136: You Are Here

Ira Glass

Amy McGuiness flies people to the North Pole, tourists who pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. It's a six-hour flight in a prop jet. And for most of that time, if you look out the window, all you see is ice. When you get to the Pole, it looks exactly like all the other ice you've been staring at for hours.

So the tourists climb out of the plane. They're only given half an hour at the Pole. And what do most of them do with the time? Take pictures. And most of them have brought these little global positioning devices, GPSs. And they spend their time looking at the devices which tell them that yes, this is, in fact, the North Pole. Here's Amy McGuiness.

Ira Glass

There are the people who always want to know where they are in the world. They move through the world checking their position. And there's a kind of travel that we all do sometimes that's all about that moment of "You are here." You check where you are. You check your position on the map. You take a snapshot. You move on.

The North Pole is just an extreme example. Because, of course, there's nothing there, no one to meet, you're only there for half an hour. It costs $30,000 per person. And, until recently, a regular civilian would have no way to confirm that they were at the North Pole since normal compasses, like the one on the airplane that Amy McGuiness flies--

Ira Glass

And then there's this sort of person who kind of enjoys the moment when the compass stops working, the moment when there's no way to tell exactly where you are, and no global positioning system to help you figure it out.

Ira Glass

On today's radio program, three stories, three people, three sets of maps. And what it's like to be lost, how we all struggle in that moment not to give ourselves over to fear, and, hopefully, try to enjoy it. From WBEZ Chicago and Public Radio International, it's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass.

Act One of our program today, Ishtar Days, Arabian Nights. A man tries to lose himself completely, leave the places charted on maps. And what happens to you, and what you find when you try to leave the known world like this and succeed.

Act Two, The Game. Writer David Sedaris finds himself in a room full of people in a foreign city. He doesn't speak the language. He doesn't know anyone. And he has one simple, simple mission, a mission that you, yourself, may be capable of.

Act Three, When You Can Snatch The Pebble From My Hand, Grasshopper, Then You Can Leave. One low-paid office worker tries to operate a global positioning apparatus on the map of her entire life. Stay with us, my friend.

Ira Glass

Act One, Ishtar Days, Arabian Nights. Back when he was 21, John Bowe decided to visit a friend of his who was in the Peace Corps in Mali, in Africa. But he chose, I have to say, the most difficult possible route to get there. He decided to hitchhike across the Sahara Desert. And not just hitchhike, but hitchhike using a remote route 1,000 miles long that most hitchhikers avoid. He brought no special gear, carried a small bag filled mostly with books, one change of clothes. He wanted to go to places on the map with fewer and fewer roads.

Ira Glass

John Bowe is now a writer in New York. After a day with the Tuareg nomads, a truck came by, which put him in motion toward Mali and, much later, towards home.

[MUSIC - "LET'S GET LOST" BY CHET BAKER]

Coming up, David Sedaris plays a game pretending he's lost, plays it over and over, plays, and plays, and plays. Until one day, he experiences the real thing and does not much like it. That's in a minute from Public Radio International when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme, invite a variety of people to bring you stories on that theme. Today's program, You Are Here, stories of people getting lost and how people react to getting lost. Some people seek it. Some people are scared by it. We've arrived at Act Two of our program. Act Two, The Game.

Yes, it can be frightening to get lost. But what if you could adapt the thrill of getting lost, the pleasure of getting lost to safe parameters? Confine it, just get a little, tiny bit lost? Is that even possible? Or is that playing with fire, and you're sure to get burned? Well, writer David Sedaris has made the attempt himself. And so, of course, you don't have to.

David Sedaris

Whenever I find myself in a strange or unusual situation, I like to play this little game. To begin with, I have to pretend that a part of my brain has been asleep for exactly one year, while the rest of my body has been answering the phone and carrying on as usual. Now I've suddenly woken up, and I can't leave this spot until I gathered clues and figured out exactly where I am. The game is generally played during those moments when people tend to pinch themselves as a reminder of the dramatic turn their life has taken.

An example from a trip given as a reward for my college graduation. I'm standing in a grim cinder block building, looking out over rows of porcelain toilets arranged across the concrete floor much like the seats in a movie theater. Men are sitting on these toilets, some of them talking or reading the newspaper and others just staring ahead. There's a 1/2 inch of water on the floor, and a bottle cap floats by followed by a plastic spoon.

