maybe even a little bit satisfied

hate + airport romance + the fading allure of alcohol

*i wrote this a week and a half ago - it is not my current reality! but i haven’t done this in a while and i want to again. the tracking of time feels important to distinguish though.

a woman asked me out in the airport on my way back from texas two weeks ago, at la guardia. after i said yes, i sped-walked down the escalator and hid in the bathroom for 10 minutes, so we wouldn’t have to deal with the awkwardness of waiting at the baggage claim beside one another, making small-talk on the same bus shuttle.

she asked for my instagram, i said i’m not really using it right now and gave her my phone number instead. my instagram and my spotify are both graveyards of abandoned romantic interests. i don’t feel like adding to them anymore. we haven’t met up yet, i still don’t know if we will, but i want to - if only for the story. i wonder if she feels the same way, if she’d done that kind of thing before. i remember us making eye contact from across the aisle, as we hit a particularly bumpy bit of turbulence. i had sleep eyes, was drifting in and out the entire flight. i wore a blue turtleneck sweatshirt, she had curly brown hair and glasses. the memory is fading.

i sit in a bar at 6:45pm and she says a name that surprises me, one that i haven’t thought about in a while. i recount the story and this time all the pain is gone. it’s remarkable how that happens, how enough time can salve things you once thought would never heal. or, you knew would, of course they would, but in the moment it never feels like that time will come, does it.

and i am thinking about those songs that are completely perfect except for one part you wish desperately that you could delete from existence. that’s how i feel about this song by florence and the machine. almost every time i listen to it i either hit skip or rewind at exactly the 2:42 mark. but i am done hating things, done making fun of things, done belittling other things and people. i know what you’re going to say i say and we skip past the conversation i don’t want to have. one we’ve had before, where once i was hateful, where i don’t want to be again.

and i think about how my grandfather apologized for something hateful he did recently, outright, i’m sorry. how no one can ever remember him saying the words before. stubborn men with stubborn, hurt, little boys inside of them. he still gets it wrong a little bit, a lot bit, but at least he’s trying. if people do the right thing for the wrong reasons, how little does it count?

a question-asking maniac someone called me recently. i’ve realized recently how much i love to be a discoverer. to tease things out of people. give people a chance to surprise me. there is a line there - sometimes i know where it is and sometimes i don’t. expectations. i have been consciously trying lately to not do that, not set that same trap for other people that i hate so much to be tricked into myself.

when i am feeling solid, this is my default mode. an investigator, without the need to be investigated back. but when i am not feeling solid, i retreat into myself and do it as a cry for help, a plea for someone to be that curious about knowing and appreciating the real me. real. what could that possibly mean.

and this makes me think about how words don’t have the same power i once felt they had. probably a reason why i am not as enamored with alcohol as i once was. the bravery to spill your guts, to say what’s been on your mind but you’ve lacked the courage to say sober. to kiss who you want to. flirt with who you’re not supposed to. the intoxicating buzz of an upcoming night of sexual tension and provocative questions and doing things you would never have the guts to do otherwise. everything is different now, i see through the facade. that magic doesn’t work on me the way it did. at first, noticing this change made me immeasurably sad. now, i see how desperate i was for a fast-pass to intimacy. how real, solid, lasting intimacy is built in other ways.

now i lay awake for 30 minutes and resist the urge to make pillow talk because i know, now, it won’t go the way i want. and so instead i go downstairs and make a turkey sandwich and try to let go of the ideas i have about things.

a few weeks ago i paid $18 to see a 2:20pm matinee showing, after work, of return to seoul. there is only me, an older woman who is alone, a man who is alone down the aisle from me, and a young couple in the theater. i prop my feet up on the seat in front of me and i keep my baseball hat on and i sob. the most i have sobbed in front of a piece of media in months. maybe it’s just the asian of it, but it reminds me of how i felt sobbing at everything everywhere all at once a year ago. i cry because it makes me think about my dead grandmother. and she’s been on my mind a lot lately.

film poster for ‘return to seoul’. go watch it.

afterwards it is only 4:34pm. i use the theater restroom, like i do every time after seeing a film alone, to unpack my mind. and the older woman in the stall next to me says oh god, oh man out loud. responding to things i can’t see.

i pass a man with a telescope in tompkins square park later and i think about how everywhere i go in this city i am watching and being watched. and there is something about having eyes on you. how sometimes those eyes are just your own. the man inside my head.

and it is one of the first Very Warm days. i am too hot. i go into an overpriced thrift store and i linger in the changing room and i shoplift a smaller shirt, under the one i go into it wearing. i buy something small as a peace offering, as i do almost every time i do this, i am too afraid to do it any other way. i leave the store and turn the block and take off my shirt and feel the small thrill of having gotten away with something.

i pass a restaurant patio where a baby sits on his mother’s lap with his stomach out, belly-button facing the world. content.

wandering to the train station i get a $1.50 slice of pizza and run into a man who works at the store next to my coffee shop, who we give free coffee to in exchange for a rarely-used retail discount and (mostly) the companionship of talking to someone we aren’t being paid to, during the day. he shows me his motorcycle and he has a nice smile. he’s older than i expect him to be. i go on my way.

a man speeds past me on a bicycle with word “meditate” on his shirt.

i did shrooms while i was in austin. with a friend i feel wholly accepted by and myself around. i slept in my old room under my old plants, with my old blanket. i sat cross-legged on the pavement in my old home’s parking lot as it began to rain. i felt each droplet as it hit my skin. watched as the ground turned a darker shade of grey. i looked in my old mirror, sat in my old bathroom. read all the quotes and poems i’d written on my bathroom walls, and felt like i was discarding something necessary.

i met my sibling’s new girlfriend and she gave us free milkshakes. i went to an estate sale with my ex boyfriend. i spent over 12 consecutive hours with him and was happily surprised by how easily we slipped back into friendship. i went to my favorite nightclub in the city and wrote my name in permanent marker on the alley door with a 19 year old friend of my sibling’s on coke. i hit a bong of fake weed for free walking with a friend in the east side. i discovered the difference between hush puppies and jalepeño poppers. i went to a rave venue where once, over a year ago, i made out with 3 different people in a row and did ketamine and molly at the same time and was also propositioned to be a part of a threesome with two people i don’t talk to at all anymore. the room felt small, doll-house-like, to me now. i thought i am too old to be here. i saw another 23-year-old i knew and we desperately hugged each other and talked about the feeling.

i swam in my favorite body of water and i saw people i recognized but i didn’t go up to them because i didn’t feel like it. i cooked familiar meals and i walked familiar routes. every single inch of that city reminds me of something. i felt good about where i’d been, where i’d gone, where i was going.

and i am enjoying having a small, simple world right now. i said this out loud a few weeks ago and realized that surprisingly i really meant it. for once it wasn’t just something to say. peaceful, that’s how i feel.

maybe even a little bit satisfied.