01.06.24

It’s nearly one in the morning and I am walking across town to catch the A Train and Luis Guillorme is moving to the Braves and I think about texting my most recent ex-boyfriend but I don’t. I feel a little more drunk than I have in a while and I should have worn a hat.

I am wearing a shirt I feel a little uncomfortable in, not because it is uncomfortable but because I feel I am exhibiting a boldness I do not actually experience. Anyone who sees the shirt would probably think I’m being really dramatic about the boldness of the shirt. My pants are too tight and too stiff but I wore them because their structure makes me feel more put together, even though they are pants that I should never sit in, only stand.

I thought I would get more — any, really — compliments on my shoes, but I didn’t. I spent over a hundred dollars on them. I ordered two sizes and still need to return the ones that are too big. Even in these, the correct size, my feet slide around on their flat bottoms. I am wearing “trouser socks” because I read online that that’s what the girls are wearing, and I have been trying, perhaps fruitlessly, to up my fashion game (via socks, I guess). Sam did say I looked pretty when I arrived at the restaurant tonight.

We got dinner at Virginia’s on the lower east side because it’s near where Sam works and it’s near where I was going to a birthday party later and neither of us had ever been there but I saw it on Instagram, where I am, begrudgingly, for the first time in a long time. I deleted my personal Instagram in 2019 because I got out of the most horrible relationship of my life, wherein I was miserable and anxious and desolate all the time, and looked at my own grid and found that anyone who witnessed my life from that point of view would have thought it was peachy, sweet, fun. I was disgusted with the way I misrepresented myself. I tell people I deleted it because I was just on it too much. The restaurant was good, if on the expensive side for us. I saved it in Google Maps.

We walked two and a half blocks to Rachel’s birthday — Sam joined me there for one drink and left. I talked to my other friends about my live show and the Real Housewives and Taylor Swift and New Year’s. I navigated my way around a tiny bathroom with a hundred girls needlessly crowded into it. I drank whiskey sours until I was too tired to maintain a conversation.

Wil and I leave at the same time and part ways on Avenue A and I walk to West 4 by myself, the wind cutting my face and my AirPods playing nothing. I’m not appropriately dressed for the weather. Saraphina texts me about how School of Rock is a perfect movie (correct). I do not text my most recent ex-boyfriend even though I desperately want to, in the wake of multiple unprompted instances of friends, separate from one another, saying of him in the last couple months, “I really thought that would work out for you,” which I don’t know how to respond to. Loneliness is so transcendent, especially lately, for whatever reason. I’m not sure I remember what it’s like to fall asleep next to someone. I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love.

At West 4 the next A Train, surely running local at this hour, will arrive in fifteen minutes.

Sitting in a two-seater I hope desperately that my seatmate will get up at every stop to relieve me of the need to keep my knees together sitting next to him (a challenging feat in pants this stiff). I shuffle my music but I don’t hear it. Time moves impossibly slow.

Upon return to my apartment, I take off all my clothes as though I have been in a straitjacket all night. I use only a makeup wipe to “wash” my face and climb into bed, even though I know I probably won’t fall asleep for a while. It feels too big, even though it isn’t. I want to text my most recent ex-boyfriend about Luis Guillorme, about anything, but I don’t.