A Return To Self

My Final Week in NY burnt me to a crisp

Legs are crossed and posture is upright as I’m perched in a full train car on my way home from work. Dreaming of cherry tomatoes. Mouth is watering for the crunch of a cherry tomato. For a vegetable. For the grocery store. The grocery store has become public enemy #1 and I’ve been avoiding confronting her for weeks now, in fear of purchasing something I’d abuse. A something including but not limited to: a jar of peanut butter or a wedge of cheese or a carton of coffee creamer or god forbid a cracker or a chip or anything salty or anything savory. Body feels depleted of any and all nutrients because I’ve been subjecting myself to the bare bones of what’s left in my pantry & fridge- hard boiled eggs & freezer burnt toast with fig butter & freezer burnt toast with regular butter & cans of tuna in vegetable oil & whatever other undesirables have been abandoned in my kitchen.

Want: cherry tomatoes & a nice leafy green & in my ideal world a small portion of feta cheese. If I purchase feta cheese I will accidentally consume the entire block in a sitting, so ideally I will just speed walk past that aisle & avoid eye contact. Yes. No temptations. Will run in & out for tomatoes & salad mix & maybe like, bacon. Then scurry home. Entering the store now. Gulp. Other cause for gulp when walking through this grocery store is that it’s right next to Crazy Noah’s apartment. Everything in my neighborhood is right next to Crazy Noah’s apartment. Of course he lives in direct view of my grocery store and my second favorite bar and the cafe job I had for like three weeks before I either got fired or quit (not sure what happened first, was kinda a chicken or egg scenario). Crazy Noah hasn’t texted me in 48 hours so safe to say he’s like, kinda dead to me. Unless he does call. Then….then I’m a forgiving lady. But as of current it’s a: he’s so dead to me scenario.

Max called me while I wandered down the aisles of the store, we chatted on the phone while I inspected the pitiful looking plastic container of multicolored tomatoes displayed in front of me. Not quite as appetizing as they looked in my head. Half filled cartons of dull red, dull yellow, dull orange. I envision myself popping 6 pieces into my mouth and it’s not a satisfying crunch, they all mush together like I’m swallowing a spoonful of yogurt. I put a container in my basket anyways. The heart wants what it wants. I scan the aisles for familiar faces. Nothin’. But the heart wants what it wants? Sigh.

This tomato fixation arrived as an apparition in my mind while I was standing around at work earlier. Work is gorgeous ‘cause it’s a lotta standing around, fucking around, repetitive monotonous tasks that I can zone out on, tasks that I can go out of body on. Eight hours will go by and I will not have had a single thought, it seems. I clock in and my mind clocks out and my body takes over, sorting & organizing & doing inventory & oh yeah smiling & feigning pleasantries, and then I clock out for the day and think about cherry tomatoes and not much else.

Talking on the phone with Max made me emotional. He sounds so excited for me to come to LA next week. He started listing off ideas for our itinerary, places he wants to take me, things we should do. Hiking & shopping & bar hopping & sight seeing. I want to feel excited too, but all I can feel is indifference. Here, there, New York, Los Angeles, it all feels the same to me right now. Wherever I go, there I am, or something like that. I’m stressed out about everything that I need to figure out here in New York, all my loose ends and pieces that will be put on hold again because I am leaving again. Why do I keep leaving? I have all this unfinished business here that just seems to keep piling up & piling up and all I can find the energy to do is to leave & create more unfinished business.

Tapped my card to purchase: a plastic container of cherry tomatoes, a jar of kimchi, a block of tofu, a tub of arugula, and a bottle of kombucha.

I haven’t seen Amelie in ages because she’s been on vacation. She’s taking the train home from Connecticut this week so that we can see each other before I leave, before we’re apart for a few more weeks. I can’t imagine being apart for a few more weeks when we’ve been attached at the hip since meeting. It’s like, Amelie leaves town and now I’m entangled with a dude I’ve named Crazy Noah. I CAN’T BE LEFT ALONE TO MY OWN DEVICES OR I’LL BECOME ENTANGLED WITH DUDES NAMED CRAZY NOAH.

In bed & popping cherry tomatoes into my mouth like vitamins, Love Island playing on my laptop. I share the opinions of the masses… Sincere is evil… Yay Brinity… Zac is evil… yada yada yada. Playing with my food, biting the skin, then swallowing the flesh, wiggling chunks between my molars, prolonging the experience.

