Five solo trips. February 2020.

South Tyrol. Zurich. Gstaad. Lucerne. St Moritz.

Reading Sweet Days of Discipline in the backseat as we cross the border near St Gallen to drink whisky. _____ Magazine, online only, $450. And juice, on spec.

Covered bridges and Swiss customs usher us away from the messy prefab home of a Tyrolean beauty guru. [Three nights, half board for both of you. The treatments on your itinerary are included but she'll have to pay for her own. 20% off whatever isn’t covered. —B.] The guru wants to tear down her father’s legacy, two indoor courts late to the 80s fad, and a rotting timber lodge wallpapered in the violent animal paintings of her deformed son which stare down guests paying thousands of Euros to detox on fennel juice and hay soup, (her publicist insisted we were mistaken about the mess;) to Gstaad, [The car will meet you at the train, all your dinners have been arranged. They’ll cover both your skis and the lift tickets for the glacier. —M.] where the youngest son of a Jewish Moroccan sugarcane billionaire, haunted by his mother’s feminine grace but insistent his wife stay home to raise their four children so he can be inspired by Ugandan refugees and Alessandra Ambrosio, sat me down under a Dana Schutz to tell me I misunderstand it, capitalism will always be inevitable, and his preferred currency at Burning Man is hugs.

No one cares the tape is running when it’s on spec.

He made a point to follow me on Instagram before he used the toilets next to a grainy looping video his dead mother filmed of the old hotel imploding, and I remember when a Silver Lake club owner introduced me to Danny Masterson’s brother with a handshake on the dance floor: “He’ll remember you’re someone now.” T Magazine, online only, $100.

No one cares the tape is running when it’s for the style magazine.

At dinner two Saudi law bros hot potato the last stalk of crispy asparagus crumbled with Japanese rice crackers. We’re sure we’re being shortchanged, that our "special tasting menu" is an excuse for thrift, but the table of women who look their age and the table who don’t know how all delight in their portions. Nothing diminishes an appetite like food security. The Saudis swipe through each other’s phones comparing square footage and jeering America. The one who was early wanted everything he couldn’t remember he had last time. The waitress kneeled and touched his arm. The late one, in a KAWS tee and flannel, arrived to a hug from the maitre’d of the Sardinian pop-up in the next room. Last night that maitre’d let us eat whatever we wanted then gave us a desk calendar of their real estate holdings, smoothing out a tear in the box. He was the only person in the hotel who didn't know our names and didn’t pretend to care. KAWS Saudi don’t recognize spicy tuna tucked in a hand roll and pushes it off his plate so it could have been worse.

No one eats in the dining room with the AIDS painting, a problem for the curator.

There’s always a breakfast table where a wife leaves a husband and fur behind. They know eventually everything catches up to you.

In the elevator two indistinguishable English women, one in the other’s service, await a condition report from London on an undervalued Dumas that’s cracking, with sexual tension.

We share a Mercedes van back to the hotel with a displeased Italian noble in orange corduroy. The driver puts the wife and skis in their place. Ostriches crane as we pull away. In the driveway a Freezy Freakie Fiat, a gift from Leo. The glaciers on the hood disappear in exceptional heat but not yet. “I’m done with these” the Italian greets the concierge who takes them from here.

Property tour. Another empty daycare. A signed Titanic poster in the cinema. “To my knowledge he’s never stayed here.”

Rosey tweens on a field trip sprawl across the Panorama train’s second class cars. A tourist’s suitcase falls to block the doors and Louis Vuitton sneakers march slush over the corpse. A Japanese girl with a canvas Chanel tote kneels, lingering to set it straight. She’s small for her class. We’re reminded of the book’s mean girls and wonder who resents her father and what kind of alone she is today.

Data Roaming. Patreon. Listserv. RSVP. Confirmation: FW20 Runway. You’re Invited. New editor gone skiing. Fact check a week from Monday. New invoicing system easy, but too complicated to explain right now. Two years pursuing a story that’ll ground me. _____ Magazine, online only, $1000. What’s two more weeks?

‪Three more trains. Qatari-owned Swiss clinic overlooks Qatari-owned hotel where the Qatari ambassador resides. [They'll cover breakfast. Only your dinners are included, as well as a whisky and cigar tasting with the bar manager. I scheduled cryotherapy for Sunday. —G.] All understaffed because labor costs more here. No one carries our luggage off the funicular but a Bentley drives us a quarter mile past the main building toward "Wellness and Medical Excellence." Over temperance Negronis physicians explain: Arabs diet with their parents watching. (No burqas in the spa. Avoid making eye contact in the pool.) Supermodels shed bloat before Paris—“they post on Instagram and they pay us!” Chinese “go crazy for stems cells” up on 9.

“10000 Americans die of the flu every year and no one panics.” They closed the pool after Chinese New Year “just by coincidence.” Of course it’s no trouble. Of course we’ll come back. Yes we were here for the opening. Yes we took pictures then. _____ Magazine, print only, $5000.

