That changed as Tuesday crept into Wednesday and then Thursday, and there appeared to be no treatment to stabilize or shrink our swelling, last minute to do lists.

We were blessed to have a handful of friends and family come down from the States to enjoy the festivities with us. I played various parts as host, tour guide, cultural consultant and occasional translator. I did my best to assure them I had more answers than questions about this place I found just as strange and different as they did.

Biggest and most important of all my roles was groom. Groom, like bride, is a strange part because you're asked to publicly demonstrate in front of a large audience (many of them strangers) the choices and promises you've made in the privacy of your life's most intimate moments. You're folded into dozens of poses by photographers that you would never put yourself in even though, yes, you can admit it looks romantic when you lean against this random wall beside her like that.

The theatrics of the whole thing does skew the romanticism behind it all. It was almost like I was the co-author of a love story that was now being adapted by strangers. As I got dressed before the ceremony, a photographer and videographer captured from multiple angles me putting on my rented shoes. After I tied them, one of the guys said to me, "That was great. Can you do that again?"

The part of groom in this adaptation might be easy to play were it not for the fact that the love story this was all based on was a true one. That I was actually playing myself in this production and I feared I might not be doing a very good job of it. The vows I was supposed to say to her weren't the same ones we said to each other in that diner in West Virginia when we first discussed spending our lives together.

Getting married is stressful. What had started as a romantic choice of two people was now a race to fit together 25 moving parts before curtain.

But all was not lost. Amid the chaos of organizing the string quartet, and confirming we had a sound guy and printing out lists of who would ride the shuttle, the emotions that started it all peeked their little heads back inside.

At the rehearsal dinner that suddenly arrived on Friday evening, I went from instructing the restaurant staff to clean the bathrooms in one moment to publicly speaking about the importance in my life of each person at the table in the next. I quieted the to do lists buzzing around in my head, stood and began with my mom and dad. Maybe four or five words got out of my lips before they quivered and I fell apart in tears. I was so thankful for them and their example. For each of my friends at the table. For her family. For my lovely bride who was teaching me so much about life. A woman that I want to share everything with. A woman that I will never leave.

"I'm getting married." The words reintroduced themselves to me every few hours that Friday and Saturday. The emotions of our true love story randomly cutting through the big-budget production of it. The difference between rehearsing vows and taking a step back to see the gravity of them.

By the time my cue from the string quartet played and I entered the back of the church with my mother on my arm (as is the Brazilian custom), it was the first time in a week that all I wanted to do was not play the part. To be as authentically myself as I could ever be. I wanted to savor and store every moment of this experience. Make it all mine again. To be the guy that inspired the story, not the one hired to play in it.

I stood at the front of the room beside my father, our minister, and took deep breaths to calm myself as each bridesmaid slowly graced her way down the endless aisle. The doors shut and the room went quiet. And then it was me and her again. I just had to smile and remember my lines.

Time sped into a tornado and I found myself an hour later a few miles away on top of a hill in the jungle again playing the part of groom. The photographers bending me this way and that. I kissed Dani at their request, take after take, as they attempted their Scorsese-like tracking shots.

There were hands to shake, cheeks to kiss, strangers to meet and some very limited Portuguese to be spoken. "Obrigado. Obrigado. Obrigado. Obrigado."

The set around us was spectacular. O Velhão is a venue that neither I nor anyone else can accurately label, describe or even photograph. It looked flawless.

The caipirinhas were muddled and poured continuously and after an hour or so I didn't feel like I was playing the part of groom. I was really him again. I hugged the strangers around me tighter, scraped together a few jokes in Portuguese and said thank you to each of them again, this time from the heart.

As a man who has thrown a few parties over the years, I can say this one was undeniably a great one. Whether it was exploring the dark jungle trail behind the venue with my American guests or dancing my first dance with Daniela to a song written by my friend Katie Dill, everything was beautiful, fun and kept moving forward. The high fives multiplied as the bottles got fewer and by the time quitting time hit at 1:00 am, I savored the warm feeling many brides or grooms don't get to have: "That was exactly what I wanted."

