This is an essay about timing.
I don’t write anymore. I can’t read as much as I used to, either. It’s tough reading someone else’s sentences and wondering if I’d be able to write something as good. Everyone writes better than I do.
Things are getting better. I quit my job to do something I love. I don’t wake up and hate all the decisions I’ve made that led me here. I’ve paid my dues to America. I’ve paid them in lost memories with those I left back home. I’ve paid them in silence after offensive jokes. I’ve paid them in patience. I’ve paid them in moments when I wondered if I still had it in me. Now I can breathe.
Things are better but leave me alone. I am grieving how long I waited for things to get better. It still takes some time for the serotonin to kick in in the mornings. I pull the curtains and there’s light but New York is weird. It’s never as bright as I want it to be during the day. And it’s never dark enough at night. It’s always a compromise.
I told a man I want to make it work with him. Timing’s bad apparently so we’re friends. Timing is everything in life, a billionaire once told me. Billionaire’s dad was in the news a few months later for allegedly getting a happy ending at a massage parlor. He forgot to also tell me that when it rains, it pours.
I tested positive for Covid last week. All those months I hid in my apartment, I was certain I’d feel the virus in me if it found me. I almost shat my pants when it did and thought it was food poisoning. I sat in my bathroom for 3 hours and played the Sims while my ass warmed up the toilet seat. A week later I found out that was Covid. I stayed up a few nights and wondered if I’d drop dead all of a sudden. Just as my grandpa did last year.
Timing is everything. And I’m okay.
The city called me to ask a few questions. Do I have any family members that I can list as emergency contacts? No, so I gave them my best friend’s info. He is my contact for everything I do. He hates it. If something happens to me, he will be the one to deal with the mess and it will be a big mess. I haven’t even decided where I want to be buried. I should thank him and buy him his favorite six-pack or something. It’s a lot to ask of someone.
I must have done something right, though, because people around me are very nice. So many of them reached out to see if I needed anything. Food? Drinks? Medicine? A vibrator, I said. I’m bored out of my mind. I made good friends in the past year. Within 24 hours I had a new vibrator.
The Promenade smells like fresh-cut grass today. There’s a relentless bee wandering by my bench. It doesn’t know climate change is coming for it first. Manhattan doesn’t care. It looks the same. Brooklyn is home.
I want someone to fuck my brains out so that for a second I forget where I am and make that place my own. I know people will always tell me who they think I am but no one can fuck me into belonging. My latest Covid test listed me as “multiracial” based on I don’t know what. I chuckled. I’d have gone with “exotic.” But don’t listen to me. I’m always in my goddamn head.
My notes app is full of crap that I thought was smart. Fuck all those moments I thought I figured it out. Fuck everything that won’t let me live in peace. Fuck the tweet about how propping up your phone with your pinky is bad for you. (I know!) Fuck the hurricane that ruined the small boat I wanted to buy. Fuck you if you try to bring me down.
I haven’t moved in months but my ex is still my emergency contact for SoulCycle. I want him to find out first if I decide to work out and die on a fancy bike. A parting gift delivered right on time.