A San Franciscan detoxing from Doordash and interrupting. In the food lab he watches our nutritionist peel half a courgette with a spiralizer, eager to disrupt.‬ He congratulates us on being here to feel less alone. Volunteers to demonstrate then leaves abruptly to shit ghee. This is why, the beauty guru confided last week, she swears by Ayurveda but preaches Chinese medicine: No one wants to clean up the shit.

Roger can’t get healthy because San Francisco has too many bad motorists and the supermarkets are too large and somebody can deliver anything, his favorite Korean barbecue, in twenty minutes. But his daughters are on a meal plan “so why do THEY need Doordash?”

A grown daughter insecure, Zurich by way of Arizona, jots down every word. Her mother is white and has never seen an induction burner before. Big Roger energy. The nutritionist’s fists grip alkaline: “Make every soup potato soup.”

At the buffet a woman fills the juicer with beets and waits.

No ferry at checkout. High winds. The clerk offers us a bus schedule. To call us a taxi. The house car. Eventually they’ll come around and make the juice for you.

In Zurich I kiss S. goodbye. Another month’s bills paid in experience because she can’t cash postcards. Somehow they always arrive before the checks do. Even when they don’t.

I stop at a jewelry store. Cut the queue for Rolexes to find a story I wrote for their in-house magazine. Forty-six switchbacks at 3am to taste nut bread at sunrise. _____ Magazine, print only, $1100. Met the editor at a villa in the south of France two years ago, a dozen writers slurping oysters and rosé, on spec. Was sure she wanted to sleep with “I used to be an editor at National Lampoon” until a year later when we flirted over comped drinks on Trinity Square past last call. An invitation to teach her a thing or two. “I could have been a Saudi prince’s second wife.” She really could.

Three more trains. Altitude. Vistas. I exit away from the soft headlights and hum of idling chauffeurs rolling my suitcase over ice through salt and horse shit. [I have arranged an overnight stay. —D.] The primary is tomorrow. Every channel in German, except for last night’s Jimmy Fallon on CNBC.

Free wifi. Instagram. X. posts “I’m really excited to be apart of the @CNN #opinion team for the #NewHampshire results.” I thumb through her story, soundbites and a bottle of Cabernet some travel PR sent to her law firm. A few years ago, X. invited me to join her, and join Him. We met in Mexico, my first trip on spec. X. alienated every writer with her politics six months after her boss descended his escalator. I just smiled. I stuffed a sock in an unceasing pendant light to fall asleep. I just smiled. Postcards followed. An offer to serve my country. “Take one more trip then come home and join Us.” I haven’t sat home since 2016, terrified of what my country’s become. Terrified I’d say yes.

Doesn’t she know.

Eventually.

Downstairs Gianni shows us the infamous fake Macallan bottle, a clipping about the hotel director who flew to China to refund a customer $10000. No one questions what’s real anymore. In the dining room: Dancing, all you can eat salad bar, buttered veal and fries. Nothing humbles like a humble meal I still can’t afford.

Strokes, Rosey alums, play for Bernie.

The next morning another Bentley picks me up in the brown snow. Toweled off my suitcase upstairs because I knew the driver would judge the mess. On the other side of the mountain there are doormats, oat milk, blazing fires. [Two nights. Feel free to dine wherever. —E.] The clerk enters my credit card manually, “just for the record.” A polite reminder we both have jobs to do.

I eat every pasta with no shame between two blonde women married to small men seated like purses on stools. The hotel is only open four months a year, the bar manager tells me. He tells me about his wine cellar at home in Lake Como. He wants to know: “Do you know about champagne?”

I think about S. ass up in a Rent The Runway gown on the vintner’s bed. Outtake from an unpublished photo shoot because the wine publicist couldn’t bother with follow up. Three free trips to France in a year. Planes, trains. Fudgy Comte, the local ham. Caviar and Philippe Starck after hours at the Palais de Tokyo. (All of us ignored him, maypoling a T editor. I ask about my last story, the Silver Laker—Would Y. really have killed the story if I didn’t leave out the coke in the Rosevelt parking lot? “I don’t know. Probably.” The casual money laundering brag before he made the strip mall sushi chef dance to The Weeknd? “Was he an advertiser?” How he disappeared from the club that night, leaving us with Lana Del Rey while he left for three days in search of Lana Del Rey. “But Y. wasn’t really an editor. You know she used to be Z’s assistant.”) Cristal at the New Museum. Vertical tasting at the Mandarin. Bottles. A candle. “Don’t you have everything you need?” Every trip the risk and reward is breaking even.

Next to me at lunch a man in headphones with his back to me watching Fox News on an iPad. South facing views. I watch over his shoulder until we both feel seen. He leaves without paying and his coat. Some people never pay. I still have to pretend. Make the gesture. Sign a check in the air and hope it clears.