11/14/14
Aboard BW 16, En route JFK-KIN
As we make our way to Jamaica, I am forced to remember the last time I
travelled to the Greater Antilles. It was
7 years ago, and I got utterly and royally toasted with three of my
friends. We decided we wanted to fly to
Paris to get ortolan, but we didn’t all have passports. Instead, we chose Puerto Rico. The details of the trip are unimportant. What is important is the details of those
friendships. I have been pre-writing
this entry for almost a week now, and the conversation we had earlier this
evening touched on many of the points I had planned to make and reinforced the
importance of this entry.
I have written
enough times about the list of 20 people in the world I love, and how I
honestly don’t care about the rest of them, the other 7 billion. I’m sure my seasoned readers know me well
enough to know that that is a real list, an actual list on my phone of 20 names
(well, initials). No, I will not be
posting that list. There are too many
people who would be shocked to find themselves included and others who would be
angered to find themselves not included.
What is interesting is that I made the same list when I was in NYU,
around the time of that trip to Puerto Rico.
Other than my family, there is not a single overlapping name.
Reader, think of that for a moment. My closest friends at the time, the people
whom I most dearly loved outside of my family, all of them, out of my
life. More importantly, they are not
only out of my life, but they are now exactly the same as the 7 billion. They mean nothing to me. I have neither any positive nor negative
emotions towards them. I am still fond
of one them, the one with whom I ever have any contact, the last one of them to
have left my life, but I no longer love her.
She was my best friend for a year, and now she means practically nothing
to me. On the other hand, the ignoring
my family again, and I will lump my sister-in-law into that group, because I
consider her as much my sister as I consider my brother to be my brother, the
women at the top end of that list are people who have all entered my life
within the past 30 months. That, outside
of my family, the four women in the world whom I love most were for 90% of my
life total strangers or not yet born.
I
am focusing on the women because the three men that fall into that range are
people who have been in and out of my life for quite some time. My best friend, he fell out of my life for
over a decade before we rekindled our friendship three years ago. He is now very high on that list and likely
will be for the rest of our lives. My
favorite coworker, someone who has known me my entire life, one of my favorite
people in the world, has been in and out of my life as I worked or did not work
at my father’s company. To know him is
to love him. The old manager of the
cigar store rounds out that list, and, there was a gap when I stopped going to
the cigar store. We had a special bond
when, 8 years ago, I walked into that cigar store looking for a pipe
tamper. That was his first week at the
store. 8 years later, we had become very
close friends, and now he has moved to another store. We have discussed some creative venture
together that may or may not pan out. If
they do, we will continue our friendship.
If they don’t I expect we will slowly and eventually drift apart, in
which case his name would slide off the list.
That leaves the aforementioned four women. The first, of course, is my girlfriend. Two years ago, she was a stranger. A year ago, someone with whom I frequently
interacted on Facebook, interaction that slowly became more and more
flirtatious as I started to develop interest in developing feelings beyond the
bonds of friendship. 3 months ago,
she was a girl I wanted to date. Now,
she is, well, she’s her. No other words
are required, nothing else needs to be said.
The next on that list would be a girl from my philosophy class. She is one of the smartest and most
interesting people I know. A year ago,
she was a stranger. 7 months ago, I fell
in love with her, and I decided to ask her out.
After the final, I forgot about her for 3 months. She was out of my life. About 2 months ago, she became one of my
closest friends, along with another classmate.
I grouped the two of them together, unable to separate my feelings for
them. The male was the closer friend,
but we drifted, and I started developing a closer friendship with the female
classmate about a month ago. I love both
of them very dearly, but they will both be out of my life in two months. I know for a fact that, while I will always
remember them fondly, just as I do the girl from the Puerto Rico trip, the girl
who was my best friend for a year, if I do not maintain regular contact with
them, they will slip off of my list.
The
next two are women who are out of my life in person but with whom I maintain
regular electronic contact. The first
one was a stranger three years ago, practically a Facebook friend a year ago,
and is now one of my best friends. She will
always hold a special place in my heart.
She was the girl who reminded that I would one day fall in love
again. After the disastrous experiences
with women I had at NYU, I pretty much resigned myself to the fact that I would
never fall in love again. I had
forgotten what it was like feel desire.
I had forgotten the meaning of the word passion. Three years ago, I was practically dead
inside. Three summers ago, that all changed. When I saw her, I felt alive. I saw one of the prettiest people I had ever
met. I saw someone who reminded me that I
wanted to fall in love again. I felt
desire. I asked her out a few times, she
always had a different excuse why she couldn’t join me, though she never
outright rejected me. After three
strikes, I called it an out, and I moved on.
