This morning I woke up at 6AM. There was no alarm, no thumping from the apartment above, no creaky footsteps in the hallway. I just woke up, painfully aware of the uneasy line I had drawn in the sand over the course of 36 hours, 12 drinks, and three relationships.
Apparently vibrating an inch away from my face wasn’t enough to tear me away from my dreamless sleep, because there was a new message waiting on my phone. It was junk. “Cum over.” A familiar enough plea but from a highly unusual source, probably sent to the wrong Nicholas.
But what was I expecting?
An apology, a demand for an apology, something starting with a term of endearment and ending with a smiley face, something starting with “Look,” or “Listen—“ and ending with an ellipsis; I wanted someone—anyone—to know exactly how they felt and to make it glaringly clear in 160 characters to be read at my leisure from the comfort of home.
By 7AM I was skyping Amsterdam. Katie knows me better than I know myself sometimes, and if my webcam didn’t freeze so often she probably could have read the story from my face alone. Of course it goes both ways—stories about 70-year-old men winning prostitutes in bar raffles and would-be suitors with hip-length hair and gold lame’ bandanas certainly distracted from the casual mention that her long-distance relationship had ended, but I know it hurt more than her chatty demeanor let on.
And now it’s noon. I don’t really have any food to eat in the apartment, but I keep looking in the fridge anyways. Every time I do I stop to stare at the four pound elk heart my roommate left on the shelf in a box, citing her love of organ meat when I inquired as to why something labeled as a biohazard was sitting on my pizza box.
I imagine it sympathizes with me.