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New Job is across the street from 1st Cafe Job. Like, I can look down the road and see the dingy welcome sign & the millennial swarming the counter for their iced orange blossom tonics. I’m styling the window displays at New Job when I see two people groping each other outside and my jaw drops. EX CO-WORKERS. My damn ex-coworkers. What the hell are you guys doing groping each other in front of me? My little life.

Lunch Break. How do I spend my next unpaid sixty minutes? Stopped into the Muji store and purchased: three pens that reminded me of Amelie (cyan, purple, and magenta), a small red pencil case to put them in, and a new notebook. Stopped into a small bookstore and purchased Hour of The Star by Clarice Lispector. Took myself & my new purchases over to the pier and sat down on a bench. Book remained untouched in my lap while I spoke on the phone with Lyn. They just started their lunch break as well so they met me on the pier where we then walked over to a Trader Joes. I purchased: toothpaste, paper towels, a cup of greek yogurt. They purchased: chicken salad, tortilla chips, a bottle of sparkling water. We hugged goodbye and parted ways where I clocked into another four hours of standing around feeling empty, empty, empty.

Home now. Time to scroll myself to sleep, or something of that variation. New York is currently being ravaged by this brutal heat wave, stinking up the city. I’ve resorted to sleeping on top of my sheets & my comforter, stripping out of my clothes, my AC on full blast for a semblance of respite. Los Angeles weather… so soon…

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I’m standing in line for the bathroom at the bins, holding in the piss of a lifetime. In my head I am bitching at the people in front of me with a What’s Taking You Bitches So Goddamn Long, but my face is giving ‘em a smile/grimace/plase-have-mercy-on-me. I am about to explode. I am going to flood the Goodwill in my piss if no one lets me into the bathroom this very second. My thighs are clenched together in agony when a woman in a wheelchair appears menacingly behind me. “Is this the line for the bathroom?” She sweetly asks me. FUCK MY LIFE. “Yes.” I respond, avoiding eye contact. Is it evil to not let her in front of me? I want to be evil & not let her in front of me. She sweetly asks me to move some furniture out of the way so that she could roll behind me in line and I think to myself FUCK MY LIFE (again). So I move the furniture out of the way & refuse to look her in the eyes & the bathroom door unlocks, free for the next person to go. The next person, IE ME. I look at the door & I look at her wheels and I curse at The World before sighing in defeat. “You can go ahead.” I gesture, holding the door open for her. “Oh thank you dear, so sweet.” She replies before rolling herself through. My brain is filled with piss, piss is coursing through my veins, but I muster out a “yeah of course!” through clenched teeth & clenched thighs.

My phone buzzes as I exit the bathroom. Crazy Noah? I plead to the World. No. A long paragraph of a text from redacted’s parents. GULP. Oh brother. A redacted event occurred back home that they were relaying back to me. In all fairness they did the right thing by relaying everything back to me, & then I had to do the right thing despite not wanting to do any - thing. I am not even in that state anymore. I’m across the country. Sigh. My Forever Tethered To Memory Lane Life.

Evening time. On a long walk in my neighborhood on an even longer phone call with Garrett. Gold between my lips. Life has become Gold’s between my lips & drawn out phone calls & drawn out walks & zoning out & figuring it out. Whatever it is. Well Garrett called with updates on his Love Life & I updated him on mine. Or well, our Like Lives.We both discovered that we had no new updates but we still found a way to talk for another hour, debriefing from new angles, new perspectives, new what-if’s. The way we can tell the same story fifty times and not tire of it is kinda magical. Is it that bad that my future husband has zionist allegations?

NO. Plus he’s like, not actually a zionist. Right?

Right! Well like, at least he said so.