We hung out a few times, exchanged a bunch of excited texts. It was a far cry from the summer fling I had
hoped to have with her, but it was more of an interaction with a woman (well, a
girl) than I had had in quite some time.
It never would have worked out for a variety of reasons. I was not in place where I was looking for a
serious relationship. I was looking to
have fun. I did have fun with her, just
not the type I had hoped. I flew off to
Nashville, and she was back in Florida by the time I got back to New York.
She was out of my life, and so were my
feelings for her, for the most part. I
always held a certain fondness of those memories, and those lingering feelings
were used in many philosophical debates to defend the merit of “irrational
happiness.” We maintained sporadic
communication through Facebook and text messaging. We had periods of more and less frequent
communications, lasting a day or a week, but she was never really in my
life. Then, something changed two months
ago. We had lunch together the day
before my 27th Birthday. She
acted like I was her best friend.
Wait,
when did this start? Well, a week later,
we fell out of touch again. Then, two
weeks after that, when Aliyah and I made our relationship status Official on
Facebook, I instantaneously got an angry text from her, demanding why I didn’t
tell her I had a girlfriend. Since when
did we have that kind of relationship?
We didn’t. I made a joke, and I didn’t hear from her for another two weeks.
She came back to New York, we met for a drink, and we were back to being
best friends. That was the last time I
saw her, and she was out of my life once more.
Then the new Taylor Swift album came out. That gave us something to talk about, back to
being best friends, texting every day, sometimes multiple times a day, about
Taylor Swift and Harry Potter and movies and our shared interests.
Relationships require a deeper connection,
but a friendship, especially one that is solely maintained through text
messages, can easily be based on shared interests and nothing else. Eventually, we will run out of things to say
about Taylor’s new album. She may even
fade out of my life once more, but she will never drop off of that list. The memory of that night in the summer of
2012 when I finally woke up, when I stopped being dead inside, when I
remembered what desire felt like, that memory will never fade, and I will
always love her for that. Wow, I did not
mean to write that much about her.
Now, to
round out that list we have one of my former co-workers. 4 months ago, she was a stranger. 3 months ago, she was a crush. 2.5 months ago, I realized that I loved her
for no other reason than that she was such a happy person and that I would hate
to see such happiness diminished. A
month ago, that foreshadowing came true.
Such happiness was diminished. I
was sad, very sad, to see that light fade away.
It is amazing how someone who was a stranger 4 months ago, someone whom
I have not seen in a month, someone with whom I really only ever interacted
electronically beyond saying good morning and good bye, how someone who should
by all means be considered an acquaintance is one of the 20 people in the world
whom I love. Eventually, she too, will
fade out of my life, and that will be the end of that. She will slowly drift off of the list, unless
we maintain regular communication, which I don’t see happening.
As of now, there are three people I text
every day. 8 years ago, those three
people were as strangers to me. Now, the
people I used to text or message every day are as strangers to me. It is amazing how these fading friendships cause us to stop loving the people who used to be the most important people in our
lives. This is slightly more than I
meant to write on the topic, and I am mamash tired. However, this entry would not be complete
without briefly, and I mean briefly, recalling Day 0.
After a harrowing day at work, I headed to
the cigar store where I enjoyed an Opus, having recently treated myself to a
box of them. I biked home, finished the
cigar as I backed up my files. I had had
no appetite since I left work, though I had not really eaten much all day. I certainly had no desire for dinner. I had a few peppermint pretzels just to
change the taste in my mouth between the cigar and the 2007 Christmas Pipe I
would later light up as I finished packing.
It was Officially that time of year, so I put on the Christmas
music.
Aliyah came over shortly after I
finished the pipe. I lit up my Ramon
Allones, and then we headed out. Oh, the
cupcake. Aliyah bought me a cupcake,
which was a very sweet thing of her to do, pun intended. Under any other circumstances, I would have
been delighted to have a pumpkin cupcake.
It looked absolutely delicious, yet I had no appetite. It did not take much convincing from her end
to get me to eat the cupcake. It was as
good as it looked. I used Lyft to get us
to the airport, which was overpriced due to peak pricing.
When we got to the airport, we quickly
realized that we were the only white people on the plane. We were able to upgrade to business class for
40% of the ticket price. My cut-off is
50%. Any more than that, and it is not
worth the premium. We went through
security and headed to the lounge, which was empty, so we enjoyed being silly
and having the lounge to ourselves. I
made myself a martini, which I continued to drink as we headed to the plane,
getting there as they announced final boarding call. Just as we were the only white people on the
flight, we were also the only people in business class. I joked that it was like a bus in Montgomery
in 1963, the segregation. Again, I had
no appetite when the food was offered, so I proceeded to write this entry,
which I will now close.
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