alone, together

Was it the first time or the last time? One moment blended into another and on and on. The days became vast stretches of eternities. The light changed, the weather changed, but it was the same existence always. Was it the first time or the last time that i had woken up alone, next to him?
Slowly sitting up, i pulled myself out of the private consolation of sleep and into the rancor of life. Shower. Dress. Brush teeth. Out the door. He slumbered on.
What had i lost along the way? And when? Not too many years ago, i was in college and the future truly seemed wide open. i had friends, i had dreams. When was the last time that my goal was any more significant than making it to the end of the week so that i could clean the apartment and sleep?

A heavy gust was wreaking havoc in the street. The city’s garbage, its refuse, tumbled onto the road, onto the sidewalks, into the faceless mass – or the mass’s face, bumping and sliding and blowing in the changing tide. i tightened my scarf and descended the subway steps.
The platform was cold and crowded, hundreds of faces anticipating the morning commute, the daily grind. i was among the mindless herd.

It wasn’t that i hated my job or even that i didn’t like it. My life just seemed, well, i couldn’t remember what i was doing with it. Ages ago, i wanted to be a foreign correspondent, to work in Russia or maybe France or cover stories in India, leading the glamorous life of an adventurer, an explorer. Instead, i worked at a music magazine. Cool enough, but not quite as substantial as i had hoped.
It had just seemed easier upon graduating to stay in the city. i told myself that i would do freelancing. i told myself that i would write fiction. i told myself that it wasn’t because of my boyfriend. i said a great many things, including, but not limited to: i’m not afraid, this is temporary, i feel no obligation to have my life together by 30, it is not the money that i’m interested in, i want to make a difference – just, you know, later.
The justifications, the excuses, were and are all bullshit. i had student loans, my mother was already planning my perfect wedding, i doubted that i could really cut it in a foreign country or that the inconsequential things that i wrote would make any difference whatsoever. So here i was writing about emo bands and video games. And what a difference it made!

The train tore up the track and slowed. The Times reported the day before that a young girl had been obliterated retrieving her cell phone from the tracks. She probably thought that her parents would kill her if she lost it. Instead, they lost her.
The doors opened and i sighed. i furtively scanned the car, as if i could find the bridge from my frustrated reality to my fantasies on the subway at 9 a.m. A student sat across from me in a black beanie and cargo pants reading Woolf. Further down, a woman about my age was checking her hair and applying lipstick. i brushed some dirt off of my black, semi-professional, extremely old messenger bag. i had the money now. Why didn’t i buy a new one?
i surrendered and bought cigarettes and coffee on the way to the office. It was like i was quitting smoking, except that i had never really committed in the first place. i had been smoking a pack or two a month for about seven years. The coffee consumption, however, was a little harder to keep under control.
Several people from the office filed past me, then security, and waited in a hush for the elevator. i finished my cigarette and joined the dumb crowd.

Somewhere between my cup of coffee and checking my email for the fifth time that morning, i decided that maybe it was time for a change. A vacation? i hadn’t been to Canada in a while. Hmmm, maybe not the best idea in December. i could take up a new hobby, like… well, maybe i had gotten a new message on my phone.
After goofing around on the internet, pretending to do research for an upcoming story, and apathetically glancing over the final edits to a piece, i left for a long lunch break. Only a few resolute pedestrians were seen braving the early winter chill. i wasn’t actually hungry yet, so i took the train to a heinously unorganized and ridiculously overcrowded used book store.

i went straight to the rare books section. i liked the musty odor and the brittle, tan pages. i stroked each spine, fingered each bump, ridge, and imperfection with delight. The clerk stared condescendingly as i reached for a volume of short stories from the ‘40s. i turned to one of my favorite stories and started to skim the tale again.
-God, i used to want to write like this.
i looked up to face the clerk’s furious eyes, closed my mouth, put down the book, and left the store. The clerk, no doubt, rushed to ensure that his precious books were still in order and remained unaffected by the outburst.