Dani and I made it to our hotel room an hour or so later. We spent ten minutes working her out of all 40 buttons on her perfect dress and promptly collapsed into bed. We had our first real conversation of the day (you don't get any of those on your wedding day) and shared some laughs about our favorite moments at the reception. We heated up some shitty leftover pizza and lay there together, feeling like us.

This night just like all the ones that got us here. Just like the endless number to come.

Uma Semana

One week to go before the marriage. Posts will probably be hard to come by the next few days.

After we say I do, expect to hear all the juicy details.

About cake.

I do love cake.

On Stage

If you enjoy this blog, then you'll probably enjoy an evening at As Was Written. It's a show that my friend Tim and I co-host that brings together on one stage writers from diverse styles. We're doing it Saturday, October 25 at the Lyceum in Alexandria, VA.

I'll be reading a piece that I can describe as blog-esque. It'll be about Brazil, but will include stuff I haven't felt comfortable putting online in print for the world to see.

We've filled about 50 seats so far. Seventy are left.

Everything is here: http://aswaswritten.com.



...And...end of plug.

Up Front

For the lion's share of the last decade, I've had a job that requires travel. It's a perk I've consistently enjoyed. My job has taken me to over half the states in the US and five foreign countries. Without a doubt, there's a lot of this big world that I wouldn't have seen without it.

That doesn't mean travel is always a luxury. For every cool trip I've taken, there's been a 26-hour run to St. Louis to go with it (I've been there twice and only seen the Arch once, from a plane).

During the height of travel season each year, I commonly find myself in Terminal C of Reagan National, my face resting in my hands, listening to the same woman on the intercom every five minutes saying, "The USO Lounge is open daily..." and thinking about the lonely Holiday Inn room waiting for me way over there in one of those other time zones.

The goal for all business travelers who trek our carry-on bags deep into coach is that we can one day sit up front with the lucky few. First class. It represents everything that flying can be. It's like traveling with the characters from Mad Men minus the cigarette smoke. It's the opposite of draining. It's like you're not flying.

Airlines dangle frequent flyer programs out in front of travelers and we gobble them up the same way young boys 23-year old men stay up all hours of the night playing video games: If there's a level higher than where we are and its within reach, we're going to do what we can to reach it.

My first trip in first class didn't happen until last December--a good six years after I started traveling for my job. I had cobbled together enough US Airways miles within the calendar year to reach Silver status and then Gold. The trip? A 25-minute jump from DC over to Philadelphia...at 6:55 am.

I boarded like a king. Took my seat. Watched all those little people drag their sorry asses to the back. Drank my OJ. Ate my snack.

Sure, we sat on the runway for a longer period than we spent in the sky. It didn't matter. I had made it.

The truth is that reaching x status doesn't really mean much of anything since it doesn't guarantee first class. You learn this quickly when asking for upgrades that never take shape. Furthermore, your shiny little x status is only good for domestic upgrades. The international stuff is saved for mileage rainmakers like George Clooney in Up in the Air: Emotionally impotent travelers who spend such a huge slice of their lives in the sky that the airlines treat them like actual friends--people these travelers so desperately wish they had.

Now that I'm in Brazil full time, my shiny status doesn't seem to serve me much good, which is ironic since earning big chunks of miles 5,000 at a time flying to the US has never been easier.

It's all soul-draining stuff. The constant ebb and flow of wasted hope on upgrades that don't happen. I know the truth of it all. You really want to fly first class? Pony up the cash or let go of the dream.

It's this kind of attitude that left me completely floored last week when a kind, beautiful, perfect, flawless, goodhearted, loving US Airways desk lady nonchalantly tapped a few keys at my asking and printed out a first class ticket with my name on it. Charlotte to São Paulo. Nine hours and fifteen minutes of unlimited food, drink, movies and a seat so big it was both a window and an aisle, a chair and a bed.

I was the first one to board the flight because I was both A) more excited than I ever had been before to fly and B) I still didn't fully believe this was happening.

Zone One was called out on the intercom and sure enough, the boarding pass for seat 2A beeped under the scanner like everybody else's.

The next four hours were spent eating bad (but better than coach) food, drinking free cocktails, starting and then abandoning a host of recent comedies and awkwardly holding the classic "hot towel" that my flight attendant brought me.