I probably came in to use the urinal, but rather than get my shoes wet, I'm deciding that maybe I'll just hold it and try someplace else. I turn to leave, but I can't. The game has begun. And now, according to the rules, I'll have to stay in this bathroom until I either hear or read the name of this particular town.

At this point, the exercise becomes more of an obsession than a game. It's not particularly fun to stand on your toes in an unventilated public toilet. But I'm powerless to leave until the person I was one year ago has figured out where he is. "OK," I think, "let's break this down."

The people in the bathroom are speaking Spanish. They appear to be Mexican, but that's not good enough. They could be-- I don't know-- on vacation or something. In the far corner of the room, a teenage boy is playing a radio, and that's probably my best bet. I'm hoping that sooner or later the announcer might mention the call letters, adding that his is the number one station in wherever it is I happen to be.

Unfortunately, the radio is currently broadcasting what appears to be the Spanish equivalent of "American Pie." I'm waiting and waiting for the song to end when a man enters the bathroom carrying a shopping bag. I read the name of the store followed by the words "Mexico City." And only then am I free to rush outdoors, where my traveling companion says, "Jesus, what took you so long?"

I take pleasure in the game partly because my life so rarely takes a dramatic turn. To put it mildly, I am a reluctant traveler, my preferred phrase being, "You go ahead. Someone needs to stay behind and take care of the cat." My hatred of travel is partially what makes the game so rewarding. I like the dreamlike quality of waking up in a strange place and the clinical way in which I'm forced to view my surroundings.

The game is never arranged in advance. It just kicks in on its own, usually prompted by a combination of visual elements I can only define as astonishing. When played in pleasant circumstances, the effect is narcotic.

Another example. I come to, and I find myself sitting in a cafe, admiring a corkscrew made out of a deer's foot. Something suggests that it probably belongs to me. I've always loved functional taxidermy, as it downplays the sportier aspects of hunting and makes shooting animals seem comically practical. I imagine someone rising at dawn and buttoning up his camouflaged vest. His corkscrew has broken, so now he'll have to go out and kill a deer.

The object sits before me on a table alongside a shaver made from an antler. A waitress appears, saying, "You must have been over to Terry's place down by the river. Oh, he makes such lovely things." The woman speaks English in an accent I can't quite identify except to say that she probably recognizes the authority of a queen. She sets down the cup of tea I had apparently ordered, and I thank her.

At the next table, an infant is crying, and I watch as a young mother fills the baby's bottle with Coca-Cola. In looking from one person to the next, I realize that I have the best teeth in the room. I have never in my life been in such a situation, and I proceed to take full advantage of it. I'm grinning like an idiot when my boyfriend, Hugh, enters the room and takes a seat beside me.

He's not in on the game. But even if he were, it wouldn't do me any good. It's against the rules to ask anyone where I am or to lead the conversation in that general direction.

It's times like this when I notice the difference between the way people talk in real life and the way they speak in the sorts of movies that heap on the exposition in order to cut to the chase. The movie version-- "Christ, BW, we've been waiting on the corner of 8th Avenue and 51st Street in the Hell's Kitchen section of New York City for over an hour and 45 minutes." Real-life version-- "I'm tired."

Hugh mentions a pair of taxidermied owls he's seen in a little shop down the street. This eliminates any doubt that we might possibly be in the United States, a country which forbids the mounting of its owls regardless of the circumstances. Even if one drops dead of a heart attack, you're not allowed to stuff it with straw or turn it into something useful like a desk clock. "You can buy owls here in Scotland," he says. "The only problem would be getting it back home." He lifts his tea cup, adding, "Is there something wrong with your mouth?"

My smile fades. He said the magic word, "Scotland," though I wish he hadn't because now the game is half over. I'm enjoying this little cafe with its views of the darkening street. And although Hugh's presence has ended my brief reign as holder of the room's finest teeth, I want to take my time and play at a leisurely pace.

We sit for a few minutes before the waitress swoops in and formally ends the game. "So," she says, "are you enjoying yourself here in Pitlochry?" It's a conspiracy. She and Hugh get to talking and within two minutes, she's mentioned the street, the country, everything, but the compass points. Check, please.

