I.
We arrived half a day apart in a city I am not named for, and is not named for me. Still, my eyes were hungry for the roadsigns stamped with my signature plus a little more. My neck craned reflexively at the sound of someone calling out for me. I would realize my mistaken instinct a moment late, discreetly dropping the expectant Yes? from my face. It was like four days of receiving phone calls that had gotten the wrong number.
I had work until late, so we met after dinner.
We’re more than friends at this point which became clear as soon as we met in the hotel room. She greeted me in heinous sweatpants and the cable hum of A League of Their Own. The room was already remarkably messy. I dropped my pants. We dropped our pretenses of a potential night on the town. I oversaturated my dry skin with a large container of drugstore lotion that I purchased knowing I would need to leave it behind before the next time I crossed the TSA threshold. There was nothing better to waste at the Hyatt Regency Charlottesville. I swaddled myself in equally heinous sweatpants, deftly avoiding a glance in Virginia’s most unflattering bathroom mirror.
We watched the movie with one eye and talked about nothing. It’s too late for us. It’s been twelve years. We’ve seen puberty and breakups and family shit. Now we are each other’s family shit. A pair of sisterless sisters. We raised eyebrows at Tom Hanks’ caricature of alcoholism and audibly groaned when the fat chocolate-stained child ran amok onscreen. Before long, we cut the power and talked in the dark, like we used to when we shared a bedroom in college.
I never knew that I talk and laugh in my sleep until years ago, when she told me. Against logic, I suspect I only do this when someone else is in the room. I believe that I sleep soundlessly when I’m in bed alone. An extrovert even when unconscious, filling the silences in my circadian rhythms. And therefore when you sleep, you are alone in your dreaming, / and running freely through the corridors / of one dream only, which belongs to you.
Thirty-one days of March and I spent five nights alone without plans. This is less like a brag, more like a sickness. There is a void in me that I fill with togetherness. And that’s how we are, forever falling / into the deep well of other beings.
But the well is irresistible. I’ll lean in to get a better look, precariously perched on a single toe.
After my job in town was finished, we spent unplanned days walking and eating until we were sick of our feet and food. We spent an hour in a thrift store where we tried on the perfect pair of preposterous prom gowns. The only moments of privacy that trip were those spent behind a closed bathroom door.
For having spent so many days, nights, and years together, we have always remained distinct. This is what I cherish most about our friendship. Our dreams have always belonged to ourselves. We maintain a comfortable space that allows us to run free.
✩
II.
It was the longest we had spent apart since we met two Augusts ago. She was gone when I was here. Then, I left when she came back. Will we even recognize each other? I texted her melodramatically. I promised to hold up a sign. It had been sixteen days. I packed an overnight bag, which I brought to the office—a formality I usually forgo. Typically, I drape myself in borrowed T-shirts. There’s the Phoebe Bridgers one with the picture of Benedict Cumberbatch and my personal favorite, one with cartoon witches around a bubbling cauldron with the caption Don’t Blow on the Soup. A cup in her bathroom is the permanent residence for two toothbrushes—mine and her boyfriend’s.
We’re more than friends at this point and she is rewriting our characters in the second draft of her novel as former lovers. It’s genius because while untrue, it captures an essence as true as the romantic nature of our friendship. It would take a thousand words to describe it any other way. And all at once, that’s it; we no longer know / what it’s all about, but we are deep inside it.
We planned a perfect Bed Stuy sleepover. Cocktails at home—Tom Collins and shrimp. A feeble attempt at watching the latest Nicolas Cage movie. We ate ultra-rich chocolate ice cream, rock hard from the pint until I could barely keep my eyes open. Early slumber and awakening to her cat milk treading on my bladder. I love that cat. We ran at the Y and sat naked in the sauna, where we made a friend who was less naked than us. Up and over the shower divider, she handed me a bottle of off-brand Dove body wash. We fielded a few more locker room conversations. She told me this never happens when she’s alone. We speculated about why my face always seems to invite conversations with strangers. We did errands while on the waitlist for a popular restaurant known for its breakfast burritos. We ate a doughnut that was so good she bought another to take to her boyfriend. I smiled because I love their love like I love our love.
My friend, my long honeymoon, the sun of every day.
✩
III.
Neither of us seemed surprised to find ourselves alone in a city that is four hours out of town merely six hours after we suggested the idea of going. Our arrangement has been spontaneous from the start. In New York, we live one cigarette apart. Say yes without knowing / how to decide even what the question is. / and get caught up and carried along.
Within ten minutes of driving, we almost got into a car accident but we didn’t, so everything was fine. Whenever I swapped a CD, I put the last one in the wrong jewel case. A series of problems for a later date. I looked in his busted rearview mirror and told him how as a kid I would be confused by the message, Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. The word objects confused me, as though there was some sort of mechanism I should be able to see inside the mirror. We tried to workshop a clearer version and agreed that the word reflected would help. I told him about a pole dancing studio in Midtown with a mirror labeled, Objects in mirror are stronger than they appear. A nonsensical slay, made all the more ironic by likening an audience primarily comprised of women, femme folk, and queer people to objects. We will never see with the same eyes as once we did when we were children playing.