That night i went home and rifled through my father’s vinyl collection, which i had basically stolen from him during my move to the city. Led Zeppelin I seemed appropriate while i mulled over making dinner. i started to boil some water for pasta when he came in.
-Have you eaten?
-Yeah, I ate with the boys.
He went straight to the TV to turn on a basketball game. How did i end up living with a sports fan?
-Could you turn down your music? I can’t hear the game.
-i didn’t really know that it was necessary to hear a game.
-What?
-i’m leaving you.
And i turned up the volume on the record player as i put back the pasta. i grabbed my coat, scarf and bag.
-I can’t hear the game!
-i am leaving you!
i paused in front of the television. He gawked, sighed, and rubbed his chin out of habit.
-Why?
-My life isn’t where i want it to be, and i don’t love you anymore. This is not up for discussion. i’m going to a friend’s and i’ll get all of my stuff on Saturday.
-What? Well, um, that’s it?
-That’s it.
-This is the end?
-Yes.
i didn’t pause for understanding. i shut the door and called my boss to tell her that i would be late the next morning. i lit a cigarette and trekked downtown in the hazy dusk. What was this feeling? Was it joy, the sweet taste of freedom, my youth rejuvenated? Maybe. Was it anxiety, the fear of fucking up my life, being alone forever? No, my life was deemed inert this morning. But it definitely was exhilaration. The revolution had begun. Just, where did it go from here?

Stopping at an Italian café, i ordered a double espresso and a plain bagel. i pondered over step two. What do i do to repair the damage that i had executed on my life? Job. i need a new job. i swiped a copy of a newspaper from the adjacent table, recently vacated by an aging hipster.
Once upon a time, i had interned at a magazine out of town. A more serious organization with incredible material – had the editor emailed me recently about an opening?
Munching on the bagel and sipping the espresso, i decided to call him the next day. i also came to the realization that i didn’t really have any friends outside of work. And even then… Everyone had eventually given up on the city and moved west. And then i sort of dropped the ball. i had lost interest in the music that i covered, stopped going to restaurants, to bars, never met anyone new. i had given up.

i paid the bill and continued my search for meaning. The few people in the city not in hibernation strutted with direction, trying to avoid the easterly blast. A young girl, hunched and squinty, lugged her groceries back to her building, fumbling with the keys and cursing under her frigid breath. A bearded, older man with a crazy, toothy smile nursed his bottle of whiskey, very cleverly hidden by an ordinary, brown paper bag.
The shop windows exposed all of the lethargy of winter, the indecision, the hesitancy, the waste. Lingering movements, blank looks, tempered breaths were the remains of every person huddling in the warmth inside. i flicked my cigarette out towards the cracked and broken asphalt. Then i turned west.
The perverse orange light emitted from the lampposts cast the world in a curious shade. The world, the windows, the people assumed bizarre, contorted forms, but their newly acquired beauty was in their wonderful and outrageous glow. All i needed was the night and the streets. Miles and miles of curiosities, obscurities, casualties were all at my disposal.

Wandering in the streets, the bars were coming to life. The city was waking, looking for love, lust, conversation, conversion. There was a bar that i used to go to all the time when i was in school. My feet still knew the way though i hadn’t been in an era.
A young man was outside smoking and watched me pass into the cramped, filthy space. i pushed my way up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine. Sitting at a table in the back, i propped my chin up on my hand and observed the smoker enter the bar and coolly order a beer. He turned around and was aiming straight for my table.
-Hi. Can I sit here?
-Sure, but i don’t have much to say.
-I don’t have anything to say either.
He swigged his beer and checked my eyes, just to be sure that i understood.
-What’s your name?
-Tonight?
-Does it change?
-Maybe.
He nodded. i shrugged.
-We don’t have to know each other’s names.
i nodded my head. We didn’t sit in silence for long. Within an hour, i was in his apartment, and i saw the future teeming with possibility.

i slipped out quietly while he was still sleeping. It was early. Admiring the rising sun, i strolled to a diner for breakfast. The faint hues of life, rays of a beginning, glittered between the buildings, bounced off of the windows. i pulled a book out of my bag and read with something that felt like excitement. The taste in my mouth was different, my hunger, my passion was creeping back. I chose life.

After he left for work, I returned to get ready for work, but changed my mind. I packed up my belongings instead. Dragging boxes up from the basement, I emptied the apartment of my existence in five hours.
I dialed the editor. He actually picked up the phone on the first try, an unprecedented event.
-How are you? We haven’t spoken in so long.
-I know. I’m fine. How are things with you?
-Well, listen, I’m looking for a change. Do you have some work for me? Even just one story. I-
-I have been waiting for you to say that for years! You still speak a little Russian, right? We have something for you in Moscow.
My blood was coursing through my veins again. Life seemed to belong to me again. The world was ready. I was ready. I took a couple of trips by cab to a hotel in the lower part of town. I left again and took the train to work.