I've played the game since my first trip to summer camp. And in all that time, I never acknowledged its inherent safety net. While the David I pretended to be was shocked to find himself in Rome, Valencia, or Gastonia, the David I was at the time knew very well that he was in Italy, or Spain, or spending two weeks at Camp Cheerio. It's basically just a simulation exercise like one of those emergency procedure drills enacted by astronauts in training. I never realized what a joke it was until recently, when I found myself playing the game for real, and I panicked. It went like this.

I'm in a grocery store, but aside from the plastic wrapped meats and vegetables, I'm not finding much that I can hold onto. It isn't that they're selling anything remarkably exotic. It's just that I can't read the labels. Here, each word includes no less than 15 letters. And every box and can seems to picture a strapping family unit, smiling broadly for no apparent reason.

It's 6 o'clock in the evening, and the store is crowded with well-dressed professionals on their way home from work. I'm standing in what smells to be the soap and shampoo section when a young woman approaches, pushing her shopping cart with her chin. Her shiny, chestnut-colored hair hangs in front of her face until she flicks her head, and the hair resettles about her shoulders. The woman wears a knee-length skirt and a knit, sleeveless blouse and has no arms whatsoever. She stands beside me, and then she slips off one of her loafers and reaches for a plastic bottle with her bare foot.

There is no awkwardness to this moment. Her leg moves gracefully, and her foot works no differently than a hand. It's even decorated like a hand. Her nails are painted, and there's a gold bracelet around her ankle. And she's wearing a wedding band on one of her toes.

I'm curious as to how she might pay for her groceries, but we get separated at the registers. I realize then that the more important question is how I will pay for my groceries. I understand neither the currency nor the language, so my best bet will be to hand the cashier the largest bill I've got and hope that's enough to cover it. There are only a few items in my basket, a tube of what is hopefully toothpaste, but possibly a vaginal lubricant, a cigarette lighter in the shape of a genie, and five tins of cat food.

I've emptied my items onto the belt when I notice that everyone around me is caring an empty canvas sack in which to pack their groceries. I, myself, have no sack. The cashier offers me no plastic bag. And so after paying with my large bill, I stuff the lighter, cat food, and toothpaste into my pockets, pretending that this is the way I prefer to carry my groceries home from the store.

It's difficult to walk properly with both my front and back pockets stuffed tight with cat food. I'm ready to return to my hotel, but then I notice the armless woman walk out with a bag held between her teeth. And then the game begins in earnest.

I'm looking up and down the busy street, hoping to read the name of this city on a shop window, when I suddenly realize, I have absolutely no idea where I am. I'd recognize the name if I saw it written down. But other than that, I haven't got a clue. My first instinct is to throw up my hands and scream like a girl. And it is only with great effort that I manage to silence myself.

I know for a fact that I am in Germany, but I honestly can't remember where in Germany. I'm here on a promotional tour, eight cities over the course of a week. Monday was Berlin. Tuesday was Stuttgart, followed by Mannheim. But where am I today?

It's a half-hour walk back to my hotel, but that doesn't worry me. I can locate the hotel. I just can't locate myself. Neither can I leave this block and return to the hotel before the game is finished. And this presents a problem as my hosts will be picking me up in a little less than an hour.

Yes, it's just a game. And yes, it's just a rule. But if, like me, you're just a compulsive maniac, you know that games and rules are everything.

I'm thinking I might return to the grocery store and see if they've got a magazine rack. But no, I can't walk in because my pockets are full of cat food, and they might very reasonably mistake me for a shoplifter. A shoe store, a bakery, a record shop. One stand selling flowers and another selling sausages. Through their windows, I see nothing that can help me. I tell myself that sooner or later, a bus will come along, bearing the city's name in bright, easy-to-read letters. 20 minutes pass before I'm able to narrow things down a bit and deduce that wherever I am, it is definitely not on a bus route.

