"Only the Night was Watching..."

I’m convinced that those of us who find ourselves staring idly at Facebook, scrolling up and down the news feed so often that there aren’t any new updates, the same assortment of “Look at how much I eat, I’m so fat” skinny girls and the high-brow look at-this-New-Yorker-article-I’m well read okay and the non-chalant personal achievements and the sardonic stories of small misfortune meant for entertainment and the you know you’re sleep deprived when… and repeat political updates I HAVE IMPORTANT VIEWS and the sports commentaries and oh-so-subtle bragging about possibly important internships and jobs, have absolutely nothing going on in our lives. That we somehow get pulled into the internet in hopes that something will happen that’s greater than anything that will happen in the real world. I’m not talking about the people responsible for the latter list of updates, but we who log into facebook over and over and over again, even in a room full of good company, friends that are with us so that we don’t need to see them on the internet. Waiting for little red boxes to tell us that something new and exciting has happened. I have nothing going on in my life and so Facebook kind of numbs that for a few moments and makes me feel otherwise. I know this and yet, after I finish typing this up, I’m certain I’ll check my own again.

And somehow he found himself, fresh from a nap, sitting there with his cell phone on his lap. Just sitting there, wondering. He had, somehow, forgotten the first three numbers of New Jersey cell phone numbers, the 419 if you’re in Ohio, or the 650, or 415, or 626 or some other assortment for codes in California or 347, 917, 718 for New Yorkers. It was something with two 2’s, maybe 202 because 212 was for Manhattan landlines.

This seemed especially relevant but also not relevant at all that he would be thinking of New Jersey in the first place, which has nothing remarkable about it except for the birth of the Jonas Brothers and Bon Jovi and also there’s Bamboozle there every year. But She was from New Jersey, putting it on the map in his mind in the first place.

They met one night out of the blue, at one of those gatherings where no one knows anyone except who they’ve come with, which was no one in either of their cases. They had spoken for two minutes. He asked her to go on an adventure; it was that kind of night in that particular part of his life, a kind of desperate night where one throws his hands up in the air or firmly scrunches them in his jacket pockets and says why not ask this strange girl I just met to go on an adventure after two minutes of conversation. Green light.

They had run around Manhattan for an hour. Drank vodka in a stranger’s room. She sat on his lap, and nothing he said could possibly be wrong. It was that kind of night.

They whispered intense things to each other in the dark, maybe. She couldn’t see him again, she said. Bluff. He visited her the next night. It was raining. “You shouldn’t have come here. I’ve missed you,” voice laced with honey, her hands on his chest.

That became their thing: You-shouldn’t-have-come-visits in the rain. That and paradoxical statements. “You can’t come here. I’ve missed you.” and “You need leave. Come back soon though, okay?” and “I’m not interested in you. But you’re totally my type.” It happened quickly, wrapped him up.

Violent flames burn out quickly.

He saw her the following October. Platonically. Just held each other for a bit. It was the winter time, when the city gets a certain sleepiness about it, especially in certain areas at certain times of night, which gives the streets that electric kind of quiet, the kind of quiet you feel when you walk, alone, through huge libraries or forbidden places. It set the scene rather nicely, he thought.

They drank wine and played Xbox. She played lots of Xbox. That’s probably what did it. Or her collection of comic book posters and weird doo dads she kept for some reason or other, presumably for sentimental value, like the text messages she would receive which she saved so many of that her inbox was perpetually clogged with messages, rendering her phone unable to receive messages until many hours later. This would be important, in one of those funny ways, like the first three digits of New Jersey cell phones.

They went out that night. She changed her pants in front of him. Platonically. “Don’t peek.” Oops. No, that’s definitely what did it. “I haven’t felt like this in a while, I forgot how it feels and I don’t know how to fix it,” he phones a friend. “You have to move on!” friend says. Solid advice. Friend is right. Friend secretly dates her.

They stayed close, the two friends. He and She on the other hand…he had his cell phone in his lap, fresh from a nap, piecing together her number from memory, if only for old time’s sake.

So Charles continues.

If African children suffer hardships together, then one could argue that they have a better life than certain other people. Than those who are completely alone and desperate. Which is a sad thing to say that if kids with no money or food or water are having a better existence than some thriving, well fed, financially stable people who maybe are not so thriving after all.

Loneliness then, surely that’s a pretty awful thing to feel. Loneliness and desperation and..well there are lots of things that are as bad as death or physical pain and that type of thing.

So maybe one shouldn’t feel guilty about being miserable about his existence when there’s so much opportunity around him or her. Maybe it’s come to that. Like, famine and poverty are problems that developing nations face and then, when they get over that they face other kind of concerns. Depression and anxiety and - will you cut it out Charles, if you’re not gonna say anything quit glancing at her, you creep.

