I knew I was being kidnapped as soon as I hopped in the car. I was too high to remember that it’s dangerous to take Ubers alone at night, and I was too high to figure out how to open the doors if I needed to throw myself out along the way. I had tachycardia for the nine minutes the ride lasted. These fucking cars. Everything that is modern lacks knobs, handles, and levers. Teslas, iPhones, and the Dyson Airwrap. Automatic doors. Segways. Dispensers with delay that release the soap just as you move your hand away, letting it fall to waste. They’re not modern. They’re stupid.
But it turns out I was being paranoid instead of kidnapped. So I opened the car door without trouble when I arrived at my destination, then opened the door to my building, then the elevator door that took me up to my floor, and then I opened the door to my apartment. I stood in the kitchen, unlocked my phone by just looking straight at its screen and typed a message. I sent happy birthday, and then come over.
…
He said he was happy to see me. That he never texted me even though he liked me because he was very proud but that he was happy to see me. He also said that a girl he was hooking up with found out we had seen each other recently and was a bit jealous.
“And what did you say?” I asked.
“That I can’t stop seeing you,” he replied. “You’re like my sister.”
I told him he couldn’t call me his sister because we did things that siblings shouldn’t do to each other, yet I got his point. We had been hooking up for three years now. It all felt very familiar. The only thing that actually kept this thing going was that we hated each other. That added the thrill.
We reminisced about the things we used to do, updated each other about our siblings, and realized how much time had gone by. I had called him for release, but it was all very depressing. He traced lines on my chest with his finger, and while staring at the ceiling, he said I looked different. I stared at the ceiling too and saw nothing but a white wall slowly turning blue with melancholy.
I had moved houses since the last time he visited me.
“What do you think of the new place?” I asked.
He noticed a faded photo of me at fourteen swimming with dolphins in Miami stuck to the wall and six teddy bears scattered across the floor. He said he didn’t like the windows. They were high up, close to the ceiling, impossible to look out of. They opened and closed mechanically with a button next to my bed. In my previous place, the windows were large and overlooked an avenue, but he hadn’t liked those either.
07/ 2022 I'm too lazy to set an alarm clock; instead, I leave the blinds open and let nature wake me. Some mornings, daylight pulls me back to when we used to do it together. I see your curls sprawled across my pillows, and my hand instinctively reaching for you under the covers while you stand up to go to the window. You light a cigarette and I stay in bed, watching you, watching the avenue below. You say it reminds you of Times Square. The first of all the times I’d hear about your parents’ New York apartment. You complain that the street lights make it hard to sleep at night and that during the day, the city’s hum is just too much. I’m confused because to me, I live in the most beautiful place in the world, but we are looking out the same window.
But I agreed with him on this one. Living in a room where you couldn't look out the window made it hard for me to remember what I was alive for. I never knew what time it was. I couldn't stick out my arm and guess the weather. Even if my guesses were completely wrong. I couldn't at least try. I couldn't make mistakes. I began to forget that there was a world where motorcycles crashed into cars, where teenagers lined up to buy bubble tea that tastes like shit just to feel that tingle on their tongues. Rain poured down on umbrellas and people walked to work and I was missing it. I forgot construction workers and scaffolding and hoardings. I forgot that the outside existed, and it was with me as much as I was with it. For whatever I wanted. To try and fail. To belong. To live in. I just had to see it.
I woke up five times during the night. Partly because of his snoring, partly because I didn’t feel well. Weed and drinks (and the almost-kidnap situation) had left me with that paralyzing tachycardia the evening before, still lingering as it worked its way out of my system. Yet each time I opened my eyes and saw his body next to mine in the dim light, I felt oddly reassured. I couldn't tell if it was because it was his body or merely the presence of a body. There. A body waiting for me to be alive in the morning.
He said the windows in my room were too high up and I knew that that was the reason I’d called him. I was feeling very lonely.
It took us three hours to get out of bed the next day. We were busy talking about nothing.
“I sometimes read what you write,” he said.
“And what do you think?” I asked.
“That you might overthink a bit.”
“Well, if I didn’t overthink, there’d be nothing to write about.”
He invited me to breakfast and took me to a gluten-free café. I ordered a tiny glass of five-euro orange juice instead of a cappuccino, just to add a bit of unpredictability. He didn’t notice and offered to pay. He joked that we’d probably end up married someday, and it wasn’t funny. If I couldn’t manage to get to know someone better than I knew him, then maybe that would be my fate. Looking for overpriced gluten-free cafés everywhere we went. Cleaning the kitchen obsessively, wiping down the counters making sure there was no trace of wheat. No crumb left behind. No pizza kebabs. No Midnight McDonald’s runs. No chocolate chip cookies, warm and gooey, with fillings that would drip onto our fingers during car rides. Time was running out, and I still had never learned how to drive. I saw that life for me and I hated it but for a second I thought about someone wanting to do all that with me and I thought it was lovely.
“It’s a joke,” he repeated.
“But would you marry me?” I asked.
“It’s a joke,” he repeated.
We pretended it wasn’t a joke for the half an hour that it took us to finish our breakfast and then parted ways to continue with our days. Or maybe lives, if we didn’t get married. We probably wouldn’t. We couldn’t. Like everything else in the world, we failed to ground it. Our love lacked knobs, handles, and levers. It was modern. It was stupid.
and that was painful.
This is very modern.