We checked into a fleabag hotel then walked through a college campus for dinner and he bought me a hamburger from a restaurant that I am also not named for. Life could’ve been different if I was a Charlie.
We’re more than friends at this point but less than anything else which is why he introduced me as his friend at the birthday party. We hover at a safe distance before crashing into each other. We chatted with the locals and considered swimming in a construction pit lagoon in the empty lot next door, which would reveal itself to be chemically green in the next day’s morning sunshine. We invented a new way to play beer pong (whimsically and badly). I wanted to bury the dead rat that his brother had tied to the chain link gate in front of his house.
In the morning, we ordered big plates of food we couldn’t finish with a steady stream of hotweak coffee. When I went to the bathroom, I noticed a drop of blood in my chartreuse underwear. I was thankful my period hadn’t come sooner. We left the diner and I unwrapped a tangerine to leave in a field as a gift for a squirrel like an orange egg on Easter Sunday. We walked impatiently through a museum before getting back on the road.
His steering wheel disintegrated black dust into my right palm. The different types of clouds in the sky seemed to send mixed messages. It seems as if we don’t know how to speak; / it seems as if there are words which escape, / which are missing. He read me a short story by a suicidal author who spent some of his life in Charlottesville and died at twenty-six. My father is a khaki cloud in the cane-brakes, and Ginny is no more to me than the bitter smell in the blackberry briers up on the ridge. I said that I had one more year to write a good short story and kill myself. I can’t tell if we bring out the best or worst in each other.
We stopped in Westport for lunch and a beer before the final stretch home. He taught me a game on a piece of paper. I pointed out the bruises on the waitress’ arms and we frowned deeply. Back in the car, we listened to music until we couldn’t bear it. I ripped out the aux on the FDR.
I got home with an hour to clean up before evening concert plans. I noticed the bruises on my own arm and bite marks on my back and thought, maybe the waitress was okay. Nobody can rescue us from other people.
✩
4.4.2024 Mixtape
Today’s mini-playlist features five songs about falling into other people. ✩ Strangers by the Kinks is a song that I would listen to extensively with my friend mentioned in Part I. It’s one of the great songs about forever friendship, in my humble opinion. It hurts more for those of us who have lost a friend. 🎶 Strangers on this road we are on. We are not two, we are one. 🎶 Yes, I’ve shared this song here before but not since August 2022, so I hope you’ll give me a pass. ✩ I, personally, wasn’t aware of how hot Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star is until literally last week. What a waste to know I could have been looking at pictures of her all these years. I embarrassed myself by Googling her too conspicuously at my office monitor and getting a Slack message from a colleague who saw my screen from the conference room saying “Faaaade Into You.” So, yes, up next is Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. 🎶 I look to you, and I see nothing. I look to you to see the truth. 🎶 ✩ I was supposed to see Katy Kirby in concert a few weeks ago, but my friend and I were itching to keep the night’s momentum moving, so we consulted my Tarot app to ask whether we should stay at the concert or move on. The cards told us that we would be susceptible to burglary if we stayed at the Bowery Ballroom, so we left for a party. I nevertheless like Katy Kirby’s new album a lot! Wait Listen is my favorite. I sent the following lyrics to my friend from Part II, who also has a soft spot for biting. 🎶 She called me a feast when we kissed up in her bedroom, then she apologized for biting in. I hope you're into that. 🎶 ✩ Since I can’t seem to shut up about Alvvays, I’ll share Many Mirrors. I was very addicted to the entire Blue Rev album through the summer, and I still feel amazing whenever I put it on. 🎶 Now that we've passed through many mirrors, I can't believe we're still the same. 🎶 I like the idea of the world as a fun house, and how we can hold on to a piece of ourselves even as we’re warped through the reflection. ✩ I saw Lily Seabird perform at Baby’s last week, and she held me on the verge of tears for the entire show. My friends and I didn’t quite know what to expect, but we were decidedly wrecked. The end of the beginning begins with 🎶 Being two, being one, 🎶 but the part that chills me most lands around minute 4:00: 🎶 The world will keep on spinning, every day a new beginning. Cause people fall out of love every day. We aren’t so special even though we’d like to say. 🎶
🫖 Most of the italicized moments are excerpted from “Emerging” by Pablo Neruda, a poem that is probably about communism, but I chose to mine for my own purposes. Also referenced is “Trilobites” by Breece D’J Pancake. Is it a coincidence that I wrote an essay in three parts shortly after Evana’s latest? Who is to say? Paid column coming up soon, and as always you can support my writing with a like, comment, or restack. 🫖
A beautiful triptych! You capture the mood of strange bedfellows so well, making them not so strange after all.