Antarctica

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Breaks it first in all the usual sorry ways of the world, sure—as for instance when you go down to the ice to do something unusual and exciting and romantic, only to find that your job there is in fact more tedious than anything you have ever done, janitorial in its best moments but usually much less interesting than that. Or when you discover that McMurdo, the place to which you are confined by the strictest of company regulations, resembles an island of traveler services clustered around the offramp of a freeway long since abandoned. Or, worse yet, when you meet a woman, and start something with her, and go with her on vacation to New Zealand, and travel around South Island with her, the first woman you ever really loved; and then after a brief off-season you return to McMurdo and your reunion with her only to have her dump you on arrival as if your Kiwi idyll had never happened. Or when you see her around town soon after that, trolling with the best of them; or when you find out that some people are calling you “the sandwich,” in reference to the ice women’s old joke that bringing a boyfriend to Antarctica is like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord. Now that’s heartbreak for you.

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