Into the void...
“That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void. There was nobody who could help her. Nobody in the world. They were all on something, mad, possible enemies, dead.”
-Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
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2003-07-12
9:05 p.m.
When I was in college, I had three roommates. The first year’s roommate was the girl I didn’t pick and didn’t like and got stuck with out of all the possible combinations in the world. Never did we try to believe that we liked one another. We attempted to be cordial, but after the tenth time that she told told me I was going to get fat from eating crackers with peanut butter on them and after I went into my dorm room once to find her standing naked in the middle of the room and after I heard her and her boyfriend having sex while they thought I was asleep and after she tried to convince me it was my fault that she cheated on her boyfriend, we determined that it was better to ignore each other’s existence.
The second roommate was a coworker who I had many of my most memorable experiences with. She and I spent most of our days drinking and partying, doing whatever necessary to forget the usual humdrum existence of class and work, class and work. We had some great times, and she is always who I think of when I think of the person I had the most fun with during college.
My third roommate was a girl I worked with who was an artist that I really didn’t have all that much in common with, but we got along quite well, and we appreciated that we stayed out of each others’ way. We hung out occasionally and were friends only when we felt like watching Buffy together or having the very rare night out on the town when neither of our outside friends were around. Out separate circles of friends were very separate.
Tonight, Rob and I went to this place called Fajitas ‘N Ritas. It is a place, believe it or not, that Psychobitch recommended to me many years ago. She recommended it to me because she knew how much I liked to eat nachos and drink alcohol. Well, I probably should’ve realized that I would not enjoy the place, seeing as how the food has no taste and the drinks are quite watered down.
Nevertheless, I was drunk when I left, and I found myself in the mood to talk to my old friends from school.
I got home and asked Rob to make me a whiskey sour because he makes the most awesome whiskey sours, and I decided to try and call the two roommates that I still think of as friends. Well, I ended up making five phone calls. Twice, I got the message that one roommate’s number had been disconnected without further information. I finally decided to call her at her parents’ house because there have been many times when I’ve tried to find her and finally had to call her parents to figure out where she was. When I tried to call the other ex-roommate, I got a disconnected message once and the number of her work pager. So, I left her a page at work and I’m sure she probably doesn’t recognize the number since I never call her or anyone else.
I hate calling people. I hate phones. But how else are you supposed to get ahold of people?
When I finally got the one roommate at her parents’ house, she was literally in the middle of a going away party because she’s about to move to Denver. I’m in Boston. She’s moving to Denver. This is disturbing not only because it’s so far away and I had no idea, but also because if there was one place I could pick to move, it would be Denver. The other roommate has yet to call me back.
I hate my friends. I hate myself.
How is it possible that I have no friends? I was seriously thinking I’d call them up and get them all together so that we could have a nice outing to the goth club for the first time in many years because that’s the one thing I can think of that would make me feel young, and then I find that all my friends have moved without even letting me know where the hell they’re moving to. Fuck me for not following up with them sooner, but fuck them for not letting me know.
Goddammit.
Usually, I try and censor what I write just a little bit so that no one will get offended, but this time I don’t fucking care. I’m miserable and lonely, despite the fact that I have Rob. I love Rob, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that I miss my friends. The last time I tried to get together with a friend, I missed him by a few minutes because Rob and his friend decided they didn’t feel like sitting around waiting anymore.
Goddamn I wish I was still young and miserable instead of old and miserable. I might not have been happy during college, but at least I had a few things going for me. Now it’s all just a pile of unmitigated misery. I keep trying to tell myself that things are going well and things are good, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t know if I’m ready to have a full-time job and be miserable, to be taking classes and be miserable, to be working towards the fulfillment of something I don’t really believe in.
No matter what I do, I’m still miserable.
