“Will you just shut up and live?”
Tyler came back on August 3rd. August 5th, I saw him for the first time all summer. There were still sparkles on his backpack from my skin, even though it was three months after I’d fallen asleep on it in the back of a biology classroom.
When I woke up that morning, each individual limb felt like a geometry textbook–heavy, useless, and completely not worth the effort it would take to drag it around. I nearly lost my right contact and didn’t even have time to make coffee to nurse my insomnia hangover. My mind was a haze and I could not remember what happened the evening before, only that it had resulted in getting five hours of sleep on a summer night. Life was a mess. I was a mess. I had too much baggage and too little space.
You know how you take comfort, during the craziest times in your life, in the thought that you’re alone in your confusion? That your friends are leading stable, familiar lives back home, and will be there for you to return to?
It never works out that way. At least, it didn’t for us.
We swapped a glass full of milk chocolate granita almost as fast as we swapped secrets, skipping from faraway Europe to life stateside in a matter of seconds. The phrase “and I thought I had it bad” soon became overused. Almost three hours of nonstop talking had occurred before a massive helping of sugar-coma-in-a-bowl shut us both up.
On the way home, we applauded random passersby in the 42nd Street subway station, paying particular attention to uptight pricks in Brooks Brothers business suits with too much in their briefcases and too little time. On the E train, we hopped from one car to the next every time it stopped, dreaming of mayhem worthy of the Step Up 2 opening dance sequence. Switching to the 7 train, I tried to have a normal conversation with him while fully aware that he’d constructed a shirt penis and belted his backpack to his pants.
This is the guy I trust with everything?
But of course.
About a month and a half into summer and the only thing that turned out as planned was that we changed. Apart. Yet still in the same direction, ending up in the same place. Which, when it comes to people you care about, is the biggest stroke of luck you can hope for.
We didn’t have any answers after the day was done. Hell, we had more questions. But it didn’t matter, because we had the real answer, the one to the question neither of us needed to ask. And because of that one answer, we believed that all the other things would eventually make perfect sense.
The answer? No matter what happened, we would have each other’s back.
At the start of the day, tomorrow in its uncertainty was bleak and terrifying. At the end, it looked promising, every possibility breathing mischief; because you know what your life boils down to, every time, every tragedy?
Your friends.
Welcome home, Tyler!
I think the city missed you almost as much as I did.