Love when he says exactly what I want to hear. Being in the wrong feels so right when it’s occurring on a phone call with your best friend. Best friend. Huh. Wow. I didn’t realize I felt this way. It’s true. Feels wrong to call anyone my best friend except redacted. Redacted who I haven’t spoken to since last summer. Redacted my Best Friend Forever & Ever but now there’s Garrett & Amelie & Ruby & & & my New Life and redacted’s outta the picture, but it’s just that she’s my Best Friend! I shouldn’t refer to my best friend’s as my Best Friend’s, it makes me feel too guilty, like I’m cheating on her. I want to telepathically tell her, DON’T WORRY BABY YOU’RE STILL MY #1! But I just thought, I just thought, I juuuust thought….soulmates, ya know? Had two soulmates last summer & now I got a buncha best friends who I shouldn’t call my Best Friends ‘cause now I’m a cheating bitch. Miss the craze. My Middle School issues, the hierarchy of friendships. Eye roll.

I felt jittery and stir crazy in my apartment, New York’s heatwave simmering in my walls & slow roasting my brain cells. So I took myself on a long, long walk because there’s more of a reprieve outside in the open air than trapped & confined in my Girl Cave. Stopped into the dollar store and purchased duct tape & a mason jar for no reason at all really. Garrett’s retelling his same story about his not-boyfriend boyfriend when a familiar silhouette speed walks past me. Da fuq? Oh, he looks kinda familiar. Oh my god that’s Crazy Noah. I only recognize him as Crazy Noah when he jumps up in the air and clicks his feet together like a little leprechaun and I think to myself yes, this is my autistic husband. I am unsure if he saw me but I watch as he crosses the street, continuing to leap & click & leap & click his whole way home. God I want to love bomb him so badly.

Crazy Noah texts me 10 minutes later, Hey, when do you leave for LA?

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I’m out at a bar in Bed Stuy, getting drinks with New Friend. New Friend and I sit at the bar, each ordering a hot dog & a pint of beer. She’s refusing to make eye contact with the beautiful bartender because he is So Hot. He reminds me of thirty year old ex coworker in a sense. Floppy brown hair and crooked teeth and a smug I know that I am So Hot look on his face.

I watch her squirm in her seat, blushing profusely while he takes our order & I think to myself, she is the most beautiful girl in the world and even SHE can’t strike up conversation with a hot bartender. That feels like, kinda amazing. Witnessing a hot girl being socially awkward. I’m giving her the updates on Crazy Noah. I show her a photo of him and she says OH MY GOD I MATCHED WITH HIM ON HINGE.

NOOOOOOOOO. I respond, in agony.

She reassures me. NO. Like, months ago.

Phew!

Wait, he’s crazy? But he’s so HOT.

I KNOW.

An hour & two pints passes & her roommate joins us at the bar. The three of us are chatting it up when the roommate leans over and whispers in our ears. Rob’s here. He’s a regular. He’ll pay our tab if we play our cards right. So we watch Rob walk in & order a cocktail & a shot of fernet and the roommate taps his shoulder, ROB! REMEMBER US? And he doesn’t, obviously. But he’s so moved that she remembered his name that he buys us celebratory shots and gives us each a kiss on the forehead and a too long hug. We down shots of fernet & more & more pints of beer & I’m feeling like a brand new lady. Like I’m experiencing a return to self.

New Friend & her roommate hate fernet & suck down the shots with puckered lips & squinted eyes but I gulp it down with glee. I loooove fernet because it reminds me of The Good Ole Days: nights post-waitressing shifts where I’d sling em back and trek over to the bar next door to my restaurant and play pool all night with the other regulars. Fernet is an industry drink. An if you know, you know, drink. A kiss from one restaurant worker to another. A palate cleanser. Rob kisses the crown of our heads again and tells us that we are like family to him now. Free drinks whenever. He just wants to make sure that we are safe & cared for. I am texting Crazy Noah with a WYD and he says that he’s down to hang so I suggest My Favorite Bar (the one with the hot dogs) and he responds I’m actually already here with my roommate so I say Okay should we meet somewhere else? And he says no, just come here and I say, but like, what about your roommate? And he says, what about him? He doesn’t care that his roommate is there and I guess that I don’t really care either. So when New Friend & I part ways, I walk over to My Favorite Bar where Noah and his roommate are seated waiting for me.