By the time I decided to extend my chair out into a bed, my head was spinning to the point that I had to sit down in the bathroom for a few minutes before returning to my seat. I felt like a freshman in college, still figuring out what this booze stuff was and how much of it I could handle. Keep it together, JMD.

I laid down and awoke in the daylight. We were 20 minutes from landing. I didn't want the flight to end. I wanted to sleep more. I wanted to eat more. I wanted to put on the socks they gave me in my little gift bag.

As thrilling as it all was to have finally made it to the front, the dark cloud of coach misery still hung over me. I could see it whenever I looked around. There were 20 first class seats on my flight. I counted six other passengers.

It depressed me because even though I was upfront with the kings, I knew there were dozens of me's sitting back there in the darkness. Their upgrade requests denied. Their statuses, useless. How many flights had I been on where this amount of prime real estate lay vacant? No wonder it never happens and may never happen again.

I shook my head in disappointment, took off my Bose Quiet Comfort headphones, put down my breakfast pastry and waited for the wheels to touch down. All this while thinking, "How can I do this again, and again, and again?"

High Wire

In São Paulo, it's easy to find yourself walking a thin line of safety. Most people try to avoid these situations.

I'm here in town for a brief few moments between USA trips. My co-workers Brian and Laura are also visiting. 

This afternoon, Brian and I went to the mall for a quick errand. As we walked back, we crossed the bridge a block from my house that spans over the bustling Avenida Vente Tres de Maio.

"Woah," I said, interrupting a story Brian was telling me, "watch this."

In front of us, rising above the heads of the other sidewalk pedestrians, a man appeared. His clothes were a mess. His face a little dirty. A short cigarette hung from his lips. His feet were perched on top of the bridge's hand railing--the railing that separates the safety of the sidewalk from the traffic that swooshes some 50 feet below.

He loosened his grip and slowly straightened his torso. He stood tall and upright. Passersby came to a stop.

The man turned from the highway and focused his attention on the handrail under his soles. He put one foot in front of the other and walked toward us, along the rail, toward the center of the bridge. His pace was jarringly normal. His demeanor, calm.

This particular handrail is maybe two or three inches wide.

Brian and I passed him, eye level with his shins. We stopped to watch with some others. This all happened in a handful of seconds so surreal and unpredicted that I turned to Brian and nonchalantly said one of the most horrible things a person can say, "Well, do you wanna watch this guy fall to his death or do you want to just go home?"

Everyone around us could not believe what was happening. We chuckled intermittently to break the tension. Anything to divert us from the glaring reality that we were about to watch a man lose his life and possibly take a few innocent motorists with him.

I squatted behind a concrete barrier. From my vantage, I could see the man and his feet, but nothing below that.

I vividly remember in my final year of college driving around a corner just as a drunk driver in front of me lost control of his vehicle. He sped recklessly into a ditch. I saw the telephone pole in front of him. I diverted my eyes. Later, I realized this reaction was my body telling me, "Don't watch this man die." Today, instinctually, I felt myself doing this again.

Another few seconds passed and the man's nimble feet took him all the way across to the other side. He hopped down to safety and took a few victorious puffs on his cigarette. As we turned to walk home, he turned in the opposite direction and continued down a path I'll never understand.

Brian and I needed a while to decompress afterwards. I thought about how different things could have been. He could have fallen, yes, but what if he fell just as we were passing him? What if one of the eye witnesses got it wrong and said we had pushed him? That's not a position either of us want to be in as English-speaking foreigners.

When we returned home, I poured us a few necessary cocktails. We told Daniela and Laura the story. We sent work e-mails and made wedding phone calls. Washed dishes. Set the table for dinner. Another hour and the moment was past. There was no way of telling where he was by then. Life, like him, walked on.

Born to Win

My first trip home since arriving in Brazil in late February. Been here in Alexandria, VA for about 36 hours so far.

-Greeted at the airport by this young man:

-Immediately go to Five Guys, not home. There's no time. The first few meals are already selected. Five Guys for lunch on Sunday. Los Toltecos for dinner. Royal Thai on lunch for Monday. Ben and Jerry's after lunch--Cherry Garcia to start. Chadwick's $4 chicken quesadilla for dinner.