I'm racing up and down the block, desperate for evidence, when I suddenly start thinking about Hugh Downs. I'd seen him once when we shared a flight from Phoenix to New York. He moved through the airport minding his own business, and I'd followed along behind him, watching as people rushed forward to say, "Hey, you're Hugh Downs. What are you doing in Phoenix, Arizona?" He did nothing to provoke this response and was courteous even when the goons at the x-ray scanner stopped him for an autograph, saying, "Well, if it isn't Hugh Downs, host of 20/20. What are you doing here in Phoenix?"

For him, the game would be a snap. Should he develop Alzheimer's disease, all he'd have to do is walk out the door and willing strangers would tell him everything he needed to know. "You used to host The Today Show." "You're Hugh Downs. What are you doing here in--" fill in the blank. Due to his television celebrity, he benefits from what I now refer to as The Downs Syndrome.

The man couldn't get lost if his life depended on it. In my mind, it was now me against him. And he had it easy. This sense of competition spurred me on, and, within minutes, I was rifling through the corner trash can, cursing Hugh Downs' name with every used Kleenex and disposable diaper.

Eventually, amidst the crumpled flyers and crushed paper cups, I came across a discarded ATM receipt. And there it was. There I was, safe and victorious. I retracted all the mean things I'd thought about Hugh Downs, took a moment to gloat, and then, arm in arm with the person I used to be, I walked back to my hotel room in the German city of Cologne.

Ira Glass

Writer David Sedaris.

[MUSIC - "FLY INTO MYSTERY" BY JONATHAN RICHMAN AND THE MODERN LOVERS]

Ira Glass

Act Three, Snatch The Pebble From My Hand, Grasshopper, And Then You Can Leave. There's a class of people in certain professional fields called assistant. I had a friend who was the assistant for NPR's Daniel Schorr, then the assistant for NPR's Nina Totenberg, then for a New Yorker magazine writer, then for a New Yorker editor. And in all of those years, as this went by, as she watched her 20s ebb away, it seemed impossible to her to ever break the yoke of assistant-hood. The skills to do the job of assistant-- answering phones, faxing beautifully, were entirely different than the skills needed for the jobs that all assistants really want, that is, those of the people that they assist. It's a trap.

Nicole Graev is an assistant to an editor at a publishing house at Simon & Schuster. She finds herself lacking a map to her own life because of her very assistant-hood. She needs a map to where she's going. She's lost. She does not know where she is, and she is not happy about all this. And she set out to find some map to give her a sense, a sense of "You are here."

Nicole Graev

When I was in school, I majored in what is arguably the least useful subject in the English-speaking world, English. And yet, I always saw my future as this vast, sunny stretch of infinite possibilities. And the night before I started my first job as an editorial assistant at Simon & Schuster, I couldn't fall asleep. In just hours, I'd be hitting it, that glorious horizon I'd been speeding towards my entire life.

The thing about the wide and limitless future that no one warns you about, once you get there, it ceases to be wide and limitless. The millions of possibilities suddenly crystallize into one choice, one present, one single five-by-five cubicle. With one swift move, I'd narrowed a world of options down to four foam-core walls and a file cabinet, though I often get to leave to visit the photocopier.

In school it's always clear how to succeed. As long as you work hard, get good grades, you move ahead. But in this job, I felt like I'd hit a dead end. The gap between assistants and editors seemed unbridgeable. We never saw them cut deals, never watched them make decisions, never heard them talking to their authors. On my one-year anniversary at Simon & Schuster, I received a commemorative pen which I used the next day to clear a paper jam.

I decided to track down some of the people who'd started off right where I am now, in the same job, the same company, same building, same floor, to see if anything became of them, if this job actually leads anywhere. They could show me where I was headed and give me the map I wanted to get myself there. I began just 20 steps from my own desk. Michael Korda, Simon & Schuster's editor-in-chief, started here as an editorial assistant in 1958, just 41 short years ago.

Nicole Graev

Michael went on to list the multitude of ways in which I'm nothing like him. His father won Academy Awards. His mother and aunt were famous actresses in Europe. His uncle directed his first feature film at the age of 20. At 20, my dad was pumping gas on the outskirts of Syracuse.

