On vacation, you can be anyone you want

“On vacation, you can be anyone you want” is the story’s governing expression of travel as a temporary release from everyday inhibition. It gives a name to Poppy Wright’s sense that a different setting can make new behavior feel possible, but its promise is deliberately qualified: vacation loosens the usual rules without erasing circumstance, consequence, or personal limits.

The Expression’s Claim

The prologue begins with a broad, second-person assertion: “ON VACATION, YOU can be anyone you want.” The phrasing makes vacation sound less like a change of location than a change in the self. A good book or an incredible outfit can also transport someone into another version of themselves, the narrator suggests; travel belongs to that same imaginative category. Its appeal lies in the feeling that a person need not carry every familiar inhibition into a new setting.

The claim quickly becomes physical and specific. Someone who would be embarrassed to bob their head to the radio in daily life may find themselves dancing on a patio strung with twinkly lights, accompanied by a steel drum band. The contrast is not between one personality that is true and another that is false, but between settings that invite different conduct. The patio, music, and vacation atmosphere make spontaneous movement feel natural where it might otherwise feel exposing.

Hair becomes another small measure of that altered self. Salt water curls it; perhaps the traveler skips washing or brushing it, and finds they like the result. The thought that this could continue at home turns a holiday habit into a possibility for ordinary life. Yet the passage presents that possibility as tentative: the traveler wonders whether they could be that person at home, rather than claiming that vacation permanently transforms them.

Freedom in Encounters and Conduct

The expression also concerns social risk. On vacation, the narrator says, strangers are easier to approach because an awkward conversation seems to have fewer stakes when the people involved may never meet again. The distance from ordinary life permits experimentation: a failed interaction need not follow someone into their established routines. In this way, the promise of becoming someone else depends partly on anonymity and the imagined brevity of a meeting.

The prologue intensifies that freedom into an apparently unlimited declaration: “You’re whoever you want to be. You can do whatever you want.” The next turn immediately revises it. Weather can force a traveler into an unwanted situation, leaving only second-rate ways to pass the time while waiting out rain. Even the narrator’s affection for a place “in theory” meets its less appealing physical reality: a sticky floor costs them a sandal, and the prospect of touching the anonymous filth bare-footed alarms them. The contrast grounds the expression in inconvenience. A change of setting can loosen social inhibitions, but it cannot guarantee comfort or control over events.

The Phrase Put into Practice

A later encounter with Buck gives the expression a more intimate application. Poppy distinguishes him from Alex Nilsen, the man she is used to being around and expects never to touch. She imagines Alex with Sarah Torval, whose careful, conscientious qualities resemble his, while people like Poppy are more likely to kiss someone like Buck on a floor mattress atop unzipped sleeping bags. That contrast makes the holiday encounter feel separate from the patterns Poppy associates with her ordinary life.

The kiss is intense and physical: Buck’s hands and tongue are involved, their shirts come off, and Poppy describes the experience as fun and as practice. The near-stranger’s limited knowledge of her matters. He knows only “Poppy Right Now,” a version of herself that does not have to carry a larger history or future into the encounter. The holiday’s reduced stakes make it possible for her to enjoy being touched without treating the moment as a commitment to everything that might follow.

But the scene also sets a boundary. As dawn approaches, Poppy sits up, catches her breath, and says, “I don’t want to have sex, okay?” Buck responds, “Oh, right on,” and says there is no pressure. The episode therefore does not present freedom as the absence of limits. Poppy can choose the kiss, enjoy its intensity, and stop short of sex; the encounter’s value depends on that choice being respected.

Meaning and Limits

Across these moments, the expression moves from a bright generalization to a more precise account of temporary possibility. Vacation makes dancing, changing one’s habits, talking to strangers, and kissing a near-stranger feel less constrained by the self that daily life seems to demand. Its freedom comes from setting and circumstance, not from becoming invulnerable or consequence-free. Rain still interrupts plans, physical discomfort remains, and intimacy still requires an explicit boundary.

The prologue’s shift from “You can do whatever you want” to “Okay, so maybe not whatever you want” prevents the expression from becoming a simple promise of limitless reinvention. The later kiss carries the same tension into action: Poppy explores a version of herself suited to the moment, but she remains able to say no. Vacation offers room to try on another self; it does not require that self to surrender judgment or choice.