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Where in the World?
Obscure Country Profile #1:
TAHITI
By Chris Fara1
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Where the fuck is Tahiti anyway? I know that it's somewhere south of California and North of Antarctica, but that's all based on some theory that claims the earth is round. Maps do a decent job of illustrating its planetary position, and it can be seen on globes that groove on the longitude and latitude. Regardless of where it is or isn't - I know that I have to go there some day, and that I don't plan on bringing much more than a notebook and some flip flops.
I've been talking about this island for quite some time now. Babbling about something of which I have no knowledge isn't out of character, as I often give barroom reviews of films and albums that I have yet to explore on my own. It's an easy tactic - particularly when people ask with no intention of listening.
Back to Tahiti, the country that I’m moving to as soon as I make enough money in corporate America to evacuate and denounce it forever. My non-Tahitian girlfriend and I fantasize about this particular paradise whenever America embarrasses us, which seems to be every time we pick up the paper or turn on the tube. And then there was also my trip to Port Authority via Greyhound this past winter, when I realized that my affinity for the South Pacific was more of a calling than a juvenile obsession.
As hesitant as I usually am to converse with the bus Cretans, who would most likely be ignorant to where the word Cretan comes from, I decided anyway to interrogate the Boston bohemian who crushed my two-seats-to-myself dreams as he paralleled his patchwork to my factory-made corduroys. As it turned out, he was an aspiring composer with all of the answers to what the guy at the front of the pit does with that little stick (which isn't very much by the way). More notable was that he was dating a girl whose family owned land in Tahiti, and that they were moving there after college to build a home. I promised that we'd meet for a drink as soon as I packed up and hit the high seas.
The U.S. government does a wonderful job of forcing young liberals like myself to investigate alternative habitats. Vietnam draft-dodgers dreamed of migrating to Canada, while some pro-black Americans obsess over the African pillages that were glamorized by Garvey and all the others who inspired a big dump in Uncle Sam's pants. These days, young urbanites seem to be more content with holding down their sanctuaries - though they do enjoy reminiscing about the Utopian playgrounds to which their studies abroad once took them. Personally - I'm much more interested in hitchhiking through the Bermuda triangle, or whichever route passes through French Polynesia.
My trip to Tahiti was virtual rather than actual, mostly because the venue this was written for is friendly in its creative allowance, but financially unequipped to provide for any extreme sports other than Internet surfing. However, there were some critical facts that I either knew already, or discovered on Google after vainly searching my pen name.
For one - I already knew that France was involved with this obscure place in some way or another. I was also impressed by my inclination that it was one of the only major islands in its vicinity that didn't play host to a Club Med; a fact that I still can't verify. What I know now is based on daydreams and the information given by the island's foremost tourist website.
Not since my first and final term of grad school have I taken a morsel of foreign information and extrapolated it into a moderately coherent essay. The four pages that I downloaded on Tahiti were comparable to the minimal research that I've been augmenting into entertainment since my writing career began in the third grade. My passion for this nirvana even grew in the process, much like it once did for schizophrenics during my first year as a clinical psychology major.
It just so happens that Tahiti is everything that I ever wet dreamed it would be. The weather is lovely around the calendar, it covers the mountain to beach vacation dynamic, and tourists don't get cut from ear to ear for jumping in the wrong taxi. The bonus is that tipping is discouraged, which sets it far apart from the northern hangout that anti-Nixons once aspired to populate. Taxes are also minimal - unless of course you're eating, shopping, drinking, or staying in a hotel. Tourism is their only real source of revenue, since there are hundreds of closer islands for the United States to rape and exploit for the prodcution of clothes and crafts.
While the occasional misdirected spring breaker may mistake Tahiti for an extension of Generica, it's actually the proud mother of an island family that people fly great distances to experience. Aside from "heaven," it's probably the most popular destination for virgin believers who don't need valid proof of existence before departure. Natives use "her" and "she" in discussing their homeland, much like unwanted visitors refer to their Mustangs, Camaros, and Civics back at home. If not for the island's reliance on California phonies for its upkeep, I'd probably have no excuse to have Tahiti's stamp missing from the passport that I don't even own.
Cliché artists always say that you shouldn't move to a place that you've never visited. What I'm looking for is a place that they'll never go. My hope is to one day have enough loot from writing about nonsense to afford a tropical hangout, or at least find that Greyhound hipster and convince him to build an extra bedroom. But regardless of what it takes, I know that I'll end up in a place where I can eat my freedom fries, and actually be proud of the powers that determine the nomenclature of my cuisine.
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Chris FARA1 has written for various underground hip-hop magazines, as well as some of the more audacious New York independents willing to publish his work. He can be reached at [email protected].
©
2003 Me Three