Loving the Unlovable

A romantic getaway to Oklahoma City

The whole thing stemmed from a miscommunication.

Last fall, I received an email from the PR representative of an Oklahoma City hotel, inviting me to “experience the property.” Travel writers get invited to “experience” a lot of “properties”. Some property-experiencing prospects entice more than others. For the hell of it, I checked Google Maps and saw that from Dallas, I could drive to Oklahoma City in three hours. I told my boyfriend, “I could drive to Oklahoma City in three hours! I should just do it.” Shortly thereafter, I forgot that I’d said that, that I’d received that email, and that Oklahoma existed.

A month or so later, my boyfriend and I met a guy who mentioned having lived in Oklahoma City. According to my boyfriend, I gushed, “I’ve always wanted to go to Oklahoma City!” I have no memory of saying that, but I believe him because it sounds like a bullshit thing I would say. My boyfriend somehow interpreted these two conversations I barely recall to mean that I was dying to go to Oklahoma City.

Motivated by the premise that vacationing in Oklahoma City was my lifelong dream, my very sweet boyfriend called my sister’s boyfriend, Adam, who grew up there, and messaged Adam’s best friend, who still lives there, to get some travel tips. The best friend straight-up ghosted him. Adam said that he had to think. As far as anyone knows, Adam is still thinking, seeing as no follow-up has transpired. On Christmas, my boyfriend, undeterred by the likelihood that those non-responses were responses, delivered unto me my Oklahoma City dream vacation. The news was typed up on a piece of paper and wrapped in a box alongside presents from his kids: a sun-butter cup from the kitchen pantry and a notebook the size of a postage stamp that was definitely used. Everyone was out of their minds with excitement as I opened the box. I got excited, too. I ate the sun-butter cup immediately. I thought about the musical Oklahoma!, which I’ve never seen, but which, I decided, must include that exclamation point for a reason.

Behold her attempt to erase evidence of previous ownership.

My boyfriend complains that I’m impossible to buy presents for. That’s because the things I want cost over $20,000. There’s a David Hockney painting I have my eye on priced at $90.3 million. I also want an infinity pool. (I live in a studio apartment, so this one is logistically complicated.) Or a year’s worth of rent. Or $20,000 cash.

I love road trips, though. And road trips only cost whatever gas and fast food cost. I don’t care where the road trip leads me. I just romanticize sitting inside a moving car, even if, as was the case last weekend, all I see out the window are YOU’RE GOING TO HELL billboards and an RV dealership called Fun Town and a sign for The Mistress Hotel. And hay bales.

Actually, I love hay bales. I told my boyfriend, “I love hay bales.”

He glanced over at me and said, “You love hay bales?” in a way that made me doubt my own love of hay bales.

Hay bales I came across a few years ago in East Texas

When we arrived in Oklahoma City, the first thing that struck us was that there didn’t seem to be a city anywhere.

I Googled, Where is the city in Oklahoma City?

“What is it you wanted to do?” my boyfriend asked me as we parked somewhere at random and got out of the car.

I didn’t know what to say. So I chose that moment to disclose that I hadn’t particularly wanted to do anything.

“I thought you wanted to go to Oklahoma City!”

“Well, it’s not that I didn’t want to go to Oklahoma City.”

“When we were talking with that guy, you said you’d always wanted to go to Oklahoma City!”

I laughed. “I did?”

It was 19 degrees out. We were the only people in Oklahoma City walking around Oklahoma City.

“It’s nice that it’s not crowded,” I said.

“Why are we here if you don’t want to be here?”

“What do you mean? I’m thrilled!”

I really was. Walking around a new place, even an aggressively nondescript place, makes me high as a skyscraper—an analogy I’m using for the sole purpose of segueing into a fun fact: Oklahoma City is about to become home to America’s tallest skyscraper. Construction is paused, though, because I guess some oppose the idea of a 1,709-foot edifice that endangers airplanes.

We stopped into a shoe store, populated by a lone employee. I asked him about his favorite things to do in Oklahoma City.

“Oh, there’s tons to do!” he said. “May not look that way, but…”

“Like what?”

He thought for a second. He appeared stumped. Then he gestured vaguely at the window. “There’s a good burger place over there.”

I took two pictures of Oklahoma City. This is one.

This is the other.

As we continued our aimless wandering, I saw a few breweries, so I declared Oklahoma City’s craft beer scene a must-experience. If I’m honest, every city and non-city has a “craft beer scene”, but I love breweries and we were freezing, so we ducked into a brewery called Stone Cloud and sat at the bar.

One archetype that has always captured my heart, or at least my imagination, is the small-town American who is extremely friendly, but never smiles. There’s a matter-of-factness to his niceness, a seriousness to his contentment. Generally, he talks about weather and home ownership, conversations to which I have little to contribute. The older couple sitting to our left, playing cards at the bar, emitted this vibe. The man was clad in head-to-toe camo. He looked incredibly prepared. His wife wore those huge, clear-framed glasses that old women wear in their online obituary pictures. Without smiling, ever, they spoke with us as if we’d been neighbors for decades and hadn’t seen one another since lunchtime.

To our right sat a younger woman with a septum piercing who said she was a marijuana grower. With her, we had a long, meaningful conversation about candy. Then we mentioned that we were trying to decide where to go to dinner later. Somehow everyone in the brewery found out that we were trying to decide where to go to dinner later and piped up with suggestions. When my boyfriend was walking to the bathroom, someone stopped him to ask, “Are you the person who’s trying to decide where to go to dinner later?”

Point is, Oklahoma City is a small town poorly disguised as a city and I loved it so much. I’m not going to turn this essay into a whole bummer because so much of what we’re reading on the Internet these days, and what is happening in America these days, is the biggest bummer ever, but if you find yourself in Oklahoma City, you should go to the memorial for the victims of the 1995 bombing in the Federal Building. We were so enthralled by the museum, we re-fed the parking meter to give ourselves an extra hour.

And go see the spiral fire-escape staircase floating over the alley.

And go to Stone Cloud Brewery. That couple is probably still there.

I have no need to be entertained by activities. When someone asks me, “What do you want to do?”, I’m confused. Why would I do something? I don’t care about playing paintball. Or pickleball. Or Frisbee. I’m terrified of Frisbee. I just want to talk. I love when people I don’t know talk to me. If I travel somewhere and the locals talk to me, I fall in love. I imagine moving there. Some places are beautiful on the outside, but ugly on the inside (tropical Tulum, for instance, is so bloated with tourism, it’s rotting). The older I get, the more drawn I feel to places that are nothing to look at, where folks pause their card games to recommend restaurants to strangers they’ll never see again.

Love,

Diana

P.S. What’s your favorite vacation destination that no one believes is a vacation destination? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. In case you missed the Travel Writing Zoom class, you can watch the replay here!

P.P.P.S. Some (off-Substack) food and travel writing from the last couple weeks:

I wrote about the best restaurants in my little neighborhood.

I also wrote about this bougie halal BBQ joint.

And I wrote about a Native chef who cooks Indigenous cuisine in Oregon.