No one seemed surprised to see me roll in at 5. Or ecstatic, melancholy, indignant. Just void. I tapped on my boss’s door.
-Hmm, I thought you weren’t coming in today.
She absent-mindedly flipped through some files and turned her back to me to search a shelf.
-I quit.
-Yeah… What?
-This is my two weeks. I’ll finish the stories I’m working on and leave.
She paused. Then spun to face me. Her eyes searched mine.
-Do I get a reason? I mean, I don’t think I need to tell you that we all appreciate your work here and…
-Well, I don’t and I’m done. I don’t need you to tell me that I’ll be missed or whatever. Don’t be offended, I’m just, I’m starting over.
Her wide eyes finally blinked. She nodded.
-Ok. I wish you the best. If you’re just going to finish those two stories, then I really only need you in the office for another week.
I smiled brightly.
-We’ll see you Monday.
-Yeah.
-All right.
-Thanks. Bye.
She stared as I closed her office door, as I slipped through the cubicles, as I waited for the elevator. The steel doors slid shut, and I descended back into the streets.

The subway platform was bitter. People were huddled together. The same blank expressions, the lack of meaning, the exasperation. I felt their heat, their lives drifting away. I wanted to nudge the stiff, middle-aged woman next to me.
-Hey, you can still catch it! You should go to Mexico for Christmas.
She was stern, clutching her briefcase and casting looks of death on the teenagers in front of us, recounting some story about one of them laughing so hard at lunch that she fell out of her chair. I wanted to speak up.
-Aren’t you jealous? We can have that again!
The train flew into the station. Riding uptown, I couldn’t help but smile. An elderly man was sleeping in front of me. The train veered, and his hat slid off his lap. I bent down to pick it up and set everything right.

I went ice skating that night for the first time in a decade. Snow began to fall on the city, like drowsy idleness covering the land. It was so beautiful and so tempting!
How I wanted someone to throw snowballs with. And at. And around. I watched some kids toss the lightly packed powder at each other. One girl caught me staring and cocked her head in confusion.
I just couldn’t leave the snow, the streets, so I walked across a quarter of the island to get back to the hotel. Everything was new. Everything was clean. Everything was mine.

The next week of work drifted away like so many grains of sand, like the snow melting in spring. I said my goodbyes, what few I had left. I put my things in storage or dumped them at the Salvation Army. I went out of town to meet with the editor and get all of the details.

Practicing my Russian in one of the boroughs, I found a copy of a book that I had purchased when I had spent a summer in St. Petersburg. The book had been lost, left unfinished. I bought it again and read it on the way into the city.My final night in the city arrived. I traipsed around the Lower East Side, eventually finding myself in front of one of my old haunts, a music venue that I hadn’t been to in months. I bought a ticket and walked inside.
In college, I had generally seen the same group of people at every show. I only recognized my companions by sight. They were part of a scene, I had been part of a scene, but there was no need to speak to each other. The acknowledgement reflected from my eyes into theirs.
The scene was the same. I saw none of my old comrades, but their newer versions were in full force. I even saw my replacement. She was waiting patiently, front and center, reading Sartre.
An unknown band played first, and my soul revived. Memories of the music that I had once adored, craved, coveted returned to me. I could feel the meaning of the music again, a sensation long forgotten, vanished, expired. My head remembered how to bob, my foot to tap. As the encore finished, I knew that I would return to the same place in five years.

If life is not renewed, recreated, regenerated, then force of habit and a predisposition to boredom would return. Maybe in the next few years, I would finally travel the world. Cobble shoes in Italy, sell flowers in Cuba, study Buddhism in Japan, but regardless the activity, I would return to this crisis of conscious, this state of disenchantment, detachment, ennui.
The struggle to live is the struggle to originate, actualize, devise; an endeavor that I had surrendered and sacrificed. It reappeared now, and I knew that I would return to this moment in time, this reevaluation, and I wondered if I would concede or once again forge a new existence, only to double back time and time again. As I watched the crowd leave, I grinned and rejoined the streets.

The day had come. I was ready. I milled around the terminal. My usual travel sickness had not set in, the weight in my shoulders, the nausea filling me up as I looked at my luggage, the sharp throb in my temples.
Instead, I sat content. My head was clear, my stomach settled, my shoulders light. A plane shot off from the ground and into the sky, reflecting the hazy late afternoon sun off of its wings. And suddenly there it was. Inspiration. I picked up my pen and my thoughts flooded the page, a belated diary that I should have been keeping all along.