Sometimes, when seated for long periods of time or waiting idling with no book to read and nothing to do, times like this one, Charles sees, or thinks he sees maybe, women like THAT glance over, and maybe smile. Maybe it’s his imagination but if he’s going to keep imagining, they’re going to talk real soon. Maybe she’ll drop something and he’ll pick it up and she’ll be oh so grateful and they’ll talk and she’ll see how interesting and nice he is. Or maybe he’ll drop something and she’ll pick it up, and immediately he’ll know she’s kind so that’s a lovely start to a relationship. Funny telling that to their kids huh? We met on a train, kids. Like a How I Met Your Mother episode.

Sometimes, Charles gave people stories. Backgrounds and qualities, like they were characters in a book or a movie.

This morning, he got on an elevator in his hotel, the kind of ambiguous building that protagonists often reside in for some reason. Gorgeous woman gets on. Short black hair, dancing eyes, which is a description that people only use when they try to sound fancy in prose, which is what I’m doing now.

Guy gets on. Good-looking in an every-man sort of way, the sort of way that protagonists look in books and movies. The two of them make eye contact for a split second, enough for Charles

Okay Charles is a terrible name. I’m sorry if your name is Charles but like…does anyone even go by Charles anyway? If for some unfortunate reason you’re named Charles, I’m sorry, but don’t you go by Charlie anyway? I harken back to Charles from my Italian class and if you’re reading this for some strange reason, Charles, I’m really sorry. Your name suits you and I mean, you obviously made a huge impact on my life so flattering.

The two of them make eye contact for a split second, enough for Ethan, which is now Charles’ name since I just watched Mission Impossible, to construct some background for the two that goes kind of like:

The girl’s name is Alice, which suits her. She’s the intellectual type who thrives in the city. She’s an orchestra violinist who’s actually really, really great at what she does. Unfortunately, that hasn’t really mattered for her as far as getting a job goes which is the reason that she just gets by, though happily, working as a paralegal. One day she’ll get paid for her music or something, it doesn’t really matter. She’s happy. She can’t cook though. Well, she can because she can learn most things quickly but she just doesn’t enjoy it and so Chipotle does in fact get tiring, even if you load your burrito with a different combinations of meat and salsas.

The guy’s name is..

Charles is on a train. For him, it’s a day like every day and any day, the kind of day that happens to every single person on this Earth, or maybe just in rich first world countries that have problems that are different than poverty or famine or that type of thing, problems like insecurities and self-doubt and all that pop-psychology “believe in your self!!” kind of stuff.

Little African kids, the kind you see on help the world kind of infomercials, surely don’t worry about being too fat. Do they worry about being too skinny. Probably. On account of being too skinny means starvation is a possibility but not on account of oh no my wardrobe will look so baggy on me and then how will I attract members of the opposite sex.

Some economists and experts in geopolitics and that kind of thing suggest that sending money to developing countries is actually not the best thing to do and might actually be a terrible thing to do because it aids the corrupt governments who will inevitably take the money intended for the starving people and because it stalls economic development and starts civil wars and that type of thing. This is very reassuring to anyone who sees those infomercials and will probably never give a dime to some kind of international aid foundation but feels bad for some reason anyway.

It’s not really fair to say that if you’re not a starving kid in Africa, you have a cushy life so shut up and please stop feeling bad for yourself, nuisance. Because what if you’re a starving kid in Latin America. Or what if you’re a grown man dying slowly and painfully in a country that’s not Africa or Latin America, which is not actually a country, but maybe China or the U.S or some other developed nation, from a mutation of your cells born from all of the trans-fat inject food you’ve been eating all your life.

Or just healthy food but drinking water tainted with factory bi-products.

Or what if the first sixty years of your life were wonderful and happy but now you’re alone in a hot, dark bedroom with no surviving family or friends and every day of your life is spent trying to make the day go by faster with reruns of soap operas and Rachel Ray. You somehow watch enough of Rachel until you’re bored enough to go to bed or furious that someone like that gets her own television show so you turn to take it out on…well there’s no one really to share your thoughts with so why have them anyway. And so you retire for the evening and hopefully wake up late enough tomorrow so that there’s less time to kill before bed time.

Charles should probably visit his grandpa soon, he thinks on that train. He is trying to think about real things, important things and not about the classily-dressed woman sitting across from him because they might as well live in separate worlds and guys like Charles DO NOT have successful interactions with ladies like THAT so put your head down, Charles and make the most of this commute. Time is precious after all.

