6th
In Search of Lost Time
When I was in college I did a study abroad in New Zealand the first half of my senior year. The semester there started and ended earlier than ours, so even after traveling to Fiji and Australia after classes were over there, I still ended up back home with a few weeks left before classes would be starting.
So when I moved into my apartment in the college town most of my friends were still with their families for the break. I remember those first couple of weeks as one of the most peaceful times in my life.
Every morning I would sleep in, fix myself some breakfast, then I would put some music on in my room and lie in my bed staring at the ceiling thinking and daydreaming and remembering for hours. I have never felt so good about so little before or since.
Eventually I would have some dinner and then walk around the corner to my friend Tony’s apartment around maybe 6. Tony was the ex-boyfriend of one of my best friends. They were on good terms and when everyone was in town we mostly hung out as a group. I had usually hung out with him via her. They had broken up while on a study abroad in London together the semester before I went to New Zealand, so I hadn’t even seen much of him in a long time.
I think it started off kind of awkwardly, our hanging out, because of all that, but we warmed up to each other very quickly. We would spend our evenings sipping beer and sometimes whiskey, listening to rockabilly, and just generally shooting the shit.
We maintained this routine for probably about a week, and it was a wonderful thing.
One night we broke routine by going out to “80s night” at one of the local bars with his anarchist friend Matt (who gave me a button that said “wage slave” which I still wear today). We drank a lot of whiskey in Tony’s apartment before going to the bar. We danced, and later that night somehow ended up collapsing into his bed together (his bed being a mattress on the floor). I don’t think he actually had sex, but there was some clothing taken off, and the next morning we parted ways terribly embarrassed.
That afternoon I got a phone call from Ian, a guy who I have often half-jokingly referred to as the love of my life. We had hooked up the prior year for what I had planned to be a one night stand but he had other ideas, and I immediately fell for him hard. We were only together for a couple weeks when he mysteriously decided he was “too crazy for a relationship.” I was drunk when he told me and I remember my response being “well it’s a little late for that now.” He was the one who had insisted that this was something special after our first night together and had convinced me as well, and now after I was completely taken in he was backing out. My angry drunk arguments did not convince him that he was wrong, surprisingly enough.
He had given the “just friends” line and I made it clear I was taking it literally. I called him the next day laughing because I had gotten high and then went to attend a philosophy lecture, which ended up being cancelled, but I had run into another philosophy student (who was probably always high) and he asked me what I was going to do after I graduated and I had just seen Office Space so I told him “probably manual labor.” That got Ian laughing despite himself and within a few days we were hanging out regularly again, sans the sex. This started a months long agonizing friendship that I like to call a “emotional relationship”—all the baggage of a relationship without the physical part.
We hung out almost every day, and he often stopped by in the mornings, sometimes even waking me up. We spent hours upon hours gently arguing literature and writing. He had a manual typewriter and read a lot of Kerouac. I wrote a fake poem on his typewriter about how I was cool and beat because I was writing on a typewriter, and then fell in love with the feel of writing on a typewriter. I still want one, but never get around to finding one.
At the end of the semester he went on vacation and said he would call when he got back but I knew he wouldn’t. Before he left things had gotten strained between us and we were both frustrated and even though we talked and talked for hours we never talked about the important things like how we felt about each other. Once we were going to a party and he was telling me something and I was obviously only half listening and he suddenly yelled “but you don’t even care do you because YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING.” I stared at him stunned but didn’t say anything. I had been drinking all of that day. We went to the party and someone wanted me to call my apartment to get somebody else to come. I tried dialing my apartment probably 3 or 4 times but couldn’t remember the number, that’s how drunk I was. Disgusted and angry and confused, I told him I was too drunk and going home. He looked deep into my eyes and said it seemed like there was something I wanted to tell him. I shrugged and walked away.
He called me once a few days after he left for vacation, and we talked for a few minutes. Then nothing. He didn’t return my calls or my emails. I gave up but spent hours every day thinking about him, heartbroken like I didn’t know it was possible to be. I didn’t hear from him again until probably about 6 months later, near the end of my time in New Zealand. He had dropped out and I think was living in his home town. We began corresponding erratically and he told me he wanted to come by the college town to visit and collect some things he had left there.
After I left Tony’s the morning after we half-hooked up, hungover and confused, I went to my place and fell back asleep. I woke up to my phone ringing, and when I answered it, it was Ian. He said he was visiting. Tomorrow.
I debated for a long time that night whether I should go to Tony’s, and if I did, whether to say something. I was sure we had made a drunken mistake and I was sure he thought so too. I went over there probably a little later than my usual time, and we pretty much repeated the same routine as usual, only of course much more awkwardly. I told him about Ian coming to visit, and wondered whether Tony would feel jealous. We didn’t talk about what had happened between us.
The next afternoon I was lying in bed listening to music and daydreaming, when the phone rang. It was Ian. “Where are you?” I said. “Standing in a snow bank” he said. He was down the street at the bus station. I went down and met him. We went to some random person’s house who had been storing his stuff in his garage. I needed some dishes for my apartment and Ian had a bunch in this person’s garage so I took some plates and bowls and a really beautiful cup. Ian wasn’t able to collect most of his stuff from the garage since he didn’t have a car, but he wanted me to take his hippy bongo drum because he was afraid he wouldn’t make it back to the garage and he didn’t want it to disappear. I kept it for a long time even though I thought it was stupid, then eventually I gave it to a friend who I think still has it. I still have the dishes. We went to my apartment and had sex that was so passionate that we broke the bed and still continued. I think he left the next day. He was going to NYC to visit someone else and there was some talk of me going too but it wouldn’t work out for some reason the logic of which I forget, but essentially boiled down to this: it wasn’t meant to be. One of my friends (Tony’s ex) came back to the college town that day and the four of us watched The Simpsons at her place. Ian had to leave for NYC. I walked him out. When I came back I was blinking away tears and couldn’t laugh at any of the jokes on The Simpsons. Tony said he’d never seen me so emotional, and that this guy must be someone special. All I could do was nod.
Postscript: Tony and I ended up hooking up again, and again, until we ended up in a long term relationship which I eventually broke off for no good reason.
