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EXCERPT
Lost in Exeter
It started when I missed the turn at Barnstable.
That wrong turn brought me to an unfamiliar road with a minuscule arrow pointing the way to Exeter. This was not the direct route I had traveled a week before from the hotel at Exeter train station, where I planned to meet Jay. Instead, it led me into a sinister network of roundabouts going in the wrong direction. Driving on the wrong side of the road as I approached these circles roundabouting in the wrong direction, I frantically searched for the next little arrow to Exeter. Motorists whizzed by in the wrong lanes blaring their horns and signing to me their English middle fingers. These were not the signs I was searching to find. And unlike Kanga who remained innocent throughout his futile search around and around the same tree, I became dizzy, paranoid, and dehydrated.
Finally, dazed and utterly lost, my psyche splattered on the windshield; motorists giving me the finger and honking relentlessly as I-the-dervish whirled while trying to stay on the wrong side of the road—the car mercifully took charge and drove itself out of the circles-of-doom and into the parking lot of a large industrial park. Sweating profusely, needing to pee badly, holding back the tears of a lost battle, I stumbled into a big office building. The sign of the of the offices read: PRUDENTIAL. I opened the door noticing the workers at their cubicles in a large windowless room. Everything was still, unmoving. One woman emerged from the static maze and approached me as I reeled, holding myself up by the edge of the counter. I looked into her eyes pleadingly and before I thought to ask her for directions to the bathroom, words formed involuntarily from frothing lips, "May I... have some.. life insurance? I fear I'm going to die."
"Are you lost?" she asked, recognizing my helplessness.
"Yes," I replied, feeling grateful someone had taken pity on me. "I've been trying to find Exeter for six hours. I should have been there three hours ago."
She told me not to worry, I was IN Exeter! She would draw me a map! Where did I want to go? I told her I was meeting a friend at the hotel by the train station. And she said, "Oh, that's on the other side of town, but it's simple enough." And then she proceeded to draw me a map of EIGHT ROUNDABOUTS, cheerfully explaining which left or right, which first or second or third or fourth right or left to take at each one. And she was so happy to be helping and so chipper, I could not possibly tell her the truth of the roundabouts and me. And somewhere I just knew that it didn't matter any more—left or right, signs or no signs; even all the road rage of England projected onto me—it didn't matter because I'm on the wrong side of the road anyway and perpetually going in the wrong direction, so what was the use? And so, I found myself conceding, a fallen road warrior, needing very badly to pee. At this she chirped, "Oh, this is as simple as pie, now don't you worry!" And then she handed me a two-page map of eight carefully drawn roundabouts with arrows and signals and whatnots. Continuing to read my mind, she cheerfully pointed me in the direction of the bathroom.
Back at the car, hunger and dehydration hit. I gulped a yogurt to ward off hallucinations as I looked at the map. I looked out to the first circle of traffic looming ahead—cars spinning around and around, all going in the wrong direction. I swigged some water as I again looked at the map, trying to memorize the first three circles and their turns, knowing I would not be able to look at the directions while I was driving—there were too many cars ready to slam into me or exasperated motorists ready to yell England’s most common profanity: YOU SILLY COW. And that would be really too much, I wouldn’t know what I would do then.
I turned the ignition and headed out.
I went around the first roundabout and then drove straight on for a few hundred meters to the second. I thought I was remembering the directions quite well, and with a breath in my heart, hoped I could make it to the third. But after holding that breath for what felt like an eternity, it turned to a rasp, then a gasp, then...Shit! What was that? THAT was the Prudential Building. I had gone full circle.
Numbness penetrated by body as the voice of paranoia whispered to me that I was being hijacked by some invisible gremlin into the eternal damnation of the roundabout underworld. But I fought that voice. No way was I going into that building again. Instead, I pulled into the parking lot, took a slug of yogurt, uttered the name of my traveling spirit-guide, and prayed to the gods that had kept me alive all day. Then, I pulled out into the road. Again.
This time I made it to the 3rd roundabout—and a straight road that looked like it might be going into Exeter—and then...a miracle! I saw a sign that read "Exeter City Center." I drove on, but the traffic thickened, the roads narrowed, the roundabouts multiplied and, after moving through it all for five or ten minutes without seeing another sign, the car again took charge, turned off the main street, onto the curb and to a dead stop. I stepped out to the sidewalk, stupefied. And I observed myself—a bedraggled, damp American woman beside her English automobile with French license plates, steering wheel on the wrong side of the car—in the middle of the afternoon rush hour, in the middle of Exeter, England, arms flailing to the traffic, and.... hysterically hailing a cab.
A cab stopped across the street in the middle of the congestion. Like a tortured damsel I screamed, "Help me PLEASE!" He smiled as a knight would—eyes sparkling with a savior’s light, oblivious to motorists honking at him, ignoring their obscenities. I continued shouting, "I'm trying to get to the hotel next to the train station, could you lead me there?"
Gallantly he grinned as he waved his strong arm in the direction I should follow to get back on the road. Before I knew it, I was safely behind his trusty taxi. And, with visions of my arms wrapped around his solid waist, away we went through Exeter City Center.
Five minutes and five quids later I was at the hotel. I parked the car, paid him, and asked if I could call him tomorrow if I needed help to get out to the main road that would take me to the ferry in Plymouth. "No problem," said he...and gave me the number to his cellular phone.
I stumbled into the hotel. I climbed the stairs to the room. I looked at my watch. I had lost the three hours I was going to use to relax. In fact, I had lost a bit more than that. Jay could readily see this when he arrived a few moments later. He graciously waited in the lobby while I took an hour to find some of what I had lost. Only then could meet him for tea, a scones, and a lovely conversations about poetry and dreams.
The next morning I did not call the cab—and I got very lost leaving Exeter. But this time, I was prepared. At a stop light by an infamous roundabout, I calmly asked a motorist to help me and, as he was mercifully on his way to the Plymouth motorway, he kindly let me follow him. When I made it to that road and was safely out of Exeter, it was as if a psychotropic drug had been ciphered from my brain. Effortlessly, I made the correct turn toward Plymouth City Center. The streets opened up to me. I drove straight away to the ferry without one glitch.
And now that I am actually on this boat and pulling away from England, sipping chilled Evian, watching the sun shine on a blue sea, and knowing I am soon to be on the shores of my Goddesslands—I sigh gratefully that I am out of the farms and cliffs and woods of that fairy tale. For as the journey continues, I am most likely to enter another tale—and that one will be, I am certain, on the right side of the road.