Nicole Graev

Where exactly did foreign languages fit into my position anyway? As Michael talked more about his time as an assistant, it dawned on me. His job hadn't been the same one as mine at all. He was an assistant back in the days when American companies still had a job called "secretary." Now in publishing, as in so many businesses, there aren't many secretaries. Instead, they hire college grads like me, pay us less money, wave vague promises in front of us, and trick us by calling us assistants, a misleading title that makes it seem like we're actually on the map, heading somewhere.

I pressed Michael for advice, and he gave me a few of the usual suggestions. Work hard, read a lot, maintain a sense of purpose. "But the most important thing I could do as an assistant," he told me, "was to find some way to make myself stand out."

Nicole Graev

I took his advice and dropped in on my boss, Geoff Kloske, while he was editing a manuscript.

Nicole Graev

From 1984 to 1988, Jenny Blum worked as the assistant to an editor who sits just two offices down from me. I thought her experience would be closer to mine. And it was. Like me, she'd lived in a small Manhattan apartment that she shared with roaches. She'd answered someone else's phone. She knew what a fax machine was. But then her life turned around.

Nicole Graev

Their kids are now four, five, and seven, Danny, Anna, and Tony, the oldest. When I went to Jenny's house in Connecticut, the three of them and a playmate were running around a large sunny breakfast room about to be picked up for a swimming lesson. It seemed wonderful. I wanted to stay for dinner.

Nicole Graev

Doomed? Not exactly the word I'd wanted to hear. The whole idea of preparing for a family somehow seems so distant and unreal. I'm 22. A family hurt my head to think about. A family thew my map off the map. As I stood over the copying machine the next day, I tried to forget everything Jenny told me.

I spoke with a few more former assistants. Laurie Chittenden, who became an editor at 25 when she discovered a book that became a New York Times best seller. She told me to stay 'til midnight every night. Brooke Newman, who left Simon & Schuster in the late '60s to fly to Europe with a man she'd met the day before, told me, "Carpe diem." None of this helped me see a map for my own life. In fact, one former assistant, who seemed to have it made, Saul Anton, he's now a freelance magazine writer with a sunny duplex apartment in the West Village. He told me he's looking for the exact same thing I am.

Nicole Graev

I end my story with Phyllis Levy, who had everything I ever wanted out of Simon & Schuster. She started there in 1955. She had the storybook publishing experience, what English majors all across this great nation have always dreamed it could be.

Nicole Graev

Allow me to provide some context. Editorial assistants these days don't even get to attend editorial meetings, so you can imagine my surprise when Phyllis told me this little story.

Nicole Graev

Quick. Reality check. My real job this week--

[SOUND OF A PHONE BUZZING]

So there was Phyllis, schmoozing with literary icons, editing the great American novel. But the most amazing thing about her? She didn't even want the fate she ended up with.

Nicole Graev

Phyllis became a magazine editor. She worked in Hollywood for a while, jetting across the country, reading manuscripts. Now she's the books editor for Good Housekeeping. I looked at her, composed, elegant, sparkling, and thought about how much she'd been through, how much more she'd been through than me.

Nicole Graev

I thought over Phyllis's words later on, at the copier. The problem with following your heart is that the heart is not a compass. It spins around and around, sometimes pausing, wobbly, landing nowhere in particular for very long. My heart swept half-circles to California, swung back to going to grad school, and plunked down in front of the TV, not wanting to bother with either.

My heart once landed on a guy named John, whose heart landed on a woman in Belize. And then my heart didn't do much of anything for a while. But then it started back up again. It always does.

Ira Glass

Nicole Graev, professional assistant.

Ira Glass

Well, our program was produced today by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Susan Burton, Julie Snyder, and Nancy Updike. Contributing editors Jack Hitt, Paul Tough, Margy Rochlin, Alix Spiegel, and Consigliere Sarah Vowell. Production help from Todd Bachmann, Starlee Kine, and Sylvia Lemus. Musical help from Marika Partridge.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

If you'd like to buy a cassette of this program, call us here at WBEZ in Chicago, 312-832-3380. Or you know you can listen to most of our programs for absolutely free. Free, free, free on the internet at our website, www.thislife.org. That's thislife, one word, no space. Thanks to Elizabeth Meister who runs the site. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

[FUNDING CREDITS]

WBEZ management oversight by Torey Malatia, who wanders every day through WBEZ's hallways, saying,

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.

Announcer

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