By a strange fluke I just got upgraded to first class on Eurostar and it might just make me have to take back all those nasty things I said about them. Well, not really but it does at least give me pause to re-evaluate my position.The toilet paper is still pink and it still sticks to the bottom of your feet. The seats still look they were designed by the color blind (grey and orange) and there are still small children running up and down the aisle.
BUT, they just served us a rather nice three course meal accompanied by free drinks, free booze and pretty much free whatever we wanted. The crew speaks about a dozen languages and even, get this, informed me that I could move to an unoccupied table seat so that I could have even more room.
What the fuck? Is this really the same Eurostar that I have come to know and loath? Well, I am assuming it is attached to the same train and that the prols back in steerage are also on their way to London but that’s about where the similarity ends.
In the back of this bus I have never once seen a crew member pass by after the doors are closed. Here in the Royal Box Seats, they prowl the compartments with trolleys full of wonderful things and I have been saying “yes please” to just about everything that they have offered. It’s not quite up to the same standard as first class on BA or American Airlines but it’s a pretty good approximation of the best Business Class on anything with wings.
I’ve been noticing something over the past 100 years or so that I have been travelling for business: the boys and girls in the seats at the front of the plane are pros. This isn’t to say that each and every one of them, including me, aren’t complete tossers but the mere fact that they pretty much live on the road has pounded into their well quaffed heads an understanding of how the game is played that the casual traveler simply has no clue about.
I’m not going to sink into some kind of class warfare rant because I pretty much have no class at all. All I’m saying is that if your job is traveling you learn how to do it as well as possible with the fewest hassles and the most comfort.
I’ve done the Euro-Rail pass, backpack and youth hostel thing and let me tell you, after the age of 35 it doesn’t hold much charm. I’ve had enough anonymous sex and hangovers in my life to realize that a seat with legroom and a vermin free bed outweigh urine stained mattresses and mean drunk Aussies any day.
But please, don’t take my word for it. I’ve always been an advocate for throwing one’s self into the fray. Get drunk, get stoned, get laid, get thrown out of university, get out of whatever country you live in and see whatever part of the world that fancies you. Fuck jobs, fuck parents, fuck that cute redhead in the seat across the aisle but don’t waste your twenties, thirties, forties or anything thereafter sitting behind a fucking computer screen working for a faceless corporate overlord.
Look, I spent pretty much all my life just doing what I wanted to do. I never had any money but I always had a job I liked and someone interesting to sleep with. Seven years ago I finally sold out and got a real job but at least it was in IT so I could continue to wear shorts and stupid t-shirts. Now they pay me far too much to travel around, work like a bastard and stay in nice hotels: it really could be a hell of a lot worse.
The point is, (if there is a point) that if you are half bright, have a decent education and have spent enough time on the road to realize that if you were somehow dropped into a strange country where they have the death penalty for speaking English that you would, somehow, survive.
If there is a secret it’s to have a portable job. Anything that ties you to one location or one industry equates to soul death. Be a digital graphic designer: the folks that work in our studio departments are all freelancers who spend six months being web monkeys and six months wandering through India getting drunk. Be a medic for the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. You’ll spend most of your life at the broken end of a bottle but goddamn, how many accountants can say they made blind people see or saved poor people from certain death?
IT? Fuck IT. When the great bell rings we’ll all be turned into pillars of salt. Twenty years from now when the kids who have grown up immersed in all things electronic come of age there will be no need for the Geek Squad. The only reason I have a job is because no one over the age of forty is able to comfortably work a battery operated pencil sharpener let alone a Linux server. When everyone is in The Know, there will be no need for magicians. With any luck, by the time that happens I will have cashed in my chips and returned to art.
Damn it! Even in 1st class they have screaming kids. I have totally lost my train of thought. Can’t they fucking invent an off switch for children? Can’t we make it legal for any passing adult to stuff a crying kids mouth full of dirty socks? Please, make it so.
Art. Yeah right. Good luck. Remember, I went to a fucking art school so I know that the only reason people go there is either because they were offered a choice between art school and prison or they have been certified as “different learners” and don’t play well with other children. After I’m appointed uber-lord for this planet I will require all art schools to post a large sign above their entrance with flaming letters that say, “You will never get a job if you graduate from here!” At least not a job in art anyway. Kinkos copy centers and web design firms from here to India are staffed with art school cast offs desperate to find a balance between eating and pursuing their pipe dreams.
Not to say it can’t be done. Certainly there are a few trust fund babies or bored bankers spouses who can afford to take a vanity trip, open their own gallery and peddle their wares to tourist or stylistically tone-deaf corporations looking to outfit their newest giant glass box. But for the rank and file, the kids I went to school with and then saw walking into my office day in and day out seeking guidance and a camera to check out for the weekend, for them a degree in art is a one way ticket to obscurity financed by loans no mortal could pay.
Take it from me, the future is a long way off and chances are you’re immortal so a few years playing with paints and brushes and taking an amazing amount of drugs won’t matter one way or another. Irresponsibility is fleeting but middle management, a mortgage and boring sex is forever.
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