There’s beer in the fridge and it doesn’t say, “Kirkland Signature.” (No hate.) There’s bourbon in the liquor cabinet. There’s a liquor cabinet. There’s a cabinet. I’ve never lived in a cleaner place. I’ve never used more sturdy cutlery.
But I brushed it off—I was having fun, and it wasn’t like I was going to live this way forever. I could stop whenever I wanted. Until I couldn’t.
The last leap year was 2012. That was the year I told myself I would take a photo every single day and create a chronological collection of three hundred and sixty-six snapshots.
I don’t do anything for the man who bangs on the church door and tells me about his probation and court date in Bremerton an hour and a half away and the company that let him go after thirty years to save themselves a retirement plan and the chronic pain in his shoulder and the botched knee surgery and how he just needs eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry or else they’ll throw him back in jail over a lousy eight dollars and ten cents and could I please, please, I know you’re good guy, please just give me eight dollars and ten cents for the ferry?
There was definitely no dancing, underage drinking, etc. And the truth is, even if the setting was different, I’m more Rory and Paris than Madeleine and Louise. Pizza and The Power of Myth sounds way better than staying out late dancing and drinking… or whatever it is people do on spring break.
If I were a man of principle, I would have shouted, “GET THIS DEVIL STICK AWAY FROM ME” and thrown it into a tree.
We aren’t who we should be, and that’s not ok. And try as we do, we can’t fix our ugliness. But that doesn’t mean we’re not loved, and it doesn’t mean we’re alone.
If I sound whiny, forgive me. I’m cloistered amongst literal stacks of books with an academically sanctioned excuse just to read. That’s gotta be one of the most bourgy complaints imaginable.
“Say nice things to me,” I pleaded with him once in desperation. “You’re beautiful,” he told me, which had once been enough, back when he was the first to ever tell me, “…and smart?” I felt myself slipping away.
It’s a remnant of an earlier time, back when the High Line was simply an overgrown former elevated rail track and Gansevoort Street was stained red with the blood of slaughtered animals.
