The Low Season

Still lingering in the five-bed dorm room, waiting patiently for a promised email from WWOOF announcing my next destination, I find myself left behind, one of the last denizens of my beloved rooftop balcony.   I have no more dorm-mates.  Four beds lie empty, leaving me free to grab an extra blanket or a couple of pillows and free to take a long shower if I’m lucky enough to find the water hot on any given morning.  The churning assembly of philosophers and stoners that I fell in with so quickly has, in its endless rotation, spun off one Roadie after another, leaving finally only the stragglers:  A thirty-one year old Venezuelan-American, who I will call Hugo, who stays downstairs working on law-school applications when he is not smoking hash in the winter sun on our balcony, and me.   Not that we are the only people staying at Silver Home.  There are a few tourists of various nationalities and a few Nepalis.   We’re just the only two of a certain temperament that lends itself well to long discussions of the nature/definition/existence of God, loud arguments over whether or not Technology is a net-positive in the world, or intelligence-sharing on the best places to eat for under 1 USD.  It’s just the two of us in this narrow demographic, and we end up knocking on each other’s doors at specific times, meal times usually or occasionally during the dead hours that pass between four and seven as the sun disappears from our balcony and we wait to ponder our dinner options.  Tomorrow I will likely be gone, and only Hugo will remain.  He says he’ll seek a livelier place to stay then, although I’m skeptical about his chances.    

This is The Low Season that we were told about.  The bulk of the tourists have gone home.  The hotel restaurants are empty.  Probin joins me again and again at my table to smoke cheap cigarettes, talk about life, his girl, his plans, his troubles.  Not that we’re exactly friends, just that there’s no one else to talk to.   Hugo and I go looking for human interaction, but single female travelers are scarce, never congregated densely enough in any predictable location and going out of one’s way to meet guys is, of course, a little strange, unless one is gay, in which case one is probably more out-of-luck than we are.   I sense a new urgency from the hustlers as I make my way between my established haunts.  They cry out in a slightly higher pitch, follow me longer, become more upset when ignored.   I’ve said before that it’s time to move on, but I think this is yet another signal.   Tomorrow.  Hopefully, tomorrow.