-Of everything above, the one that hit the hardest in the this-is-exactly-what-I-was-missing category was undoubtedly Five Guys. Absolute perfection. Ben and Jerry's takes second.

-Stars and Stripes forever taste like:

-Overwhelmed by the beauty and cleanliness around me. I realize immediately how accustomed I am to the graffiti-ed walls and littered streets of Sao Paulo. America looks like the future.

-Get to work immediately on all the things I have to do. Renting a tuxedo here instead of Brazil in order to save roughly $500 in rental fees per suit. It's outrageous there. The place I want to go is slammed. Leave. Go get haircut. Buy a shirt at Old Navy. It's Tax Free Weekend.

-Reach an awkward sort of breaking point while using the free wifi at a Starbuck's to make a call on my cell phone. Feel like I do not fit in anymore in this world. This was my place, but no longer. Brazil is just different in all respects and my brain has adjusted to it. That's reality now.

-Everyone is so good looking. They look upbeat, healthy and happy. Cheerfulness all around.

-Arrive back home. Don't think to turn on the AC.

-Drive a car for the first time in 5.5 months. Immediately start fooling with my cell phone. Difficult at first to deal with cars that are in front of me when I don't want them to be. I'm used to walking on busy sidewalks where you can just go around a person. It's the first time in my life I realize how limited driving is in comparison to walking. When you're walking, you're always calling the shots.

-Without a doubt, the drawback that catches my eye the most are the cop cars quietly crawling up and down the roads waiting for drivers to make a mistake so they can write a ticket. This feels inexcusably like bullying to me. In Brazil, police don't pull drivers over. They're constantly on guard trying to stop real crime. You can jaywalk right in front of them. You can pull your car onto the sidewalk to park while you run over to an ATM. It doesn't matter. That's not crime. I feel like I can do anything in Brazil as long as it doesn't involve drugs, guns or hurting someone else. Here, the idea of being penalized for going 57 in a 45 is outrageous. But you're the cops. Go stop criminals.

-See groups of old friends. So refreshing. It feels like no time has passed with any of them.

-English. Everywhere. Like deep breaths of pure oxygen into your lungs.

-Never remember to turn the AC on the first day. Wake up to a house that's about 77 degrees. Turn it to 75.

-Start to feel more at home.

-Return to the tuxedo rental place Monday morning. From the moment I walk in with no solid idea of what I want till the moment I leave with measurements taken, paperwork completed, deposit paid: One hour. No one cried. No champagne. None of my friends gave me their opinions. No photos taken. Just simple in and out. Take 20 steps away from a tuxedo and every one of them looks the same. Thank God I'm a man.

-Go to my office for the first time since February. The familiarity hits me in the lobby when I hear the elevator chime. Have to shake my arms to get the tension out.

-In a surreal move, return to my old desk (unoccupied at the moment), sit down just like I did in the past, open my laptop and go to work. Same guy across the hall from me as before. Same view out the window. The closest thing to time travel I've ever experienced.

-Happy hour out in Old Town Alexandria. From this familiar place to that one. Light Horse does karaoke now on Mondays. Sing "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak to about five people. One person buys me a drink halfway through the song.

-Walk the quiet streets of Old Town by myself. More than ever before it looks like a movie set. Since returning, I have zero fear in America. Find myself looking over my shoulder constantly out of pure habit. Force my muscle memory to cooperate with my mood, which is at ease. I feel completely safe at every moment. My bag can sit unattended over there. It's okay if that door is unlocked. It's okay to walk past this stranger at night when there's no one else around. Crime is that thing that happens in far off places beyond the curvature of the horizon. It does not happen here.

-Board the Metro late in the evening. I'm the only one in my car. After years of living in DC this has only happened two or three times. The coincidence feels apt. In my 36 hours here, more than anything else, I'm feeling amazed at the sheer luck of it all. The enormous blessing that I used to incorrectly label as "life." The fact that I was born here and not anywhere else. 330 million out of six billion. And I made the cut. The game was over before my first step.