Apparently, I decided to take some time off after Thanksgiving.
It's a lot of things - the holiday season is upon us, and apparently, I've decided to try and make a serious go of working in the coffee biz, with the encouragement of my boss and her boss as well. The weird thing is, it's not that I have nothing to say; I'm feeling particularly energized, just now. Just too busy to write.
Also, Chanukah was early this year.
So, getting back to it has been a challenge, but here I am, for the weekend, visiting my old pal J. in B.
It's always weird, coming back to my old home town; sitting in the mall food court - which didn't exist when I was in high school - seeing the familiar expressions and atiitudes of what it was to be a teenager in this neck of the woods. I don't live this life anymore - not exactly - but the familiarity of it was both odddly reassuring and thoroughly disconcerting.
I've been thinking, a bit, about my high school experiences, particularly in these days of worries about gay teen suicides and the appeal of "it gets better" (when, honestly, I'm not sure it does; it gets different... but not necessarily better). It's easy for gay people - especially my age or a little older - to rewrite the years of teen angst as, well, angst-ier than they were. It wasn't necessarily fun being weird and gay and different... but truth be told (at least when I try to be honest with myself about it), mostly things were pretty okay and, in retrospect, nothing all that bad actually happened.
The thing about visiting J - or writing over e-mail, as we do, mostly, these days - is finding a kindred spirit. We didn't know each other during our high school experiences, but the commonalities still shine through. Towson, gay, preppy... too smart for our own good.... these things define us, join us. It's not all of who we are, especially these days; but those touchstones are what help make us who we are.
It's easy and reductive to say this is all "old friends... aren't they great?" It's more than that, for me, anyway. It feels like, well, I'm seventeen again; like I'm looking not at life as it is today, but the shadows of a life I led twenty, thirty years ago - with all these ghosts hovering around me. I can say that now, and oddly, it doesn't sting like they said it would (that said, I can't imagine turniong 50, as I will, in 5 years).
I just don't have a lot of interest for living in the past; I don't want, or need, to go back and revisit this past life, those old feelings. It's not uncomfortable, it doesn't dredge up a lot of bad memories... but I left this place and went on to do other things. In the conversation we're having (real time!), about how rambling and all over the place this piece seemed as I began to write it (i.e. a few sentences ago), J asks, "is the point of this piece that it's great to have lots of good sex in your twenties?" Yes. Yes, it is... but that's not all of it. Not exactly, anyway. I mean... if that were all, I too, would go on You Tube to tell the kids "It gets better!" And how. But that - like the mythical gay land - is not the whole of this story, not the whole of my story. I live in a different place now; not the physical place.... but the life of the mind, and the heart, I thought, for a long time, that I liked feeling, always, that I was still seventeen. And here it is, feeling like I'm actually seventeen, again... and I don't think I need to stay here that long.
(And, at this point, I must say "Thanks!" to J for his attentive edits to this post; he's offered to provide the service full-time, for a small fee.... when I can afford him.)
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