I greet the bartender by name and Noah moves down a seat so that I am situated squashed between the two of em. Strange. We exchange hello’s and the roommate is even farther on that spectrum than Noah. Rapid blinking & an intense gaze & an ominous vibe. I ask his roommate if he has cigarettes ‘cause I gave my last 3 to Katie as a Thank You For Being a Perfect Friend and he says no but he can run home & grab a pack. So I say yes please and he does in fact start jogging home to retrieve a pack. Right. Noah and I are alone but it’s still no different than when his roommate was just here. Vibes are still strange and off-putting but God He Is So Hot so I do not care that vibes are strange & off-putting. His roommate returns & Noah pays everyone’s tabs. The three of us migrate to the other bar I like, the one under the M train, where we each order a Moscow Mule. Noah & I are holding hands now & his roommate looks flustered. You’re paying for this, right? His roommate asks pointedly, grimacing at the Mule. Yep. Noah responds. His roommate glares at us and storms out the front door of the bar, cocktail untouched.

Um, did I miss something? I ask, confused at what just happened, why he just stormed off wordlessly.

Noah is confused at my confusion. No? He says, taking a slurp from his Mule.

I bring his roommates untouched glass to my lips. Well, why did he order this and then immediately leave? Noah shrugs his shoulders in an I dunno and continues to slurp on his drink. Ok let’s go. He says. Oh, okay. So I chug mine and chug his roommates too. We walk towards his apartment, into his room, into his bed, I’m out of my clothes he’s holding me close WHEN HIS ROOMMATE BARGES INTO HIS ROOM. I FREEZE. He freezes. The three of us are all frozen in place. His roommate stands wordlessly in the doorway. The roommate does not move. I do not move. Noah covers me with a blanket and puts on his boxers and escorts him out of the room. I hear them through the door and Noah is so gentle with him. Are you alright ******? He says. No anger in his voice, just confusion. You can’t come into my room like that ******. Please don’t do that again, let’s just talk in the morning.

I’m laying there naked on my back, half-listening, half: scrolling through the notifications on his locked phone, BEING A PERVERT. THIS IS MY ONE CHANCE. ALONE WITH CRAZY NOAH’S PHONE. I’LL SHOW YOU CRAZY. GOD WHY IS IT LOCKED. I want to figure out his last name so that I can instagram stalk him later. No success. All I know is that his name is Noah (Not his actual name Obvi) & he is niche-ly FIT cancelled. Ladies if you have any leads, DM me. Saw a cute text from his dad and 4 DoorDash notifications & 3 Uber notifications and nothing else. In defense of my pervertedness/ phone snooping: I was piss drunk in the heat of the moment. I am not a serial phone snooper, unless provoked. I was only a phone snooper with REDACTED ‘cause I was provoked and I found exactly what I was looking for, which I actually did not want to see one bit. But I was provoked! I scream into the ethers. And then the cruelties of the world were presented to me (My Boyfriend Secretly Hated Me). So the cycle continued and I was provoked every week until he changed his password & I could no longer be a perv snooping through my boyfriend’s evil iPhone. No regrets. Kinda.

Noah & his roommate finally stop arguing & I hear his door click open and I click his phone off, shoving it far away from me, pretending to be fast asleep. He climbs into bed next to me & I stop pretending, drifting off into deep slumber…

Next morning. His room is bathed in light. His empty room. No furniture, no decorations, stark, empty white walls. He has a bed, a desk, and three stolen traffic cones sitting neatly in the corner of his room. Boy apartment. My eyes are crusted shut with mascara. Head is pounding. One too many shots of fernet. Memory flits back to the image of his roommate standing in the doorframe, staring at us, full cuck mode. Hands fly up to my face in horror. What are you doing? Noah groans, looking over at me with my fingertips splayed over my eyes. You don’t have curtains, and your room is so bright and I can’t believe that your roommate walked in on us last night. I yelp. I continue,

Does he do that? Just walk into your room?

No, never. He’s never done that before. He replies awkwardly.

I don’t know what to say to this so I say nothing, just kinda pouting. Feel exposed and vulnerable. He gets in the shower & I leave, walking down the street to mine. It’s 7 in the morning and the sun is beating down and the heat wave is flooding the city in flames.

When I come home I climb into my own bed and drift back off to sleep until noon. I wake up a few hours later, drenched in sweat with a scratchy throat & bloodshot eyes. Hot mess. I wash my face with ice cold water and make a mental note to PLEASE DO LAUNDRY THIS WEEK. Need to wash my towels. & bedding. Need more face wash and a new loofah and more toothpaste and some actual fuckin’ groceries please. Have been living like a cave woman with the excuse of Well I leave for LA next week but oh god next week huh? I leave for LA next week. Wow. I haven’t put much thought into that. I forgot about My LA Life. Why am I doing this again? It made a lot of sense in the moment when he offered for me to stay in his apartment and I felt desperate and SO grateful and it felt like such fate but now my arrival date is quickly approaching and I am just thinking, wait why the hell am I doing this?

