Not really, no, actually that’s not true at all, I don’t want a boyfriend at all, not not not at all, en serio. I think a proper rephrase would be: I’d rather not be alone forever.
I am in Brookyln, at Nick/Joe/JJ’s. It’s a temperate winter evening and this year is draining out its last venom like a dying serpant. I get to wait; I’m waiting until this awful year is gone. GO AWAY, 2004! Be gone with you!
There is a small flag of Canada on Nick’s floor. This morning Joe sang “Oh Canada” on the way to the train. Now I’m eating six Belgian chocolate seashells for dinner; they were a parting gift from DC, whom I visited briefly before catching the latest Almodovar film solo (La educacion mala, starring gorgeous Gael B., in case anyone’s interested). I bought a pair of Fluevogs on the way and put them on in the bathroom of Sunshine Cinema.
So back to the boyfriend discussion…
No, let’s kill it now, I’m not serious. I like being alone, but not really. Not initially, or ultimately, or generally. Just sometimes. Like 1999, for example. That was an excellent alone year. But I was younger and traveling internationally and I didn’t have the weight of career decisions, massive debt, the influence of everyone either moving to New York or California, converting to domesticity, having babies, or all of the above.
Freedom is an essential, growth-inspiring element crucial to one’s best development. But it’s also a vast cavern of emptiness if you don’t have a specific plan.
I’m not content with casual affairs, with unemotional connections, with the alchemic, temporal transformation from platonic buddies to wanton bedfellows. But it’s so easy to have that. And as equally unfulfilling.
While we’re on the subject of irresponsible sexual behaviour, my father called the other day. At 8.53am. From work. It was a call returning my call to him. As usual, it was formal and brief, a bit defensive. I have given up on him, and he knows it, hence the defensiveness. Call me crazy, but it’s hard to count on anyone who avoids you for several years at a time, or a lifetime, or both. Or at all. I haven’t time for men like this; I haven’t time for anyone like this. I have, instead, time for Joshua, my 15-yr-old surrogate bro in Amherst who leaves me awesome voicemails about how his grades are improving and high school’s ok and he can’t wait to hang out again…and I have time for Ryan, who leaves voicemails mandating divorce if I don’t come home immediately and take care of the children…and I have time for George, actually, who has prioritized me enough in his busy schedule to actually pencil in a lunch date after several cold months…
Whatever. Who cares? Who’s reading this, anyway? I’ve started having dreams about England again. Manchester really was the worst. I had a moment today, between the theatre and E.14 Street, where I recalled precisely my red-headed British roommate’s cool shoes, the day we went to the bicycle shop in Chorlton and she spent 200 pounds on a massive dark two-wheeler…how I realized even back then she would never open up completely, that I could never actually trust her or many others completely, if at all, even though she tried to be nice; how low the clouds really were and how awful it really was.
And now, in Brooklyn, with my pals out on the town and me in the same dirty jeans somewhere in a bedroom on Nassau, I’m writing to the internet, realizing how badly my calves hurt from walking 10+ miles around the city today. Bouncing between my three East Coast cities always yanks me into confusion, and I wander around Philadelphia knowing I should know it but knowing that I don’t; and then New York, knowing I should be here already but knowing that’s not my proper fate just yet; and then returning to Boston, cold, bitter Boston, where my rent is cheap and my office is flourescent and the spinach salads are always free when I babysit.
2004 has been a short but substantial year, packed with a series of challenging yet character-building events. If I could summarize the year into one succinct menu, it would include bagels with cream cheese, burritos, frozen German pizza, Stroopwafels, Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked, pumpkin cheesecake, roast beef sandwiches on rye with all the vegetables, and McVittie’s dark chocolate digestives.
Not unsatisfying, but enough to make you puke, right?
Now you finally understand.
