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What it is
Staid Air
01 Nov 2007, 13:55

I spent the weekend in a room I fled two years ago.

That night was unpleasant. I was en route, back to California from St Louis, and stopped at my friend's place just outside of Dallas. He and another friend were working together at a cafe near a Mexican restaurant where, after they got off, we had a few tequilas. Back at his place, someone called that wanted to meet me at a hotel not far from where we were. My friend fed me four shots of espresso—to neutralize the tequila, you see—and then I went to meet her. I left my bags at his place.

Some time after two, she told me she loved me. Not wanting to return the gesture emptily, I told her that I didn't believe in love, that the word didn't mean anything, and then spent the next two hours trying to substantiate that statement with strong logical declarations. We both fled the hotel some time after four.

Part of me still believes that love can be deromanticized, broken into a large number of less enigmatic components. Some day I'll list them all and enlighten you. Look out, Love. I'm cogitating.

Later that morning, without having slept, I fled the room in my friend's house and made it back to central California in under two days.

I was sitting in that room this weekend when she told me she would be marrying soon. The ceiling fan was on just enough to keep the air moving. I can't stand staid air.

To get to my Unix class at UCLA last fall I would take the rail and the bus and, in total, I spent over four hours each Wednesday in transit to take an unnecessary, work-unrelated class. LA's rail system is called the Metro. On the side of one train, someone had made the name an acronym: Moving Ethnic Transients Rapidly Overland.

On my way in, I would always fall asleep. So many people in a closed car—the stale air in there just knocked me out, I guess. Too many mouths hungrier than mine competing for a limited oxygen supply. But I got to leave work early, at least. And they paid for it. Falling asleep in the train on my way to a class in LA made me feel somehow more awake than I did in my cubicle.

The subway in New York is different, though.

Over the new year, 2007, I went to stay with a friend that lived in Brooklyn. Earlier that year, Halloween 2006, we'd rendezvous'd in San Francisco. Prior to that, we hadn't seen each other or even communicated very much in the two years it had been since we had a class together in Austin. I still remember that as one of the best weekends of my adult life thus far. She might feel similarly. I might be unhealthily optimistic.


Actual sign.

Aside from partying with Castro freaks, we didn't do anything spectacular in San Francisco. Our relationship stayed platonic. Mainly, we wandered. We drank and talked and wandered. In one day, we walked from North Beach to Haight-Ashbury and back. Wandering with her in an unfamiliar city was fun. Wandering around her home city, though, was less fun. To her, anyway. She said so.

"I'm worried about us, my dear. Something feels... different."

"Yeah? Like what?"

"I don't know."

"How does it feel different?"

"I don't know... Something just doesn't feel the same."

Many things were, in fact, different. There was less novelty about each other, as we'd been talking frequently. We weren't in neutral territory. Anyway, on New Year's Eve, we made our relationship less platonic. I don't know if that made things any better, but it did make things more fun for a while.

We talk less frequently, today.

And none of that helped explain what makes the New York subway different than LA's Metro. But I once saw a drunk kid barf all over his boogie board and his friends, less drunk, on their way back home, all tried to mop it up with their beach towels. That was kind of endearing.

And today I'm in a friend's apartment in Denton, Texas. He smokes inside and he keeps the windows closed. His only fan, he turns on at night, on high, so he can sleep without broiling under his puffy down comforter. Every time I stand up, I get dizzy. Every time I take a walk, I feel years younger. Every time he sneezes, he exclaims "Wooch! God damn!"

So last night I opened the windows. Last night we drank 10 Blue Moons and howled at the couple banging upstairs. It's All Saints Day. There's a breeze outside and I feel fine.

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