Recently
I accidentally moved back to a city I had never liked. A friend of mine
was moving there. It will be amazing, she said. We could go hang
gliding every day.
I must have broadcast this decision widely because several friends of
mine met me at the independent bookstore, one of the largest in the
country, and the only reason to move to this city. The bookstore was so
big, it was divided in sections and rooms based on different colors,
not just primary colors but secondary colors and colors that weren't
even colors, like gold and silver. Several clerks had disappeared in
the stacks in recent years. Now they had their own union.
Maybe my friends were at the bookstore independently of my arrival.
There is not much else to do in this city I have never liked. These
friends had often complained that the world seems to revolve around me
during certain seasons, spring and summer, and sometimes fall, to a
lesser degree. They realize this is not a choice; it has something to
do with personal magnetism and my physical appearance, with the reasons
they chose to be friends with me in the first place. At a later point
in these magnetic seasons, they remark that I am the worst and most
selfish person they've ever met. "You hate it here," one of my friends
reminded me.
But there was very little I could do at this point.
Was there? Had I quit my job? Where was my pet iguana?
I did not have answers for these friends. They grew more impatient with
me as their coffee dwindled, and one of them reminded the others of a
previous appointment with a fourth friend who I've never heard of but
assumed to be my replacement. “We’ve got to go.” As
they walked away, one of them speculated that I’d never owned an
iguana.
“I owned an iguana! It’s name was….”
I wandered around downtown, trying to find a specific burrito
restaurant. They are not called taquerias in this part of the country.
I walked three or four miles. I wanted to walk more, but I could not
cross any bridges for supernatural reasons. It started to rain so I
went home. The left side of my body is made of sugar. I didn’t
want anyone to know.
I have no immediate plans to go hang gliding and neither does the woman
I moved here with. In fact, we are probably not even dating. It is
probably too windy here for hang gliding. During the war (which war?)
giant balloon hangers for zeppelins were built near the airport, but it
was too windy for rigid air ships. I assume zeppelins and hang gliding
wings (is there a real word for those?) require the same lack of wind
(again, is there a such phenomenon? A lack of wind). Most of these
questions could be answered by the internet. Life was more interesting
when there were more unanswered questions.
Why I moved back to this city. It began when I did not get admitted to
a PhD program which I also did not apply for. I assumed God would take
care of it. My friend was admitted but decided to wait for a year until
I was admitted. Half of her body was made of sugar. If I touched her,
we would both crumble. I didn’t want to touch her. God has a
stupid sense of humor.
My friend was crying when I got back to the motel. “You have friends without telling me.”
“I didn’t know, and besides, they hate me. I brought you a burrito.”
“I wanted tacos.”
She locked herself in the bathroom. I spent the afternoon looking out
onto the highway and thinking about a woman I knew in our former city
who had once clasped her hands behind the headrest when I was in the
back seat. Her girlfriend was driving. I suddenly understood why she
had done this.