I ran into this girl from my old Writing the Essay Class today. She’s the type of person who was kind enough to me that I’m pleased to see her but the type of person that I don’t really know anything about so I never know what to talk about with except “I’m so tired” and “Finals are killing me.”

We took the bus together and she held my sushi because my hands were full and while the girl behind me kept falling into me from the momentum of the crowded bus, she told me how she’s one of 3 females working for this huge accounting conglomerate in Pakistan because they’re not too fond of women over there. Then she told me that her parents were going to arrange her marriage for her so hopefully it’s someone good.

God, I really hope so too.

“Si sente quando qualcuno sorride perche ci sei tu anche se non lo vedi o e’ buio: l’aria diventa caramellata.” - Pecore Vive da Carola Susani

Or roughly (I think):

“You can feel it when your company makes someone smile, even if you can’t see it or it’s dark: the air becomes caramelized.”

I like this so much.

I’m translating 60 pages of a book right now for my Italian class and it’s almost midnight and I’m kind of at peace.

I’m in Starbucks and the girl next to me is reading David Foster Wallace for her Writing the Essay Class, which is cool because I just got off my phone with my mother an hour ago and told her to purchase “Infinite Jest” for me with some fancy discount she has at Barnes and Noble. I love when things form perfect circles. I spoke to her for a bit about how that class changed my life even though I hated it because it introduced me to writing as I see it. I don’t think she cared very much, but let’s just be real, I’m using her for an introduction so she can think whatever she pleases with little harm done to me.

People care too much about what everyone else thinks. Is that cliche’? Maybe. But like “Practice makes perfect” and whatever other cliche’s are out there, it holds true. One time I had to fart on a subway and I waited until I was safely outside of the car and it made me think, what will possibly happen if I just took care of my business inside of the subway car? The answer is that I will be judged harshly by people I’ll never see again, which is stupid because everyone farts and also because I’ll never see any of those people again. And then, even if someone wanted to say something, he or she wouldn’t, because we’re conditioned to keep our mouths shut and not say anything to strangers.

The scary part is that if let’s say instead of farting, I decided to harass an elderly person next to me or annoy a car full of people by break-dancing in a confined space, you’d have a tricky situation in which people would look at me in disgust and maybe say nothing at all.

If they do say something, they’re called heroes and sometimes they even get media coverage. Good job saying what you’re thinking. You and Martin Luther King Jr. are basically the most heroic people I know.

~

I’m sure many people have reflected on the pain you feel when you’re walking with your grande iced mocha that cost you 5 dollars and you have to step over a quiet homeless man sleeping on the sidewalk who might actually use that money to get something to eat because if he wanted to buy drugs he would probably be one of those rambunctious homeless people instead. The words “passive” and “defeated” come to mind but maybe he’s stronger than anyone I know. This is more likely the case because I’m going to do what everyone else does and just push these thoughts to the back of my head and make excuses while I continue to enjoy my beverage.The problem with what I just said is that I’m reflecting on the pain I feel, which somehow makes it sound like I’m the victim in this scenario when there’s a man sleeping on the ground. I blame society.

~

There are few things I’d rather wake up to than a beautiful girl and one of those things is a pastrami sandwich from Katz’s deli, which I bought last night at 1:30 and had to take half home so I didn’t get sick. Good morning.

Although to be fair, I haven’t done laundry in a while, and so when you have no towels to dry yourself, you have to use the one that girl used when she stayed over your place last week. And by stay over your place last week, I mean slept in your bed. And by slept in your bed, I mean she slept in my bed and I slept in an air mattress next to her.

So now I’m torn between the sandwich on my table and the smell of the lotion she rubbed down her legs with, which is not only on the towel I’m using but also on the T-shirt she wore to bed, which I’m wearing now. And so maybe it’s a tougher competition than I thought between waking up to pastrami and waking up to a girl.

Smell is the strongest link to memory I’ve heard over and over again and actually talked about with my good friend, Troy before this phenomenon occurred. The fact that her scent lingered in my bed for four days was kind of nice because if everyone wore that lotion, I think there would be no more wars because everyone would be too busy making babies with the first person they saw. The con of this is that the combination of no wars and a surplus of babies being born would exhaust the world’s resources.

Lack of resources. That’s how I felt that night. Helpless kind of. Castration comes to mind but only because I spent the next half hour trying to figure out how to bound over the 6 inch chasm that separated my island of an air mattress and my bed.

The first problem in this scenario is that this girl is sleeping on my bed. I took the air mattress to be a gentleman, but let’s be real, that’s not why this type of thing happens because my friend Andrea sleeps over many a night, and I always get the bed.

