Off Assignment, Letter to a Stranger: “To the one who was supposed to get away”
Letter to a Stranger
lavinia spalding
What I remember, 15 years on, is not your face or hair or hands, nor the beach or full moon above us that night. I remember the safety cone. It was bright orange, brand new, and perfectly incongruous, so we stared at it for seven hours.
My friend swung by twice to check on me, maybe three times.
“I’m good,” I said dreamily, as you studied the plastic cone or the silver sea of tinsel before us or the spectacle to our right—hundreds of barefoot bodies gyrating to a techno laser lightshow. Perhaps you looked behind us to the dreadlocked girl with the vacant eyes performing fire poi, twirling and swaying inside her trance of flaming hoops.
I wanted to stand up when the giant paper lanterns drifted like white sparks into the sky, burning ash flakes from a campfire. I should have scrawled my wish on paper and flown it into that blackness, or joined the mob of dancers and truly belonged, then, to the tens of thousands on our tourist-trap party island in Thailand. I contemplated finding my sandals. Instead I stayed captive, promised to one small square of sand and one plastic cone and you.
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The New York Times, Modern Love: “Goodbye, My Fantasy Man”
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AFAR Magazine: “Playing by Heart” (Winner of a Gold Lowell Thomas Award)
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Longreads: “The Cabin”
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River Teeth: A lot of Tomorrows
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Going: New Orleans, The Southern US City Where Jazz Was Born
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Parents: I Grew Up in a Haunted House—Here’s What I Tell My Child About Ghosts
AFAR: Seoul Food
Off Assignment, Letter to a Stranger: “To the Shopkeeper in Fez”
The Bold Italic: “Working Three Jobs Nearly Killed Me”
AirBnB Magazine: “So I Slept in a ...Cave”
AAA Westways Magazine: “Korean Encore”
AFAR.com: “Everything You Need to Know About Jazz Fest”
AFAR.com: “Get Beyond the Beads: The 101 on Mardi Gras Throws”
AFAR.com: “The Art of Eating Crawfish in New Orleans”
AFAR.com: “Find New Orleans’s Soul at These 6 Mini-Museums”
Ms. Magazine: “Politics is on the Menu at Hell’s Backbone Grill”
AirBnB Magazine: “New Orleans for the Celebratory”
Off Assignment, Letter to a Stranger: “To Old Johnny”
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The New York Times, Modern Love: “Goodbye, My Fantasy Man”
I wasn’t willing to settle for less than kismet. But chasing a romantic illusion nearly kept me from finding love. -- The night I agreed to try online dating, I told my roommate Meghan I hoped I wouldn’t meet anyone because that wasn’t the kind of story . . .
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River Teeth: A lot of Tomorrows
We are at the dinner table when my young son asks, “The day after a lot of tomorrows, will we build a treehouse?” I want to scoop him in my arms, this boy so eager and fresh, so tall his forehead meets my shoulder. If I could, I would lift his body above . . .
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AFAR: Seoul Food
I still clearly remember my first meal in South Korea. I had just arrived in the country, fresh out of college and ready to begin a job teaching English. My new boss had whisked me from the airport to a barbecue restaurant, where I’d watched in panic as . . .
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The New R&R
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