8/29/14
Aboard UA 509, En route LGA-DEN
I suppose that I could say that, in the 5 days since I closed coming
home from the airport, not much has changed in my life. Of the four nights, I had two very enjoyable
evenings, getting home after 11:30 PM both nights.
The other two nights I fell asleep early. I have not been sleeping well, and have not
had a need to set an alarm clock all week, knowing that I would wake up around
7 AM without an alarm. Maybe it’s
something wrong with my sleep machine, maybe it’s stress, maybe it’s love. When Andrew said that I seemed distracted all
week, I told him that I’m lot less focused when I’m love-struck than when I’m
heartbroken. The flipside of that equation
was that I’m more likely to oversleep if I’m upset than if I’m happy.
Anyway, back on topic. An interesting part of this trip is that it
is the first trip that I have taken alone in over 3 months. I have not slept in my own hotel room since
Tokyo. It was a matter of coincidence
that it played out that way, but I actually liked it, having travelling
companions over the course of the summer.
It made the trips more stressful in some ways, but it also made them
more enjoyable in many ways. More
importantly, in my personal life, I do not want to be alone, either. In fact, I never want to be alone again. My father once, well more than once, relayed
a quote to me, from either Nathaniel Branden or some dancer, I cannot
recall. The quote was quite simple. “Everyone who is alone is lonely.” I never quite believed that. I preferred a different quote, about either
Kennedy or FDR inviting some brain trust to dinner at the White House. The quote went something like, “It was the
greatest collection of minds to sit down to dinner at the White House since
Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” That was
me. I loved that quote.
Last summer, I drove over 100 hours
throughout Europe in the span of 18 days, left only to my own thoughts and the
same Taylor Swift CD, and I never got bored.
My own thoughts kept me company.
It was the opposite in Alaska with my best friend in the car and a lot
less driving. I spent the summer of 2013
alone. The summer of 2014 would be
different. In the summer of 2013, the
only time I spent with other people was at work and at the cigar store. The summer of 2014 would be different. On Tuesday, I was asked about my social life
in high school, and I honestly answered that I had none. The follow-up question was what I did on the
weekends, and I honestly could not remember, and it saddened me that I, with my
excellent memory, could not answer such a simple question.
I suppose that I spent the weekends playing
video games, watching TV, doing homework, dreading Monday. This August, I never once dreaded
Monday. This August, Monday was the day
when I went to Bryant Park. This August,
Monday was the best day of the week. In
elementary school, I was always the class clown. I loved attention, any attention, positive or
negative, that I could get. I had a
minimal social life, which dwindled even more in middle school. I had a best friend in middle school, someone
who was my intellectual equal, us both taking math classes two years beyond our
grade, of course being the two top students in those classes. I used to ask myself why I would ever need
any other kind of companionship beyond my own beautiful mind. I convinced
myself that I was the only friend I ever needed.
That changed when I got to college. I had a social life. Alcohol, women, and friends were readily
available. My dorm room became the place
to be. I hosted parties on a regular
basis. Of course I got distracted. I got stressed. It was an overload. I couldn’t take it. When I saw my best friend from middle school
on the train about a year ago, it turned out that we both dropped out of
college after a couple of years. With
him, it was the opposite, he couldn’t fit in.
He wanted the life that I had been living in college. The funny thing is, if our social lives in
college had been reversed, we both probably would have finished. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that we were both happy with
where we were in our lives when we met on the train, and I am even happier
now. We promised to stay in touch. We didn’t.
Over the past couple of weeks, I
have started to realize that I care about my two newest co-workers. One of them may be reading this, so I will
have to be careful how I choose my words.
The first one, our newest inspector, reminds me of myself in many ways,
and I actually care about him. I want
him to do well, and I like him a lot. I
have spent extra time teaching him the ropes, making sure that I do everything
I can so that he succeeds. I don’t do
that just because it’s part of my job. I
do it because I care about him. The
other one I don’t know why I care about her.
I just know that when I saw that she was visibly upset earlier in the
week, I was upset by that. I have been
working on a theory of implied emotional attraction, and it might have
something to do with that. If someone
reminds you, in any way, of someone who once mattered to you and who is no longer
in your life, you feel similarly about that new person as you did for the other
person. I certainly don’t feel anything
for her, just a desire that she be happy.
Maybe it’s just she’s just such a bubbly person that I would hate for
such happiness to be diminished.
Happiness is contagious. I love
being around happy people. It makes me
happy. It should come as no surprise,
then, that the person I now want to be around more than anyone else in the
world is one of the happiest people I know.
On that note, I will close into I get to my hotel tonight.
