Breadcrumb #192
ALLEN GUY WILCOX
Every one is free on Saturday, or busy with friends—family staying with them over the long weekend. Wedding in Vermont. Wedding in San Francisco. Wedding in Brooklyn. Wedding at your parents’ farm.
Coffee with your best friend—coffee with an old friend you haven’t seen in forever. Coffee with someone from college. Drinks with someone from high school, someone you haven’t seen in a million years.
Friends visiting from France—sister’s boyfriend’s family in town. Work drinks. Work dinner. Work coffee. Tinder date. Bumble fuck. Date with someone I met on OKCupid and stayed with three years. Date with a woman I met online and moved in with.
She’s moved out. She drove cross country. I took over the lease. I was upstate, she was in St. Louis, visiting her brother, his wife, their kids. Brunch with my folks. Brunch with my Tinder date from last night. Brunch with my gays. Day drinking with my gays.
Day drinking with my best friend. Day drinking with my brother. Day drinking with my sister and her husband. Day drinking with somebody I met at a bar. You know she grew up in the next town over? Small world.
Everybody’s on the phone, looking something up. Everyone is pledging allegiance to regular digital detox. Everyone’s at work, Yelping their favorite restaurants. Everyone’s at work, hoping to get cut. Really need the money. Everybody really needs the money.
Everybody really needs the money but if I have to be here one more hour I’m going to lose my nerve. I’m going to rip my fucking hair out. I’m going to set this place on fire. Seriously, I don’t blame myself. Name me one person in New York who can save money.
I blink my eyes and I’m nineteen again, on my vision quest. I’m listening to tapes in the car, I’m waiting for somebody to call me back. I’m waiting for someone to cold call me, the girl from the cafeteria. It was unmistakable the way she looked at me and then away.
I am waiting for my parents to bail me out. I’m waiting for whomever it is who controls who gets what money when to remember me in a kind of eureka moment. Everyone is waiting outside the restaurant. The man in the gray suit drank a lot and hailed an Uber.
I blink my eyes and I’m at the bar again, having a glass of beer waiting for my girlfriend to get out of yoga and my brother to walk down from his place so we can go to Riis Beach. So we can go to the Whitney. So we can get classed up and go to Monkey Bar.
I’m waiting for my girlfriend to get out of work and for Andrew to get out of his tennis lesson so we can go to the 92nd Street Y for a conversation with the head of the Joint Cheifs of Staff. With Obama’s second in command, with a former deputy press secretary.
I’m waiting for my ex-girlfriend so we can go to Grand Central, so we can go to Cape Cod, so we can stay at our rich friends’ place on the Vineyard, so we can go to couples therapy. So we can stay together despite the fact we’re both deeply uncertain about it.
Everyone is reeling from a breakup, unsure about someone new. Looking for someone. Looking for a little something. Back to checking my horoscope, apparently the sun is in conjunction with Venus in Leo and the bather in the sacred pond went too deep.
I-Ching says I should have expected as much. Who knew—when I was a boy and first started to fall in love—that one day I could erase a morning, saturated in pics of lonely women, 5-10 miles from my current location? Erase an evening. Erase a weekend.
Everyone’s a sarcastic whisky drinker in search of a goofball partner in crime. The balsamic moon encourages reflection. Everyone’s a wine-loving all-around nerd. Heaven has withdrawn its mandate. Bonus points for beards. To this we must reconcile.
Lana left the sofa and enough glassware for a dinner party. Lana left the mattress and several towels. Lana left for another life in California. You know who else lives there?
You won’t believe it when I tell you. Seriously though, I know, right? Small world.