Renting A U-Haul At Midnight
Fort Reno, Washington, D.C.
I watched you as you said goodbye to your dreams. You weren’t aware that you were saying goodbye or if you were it wasn’t the kind of awareness that you would share with me. We would meet at a dive bar we had outgrown and drink black label and eat cheese puffs and you would tell me about what you found inspiring and I would complain about my job. I took you at your face value word that we were in this together: artists railing against a capitalist system that had no place for art other than generation of capital. And so I guzzled the black label with gusto and then went home and ate a Shin Bowl, this being the best and cheapest way to not be hung over. But I was hung over anyway because no matter what happens in your late twenties, that seems to be what happens (and I’m told it only gets worse).
You told me about what you found inspiring and maybe you didn’t find your savings account inspiring. Or the woman that you had met on Hinge (“Have you tried Hinge? It’s great. So much better than OKCupid or Tinder. They, like, redid it.”) who was going to school to become an RN and you really liked her. (“This might be the one.”) Perhaps inspiring is the wrong word but I do hope that you found some pleasure in being around her, meaning in her company. And I wish you would have told me about her but you didn’t. You only spoke of the bad frustrating things perhaps because, when we met, it seemed like only bad and frustrating things were happening. We bonded over our frustration and maybe you didn’t tell me about her or about the application you just submitted to be a kindergarten music teacher because you were worried that you were changing. And maybe if you changed enough, you’d no longer be as frustrated. And maybe if you were no longer as frustrated, we would no longer be friends. Because friendships have to be about something.
It’s too late now, but I still do wonder if I had pointed out just how abandoned your dreams were feeling if you would have done anything differently. The past is so easy to try and re-litigate and I’m a sucker for figuring out, and focusing on, the ways in which I was wrong. I should have been a better friend and pointed out what the rest of us saw: your financial security wasn’t making you any happier; your new, more expensive wardrobe didn’t make you a better person; you didn’t really like this woman, did you? It’s too late now but I still lie awake thinking about these things because it turns out I absolutely have to lie awake and think about something. God knows I couldn’t just be happy.
One day soon you’re going to get married, move to the suburbs and you’re going to rent a house and buy a car and then you’re going to have a child, maybe two. Three seems a little bit excessive, and you were never an excessive person. And we’ll see each other occasionally, most of the time when you come into the city for work. We’ll meet at a wine bar in the village that I can’t afford, and we’ll pretend to know things about wine. I’ll tell you about what I find inspiring and you’ll tell me about how adorable Annabel’s recorder recital was, and you’ll have several videos on your phone for proof. I’ll go back to my three roommates and you’ll go back to your three bedroom and we’ll both secretly judge each other and we’ll both know that we made the right decisions. I’ll tell my roommate Frank about you and say that you gave up the dream, and “once you’ve given up, you know, what is there to live for?” and you’ll talk with your wife about my arrested development and about how sad it is that I haven’t grown up. And we’ll both know that we’re right and maybe we both will be.
But I am more right because you took the easy way out, motherfucker. Look at you! Is this what you fucking dreamed of?