I like chivalry very much but sometimes I can’t help but feel that I’m sucked into doing the things I do because everything I’ve seen on TV and movies tells me that’s what I’m supposed to do or because I have some hidden agenda.

The second problem in this scenario, the greater problem and the reason that I ever write anything at all is because that “6 inch chasm between my air mattress and my bed” is actually more than that, if we’re going to metaphorical and intelligent. It’s a chasm between desire and action that’s filled with an irrational fear, a chasm that I’ve made quite large in the weeks leading up to this night with my inaction, the chasm that I’m convinced most people feel every single day in a variety of scenarios that makes the concept of free, independent beings into a giant joke.

I went to an all boys high school with 200 kids in my graduating class. It was actually a pretty fun time except that it didn’t prepare me for certain situations, like warm weather in a co-ed college and the pain it causes both my neck and my father after he sees my grades.

I changed friend groups like 4 or 5 times before finally ending up with Matt, my cousin and longtime best friend, and Frankie, who spent all his money on Yugioh cards and did not leave his house until the junior year.

I was kind of dissatisfied with my number of friends sometimes, mostly because I always wanted to go out and meet people and live like my life was a TV show while my few friends were content not doing that kind of thing. Also, if all your friends are guys and you’re a straight male, you can’t fall in love alla Hermione-Ron.

But having a small group of friends was also awesome, because you get to become really close with a few people instead of not-so-close with a lot, which is much less valuable in the long-run. And since Frankie previously spent his whole life inside before hanging out with me and Matt, he was kind of grateful for sun exposure and for our company. And also I could cry thinking about the nice things Matt and Frankie have done for me. 

I started hanging out with my friend Steve in the spring of senior year, so just in time for us to not be in high school anymore but also in time to come to prom in our limo, where we bonded and became best friends. Steven is both handsome and makes me laugh very hard and very often. He also has a car and really, really, likes girls and Paramore so after meeting Steve, my life got infinitely better, obviously. The summer before college was the four of us having grand adventures in Steve’s car, which is still my favorite place in the world.

My life was getting more TV-show-esque. It wasn’t really there yet but college was coming, so it would get there, obviously.

~

The making-friends environment at NYU is more difficult than one would imagine, made worse by the fact that there are so many people here and so if you don’t have friends it turns into, what’s wrong with me how can I not relate to anyone here? And the answer to that is that people here, or maybe people everywhere, are really, really, really, pretentious and fake and so everyone you end up meeting in the first month of school is decidedly lame.

Except Troy.

I met Troy at orientation. I spent the day being friend-zoned by the first two girls I liked in college, this super smart, artsy girl from Connecticut and this really tall girl named Deanna, who actually turned out to be a model so good taste all around.

Like everyone else during that time, I was as social as I’ve ever been in my life and so meeting people was the easiest thing on this Earth and so why did I not find anyone that I liked enough to be friends with?

Perks of the situation: When you are lonely you start to do lame things like make conversation with your tour guide and then some other kid in your exact same position will hear you and jump in on the conversation and you two will start a bro-ship that lasts two years and counting.

That was Troy.

I thank God every day that in that big mess of people spanning 5 orientation sessions, I somehow met a Catholic from Ohio with as much appreciation for the fairer sex and as much disdain for pretentious people as me. We lived together for a year and everything was wonderful.

Except for the worst two weeks of my life, which I should preface by saying that I have and have always had a great life, so this is nothing compared to detention camps in North Korea. But Troy and I stopped hanging out for a short period of time, for some reason. And I was simultaneously seeing my first almost-girlfriend of college. And so when you lose your best friend while seeing your first almost-girlfriend, you may or may not turn into a clingy sap, which will then get you to lose your almost-girlfriend as well.

~

Things can get pretty dark, pretty quickly when you’re alone in New York City. You look out your window or you walk down the street and you see people, thousands and thousands of people in every direction, and they might as well be empty shells. Because they’ll never know who you are and you’ll never know them.

And if you stop to look at groups of friends sitting in coffee shops or doing homework together in the library, you’re gone. And does the weather actually follow your moods or is this just your imagination? What went wrong and how did you end up there and most importantly, how do you get out?

You find a person. A single person. Maybe he’s in the same situation as you. And maybe you can pull each other out. Because once you have a single person, you have someone to go to concerts and dinners with. And then you can invite new people to join you. And in the next instant, you’re alive and thriving and you will never go back to that fragile state.

I met Rob. We were both lost souls. And then we weren’t.

~

No one deserves to stay in that dark place. And nothing has made me happier to say “join us” to those who ended up there. So here we are. And in my head we’re the crew of Serenityor Star Trekor some other ensemble cast, the most beautiful and talented and intelligent people that exist.

~