1.
After a farewell handshake through the bars on your window, I realize it's late and no longer raining. I huddle into my friend's car and she drives me back south down Broad Street. The wide sidewalks are mostly empty which I find strange because it's Friday night and people should be walking on the street right?
I stare at City Hall getting bigger and bigger and my friend turns up the volume on Nirvana's greatest hits album. I want to transmit a live feed of everything I see to you. All of the time. Ideally, you would just spend all of your time seeing what I see and being enthused and impressed. Just sit on your couch (shit, do you have a couch?) and watch my life.
My friend dropped me off four blocks from my house and I walked to buy cigarettes. You said you had friends when you lived in New York. But you didn't like living in New York and now you don't like living here and I think you just don't like living. I picture your house being full of black mold, a damp place where you just brood between rooms all day, coughing and occasionally texting me.
I'm concerned for you, I really am but I'm being about as accommodating as I can. And I'm probably the most accommodating guy I know.
After I bought the cigarettes, I went over to a different friend's house. His roommates had about a dozen of their oldest and best friends from college over and they were all listening to songs they used to listen to together and laughing and singing along and smiling at each other. I asked if I could put on a song and they all smiled and nodded accommodatingly. I think one of them even patted me on the back. I put on Mr. Bungle or something stupid like that and they all kept their smiles and charitably listened to half of the song before changing it back.
I wandered into the kitchen and lost five cigarettes out of my fresh pack in the dice game being played on the counter. A big man told me that I was good luck and kissed me wetly.
You would have hated all of it.
Later that night, I met another girl who had recently moved here from New York. You should talk to her. She was sitting on the couch, drinking a warm beer. She works at a coffee shop in your neighborhood. I don't remember which one. Ask around. This girl told me that sometimes, on her days off, she just rides the bus, a confession which seemed contrived, overly quirky, kind of gross. Look at me, I'm so weird, I ride the bus without a destination. She reminded me of you.
2.
So I left New York and moved back to the cheaper East Coast city where I had attended college, closer to where I grew up, closer to what I think of as my more permanent human connections. It was a simple decision and I barely remember making it. I mean, my ex-boyfriend was killed by a car on his bike and I think his death will probably go down on record as the catalyst for my move but that's not really it. We had broken up a year before he died, I hadn't seen him in six months, and I had been leaving New York for a long time by that point. It reminds me of something my father said during one of his calculated attempts at imparting the wisdom of his age on me. We don't remember the thoughts that lead up to decisions, we only remember the effects of decisions.
