behave

I went through the car wash over the weekend.  During the week, when I’m running errands at lunch, I walked past my car three times, end up circling the parking lot.  It doesn’t look like it’s mine when it’s shiny.

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There’s a blizzard in the middle of March. My car crusts over. It’s easy to find in a parking lot.

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I don’t go out on Friday night, and then wake up at 8 on Saturday morning and am at the pool by 8:30.

“I would feel smug,” Casey says at 1:15 when we finally meet up for brunch. (“Brunch.”) “All day long, I’d be like, ha, I went swimming before nine.”

“I guess,” I said. “Mostly I’m just like what am I going to do for the rest of the day?”

I get bored and it’s the end of the world. I’m empty and my life is empty. It’s always been empty. It’s always going to be empty. I’m alone. All the days are the same. I start looking at volunteer postings. Maybe I should mentor a teenager.

I join a new gym. I start eating breakfast every day and always bringing lunches to work. I make dinner each night. It’s tiring and eventually I’m bored of that as well but I’ve managed every day for the past three weeks. It just takes one or two bad things to make me loathe myself but I need a whole lot of good behaviour if I’m going to justify myself to… myself.   I wake up in the morning and think I can’t get up; I was sad last night, but it was every night and there's never a reason to be sad.

At work, my boss is away for a week. I run a meeting with various consultants to start up a project. They’re all 15-30 years older than me, but they have to listen to me because my company pays them. I feel feintly accomplished, relieved to finally have something to talk about with my parents.  When I tell them,  they just ask when I`m going to start applying for a new job. They want me to move back to the west coast. They want me in another industry.

After brunch, one of my university friends, Elle, texts me that she’s having an early St. Patrick’s Day party. I won’t know anyone there, but I also don’t have any other plans, so I go.  She’s close enough to walk, but it’s bitterly cold and I take the subway. On autopilot, I get on the eastbound train, only realizing a few stops down that I’m meant to be going west.

When I finally get there, it’s me, Elle and her husband, and seven other couples.  One of the couples is twisted together on a loveseat and they don’t untangle at all through the night.

I end up in the kitchen with Elle and most of the other women. They’re skinny and beautiful, like actors the Toronto recast of The OC.  I’m drunk enough that I can still act sober: two rum and cokes at home while I get ready, an entire bottle of wine and an Irish bomb (Guinness and a shot of Baileys: delicious). I smoke up when I get home at the end of the night and write most of this blog post.

I’m really good with normal people. That’s how Karen puts it. She says it’s because I have straight hair and wear mascara. I do wear a lot of mascara, but sometimes I curl my hair with an iron.  I think it’s just that I’m good at making small talk.

They start talking about how this girl’s boyfriend hasn’t realized he’s gay yet.

“The guy with grey hair?” I ask.

Yeah.

It’s funny because everyone thought Elle’s now-husband was gay when we were in university. She’s taller than him.  One time the two of them came over to my place when we were heading to meet other people at a club and he talked about how his red scarf cost over $200. I think his parents are rich. I think her parents are rich. I think they’re happy together.

I get off the subway and walk all the way down the platform in the wrong direction because I’m used to taking the other train.  At home, I step into the elevator and press the button. I do a double take because it seems  I’ve pressed nine. Why the fuck did I press nine?  I live on the sixth floor.  I follow the line of numbers up. Four and then five and then nine….it was just that someone turned the six upside down. I pressed the right button. I get off on the right floor.  My dinner dishes are still on the table. I need to change the cat’s litter. There’s dirty laundry at the foot of my bed. I’m lazy and slobby and lonely. It’s going to be Monday soon. The weeks move faster than the days.