Colorado Springs, Colorado
To continue on this theme of loneliness, I was actually not always
going to take this trip alone. One of
the guys at the cigar store, someone who has come to call me his cousin, was
living out in Colorado, and he said that he would join me once I arrived in
Denver for the trip. I didn’t think much
of it. I gave him the dates, and, if he
wanted to meet up when I arrived, that was fine. As long as I saw my three National Parks, I
was flexible. When I saw him at the
cigar shop on Monday, I think, I reminded him that I was going to go to Colorado
this weekend. It turned out his business
went under and that he was now living back in New York. By the end of my cigar, he said that he was
going to fly out with me for the weekend.
Again, as long as we kept to my schedule, it was fine with me. Anyway, I he was at the shop today, and he
kept apologizing how he needed to go to this company retreat for the weekend,
and I kept telling him that I wasn’t upset that he bailed.
About 7 years ago, the cigar store used to
have what was called the Aurora Treasure Pack, five Aurora cigars in metal
tubos, all named after different gems or precious metals: platinum, gold, ruby,
sapphire, and emerald. I had always
wanted to buy it, but it was not quite worth it at the price point. I loved the idea of collecting the whole set
even more than the idea of smoking the cigars.
Recently, I placed a large order of cigars online, and I saw they had
the Treasure Pack at about half of the price, so I bought it. Figuring it was 5 cigars, I knew that I would
need to smoke one each day after work on one week Monday through Friday. This week was the week I finally got around
to doing it. Today was the last cigar in
the pack, the emerald, and it had my favorite wrapper, the Ecuador
wrapper. I knew that it would be a good
day.
After my cigar, there was a taxi
waiting right outside, so I hopped in.
He asked if I was paying cash or charge, giving me an approximate price,
saying that it did not include tolls. I
knew that the fare to LaGuardia was usually much lower than that, but I’d be
paying cash either way. The driver was
very friendly and amiable. About halfway
there, I realized that he hadn’t turned the meter. This was no mistake. He was trying to screw me. I knew that, when we got to LGA, he would
quote the inflated price he had provided and then ask for the toll and tip on
top of that. I could have screwed him
over at that. I could have pointed out
that the meter was not on, and he would have had to turn it on then and accept
just the fare from that point. I instead
calculated exactly how much the fare should have been, along with tip and toll,
and it came out to be slightly less than the original amount he had quoted, but
I didn’t have the banknotes to hand him exact change, so I decided I would hand
him the two banknotes that would equal the amount he quoted. If he asked for the tip and the toll, I’d threaten
to call the TLC.
That was exactly what
happened, and I said, “You know it’s [the amount] with tip and toll. Do I need to call the TLC and tell them you
didn’t use the meter?” He said that it
was okay in a way that made it seem like I was cheating him. By the time I got to my gate, they were
almost boarding my zone, so I didn’t really have time to do anything. I read the in-flight magazine and then fell
asleep, waking up as the beverage service began. I just wanted a refill of my water bottle to
wash down my Quest Bar. I proceeded to
write the preceding entry and then fell back asleep, waking up as we reached
Denver. As I headed to the car, I joined
Instagram. It gave me an option to add
all of my Facebook friends who were also on Instagram, but I was selective,
only choose the people whose pictures I’d actually want to see in my feed. I got my car, I headed to Buckhorn’s
Exchange, one of the oldest restaurants in Colorado and the best place to get
Rocky Mountain Oysters. In case my
reader does not know what Rocky Mountain Oysters are, they deep fried cow
testicles. No, that is not a
metaphor. That is exactly what they
are. For my main course, I ordered a
buffalo prime rib and elk medallion combination dish. It was small and overpriced, but it was
filling. Since I was in Colorado, I knew
that I need to have a Coors, which I had with my appetizer. I saw that they had a Colorado whiskey, but I
didn’t trust myself to drive an hour with two drinks. I ordered it anyway to go with the game meat,
figuring I wouldn’t finish it. I think I
had less than half of it.
When I stepped
outside after my meal and grabbed my Davidoff Nic Toro, which has become my de
facto first official cigar of any driving trip, I realized how happy I
was. I was happy about all the good
things that are going on in my life. I
was happy about the great trip that I know this will be. I was happy about the cigar. I was just fundamentally happy. During the drive, I ran into some bad traffic
due to a brutal three-car collision, and I also received an email from the
hotel asking me to confirm my smoking preference. It turned out that they only had smoking
rooms with two beds. That was fine. I even get a free breakfast voucher for being
so cooperative. When I got to my room, I
settled in and then had to make the hardest decision of the day. Would I have a pipe or a cigar before
bed? I opted for the pipe, so I lit up
my Ardor and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I
can publish it and get some sleep.
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