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Sitting at Fable, my New Favorite Cafe. The one with the sleepy eyed barista & the plentiful couches and plentiful outlets and where my opps & opp-in-law’s are regulars but I DGAF ‘cause other than that, it’s perfect, perfect, perfect. I’m sitting here with the intention of getting work done on my computer but I am really just lounging around & slurping on a whole milk latte & thinking about Crazy Noah. Going on dates with him makes me feel kinda guilty. Like I’m dating someone who’s just maybe not all the way there.

New Friend told me a story about how she felt guilty when she dated a man who was maybe not all the way there, and my stories of Crazy Noah remind her of that man. Yikes. That man didn’t have a car so he would run everywhere. Like, she walked him to the door and he waved goodbye and started jogging away into the sunset. Like, on their first date she witnessed him put on tennis shoes and jog to the next bar. Brooklyn men.

This heat wave is tantalizing. My spirits would not be as twisted if I was not being fried to death. New York is in a bad mood. Everyone’s got permanent fixed frowns on their faces, sweat droplets down their backs. I stopped into a Whole Foods on my way here and tapped my card for an XL bottle of coconut water and then walked two more blocks and stopped into the Japanese market where I purchased a strawberry dessert sandwich that I scarfed down in 30 seconds. Now I’m here at the cafe, nursing a latte with whole milk, red in the face, the backs of my thighs sticking to my chair. I work the evening shift today so I’m biding time here in this cafe.

It’s hard to focus ‘cause I’m nervous about staying at redacted’s West Hollywood studio next week. Next week! I’m nervous to be in his space, be around his things, wanting to snoop like a perv but knowing better than to snoop like a perv. Speaking of pervs, last night I was out with Ruby & Amelie, and we bumped into Crazy Noah’s roommate! We were out at my second favorite bar, slinging back rum & cokes, when I’m theatrically retelling the moment he walked into the room, staring us down full cuck mode. I feel a tense gaze. I look over my shoulder & then whip my head back towards my best friends. “Guys, that’s him.” I whisper, eyes widened in disbelief. Not sure why I felt disbelief, he does live a 10 foot walk away. “Crazy Noah?” They respond, mouths parted. “NO! The pervert! The roommate!” I whisper back. We’re seated in a shoehorn shape around the bar: Ruby, Amelie, me, empty seat, empty seat, bar patron, empty seat, the pervert. He’s here alone, just drinkin’ to drink. I recognized his short cropped hair & wire rimmed glasses but wasn’t 100% sure that it was him until I heard him order a Mule & a shot. Yep, that’s him alright. The perv.

He begins to chat with a girl, also solo, who sits next to him, and Ruby mouths to me, HE’S STARING AT US. I mouth, really? And Ruby & Amelie vigorously nod their heads YES. I wait a few beats. Still staring? I whisper. They nod their heads again. I whisper, I want to be messy. So the girl sitting with him gets up to go to the bathroom & we suck down our drinks and as we’re leaving the bar, I tap the perverts shoulder.

Hi

Oh, hi.

I can’t read the expression on his face. Puzzled-anxious-indifferent, maybe. Or blank? Smug? Embarrassed? Delight? All? Neither? Unsure. Felt like I was witnessing a full range of emotions & nothing at all. Whatever it is, we exchange pleasantries and a good to see ya! And I skip away, arms interlocked with my Besties. The two of em spend the night and we snuggle close, Love Island playing on my laptop & love exploding from my chest. It’s our last night together before I’m back in LA. We hold hands & I tell them that I am in love with them, and I mean it. I am so in love with them. We exchange gifts, just ‘cause. No one mentioned having gifts for one another, and yet we each had little presents up our sleeves. Ruby gifts me a travel sketchbook with a sweet Safe Travels note attached, Amelie gifts me pens & a travel emergency kit & snacks & I think to myself, how did I get so lucky? I’m a very lucky lady indeed.