Southern Legitimacy Statement: I grew up in the swamps of Loxahatchee. Folks there like to sit on fallen logs and smoke cigarettes while looking up at sunsets that make you wonder how many shades of pink there really are in the world. Family moved up “North” to South Carolina at some point and the landscapes were similar with the sunsets and all, but had a few more hills, some big enough to be called the Appalachian Mountains. Now I live in Southern China, home of dim sum and the Cantonese language. Funny how life works.
Antiheroes From Descending Perspectives at a Party
It was a nice conversation. The only thing that went wrong was him saying This was a nice conversation. It’s nice to meet you and her saying Dude, this is the third time we’ve met.
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She knows her limit. Three glasses – fine. Four – great. It’s around seven when things like You know what your problem is? start coming out of her mouth. Her friends say if she doesn’t offend a stranger, lose her phone, and start crying at some point, it isn’t a party.
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You know how when you’re still trying to figure out what to do with yourself and you meet someone you just click with and it takes you by surprise because you’d (of course) been thinking about what it’d be like to meet someone like that, but it’d always been more of a thought experiment, so when it actually happens it’s all just a bit too much and you slink away from it? Then you get the person’s contact from a mutual friend or harvest it from a group chat, then build up the confidence to send them a message asking them out, then (finally) send them the message, and a few days pass before you get a reply. And when you get the reply, it says they’re Looking for a long-term relationship and you want to tell them that’s a stupid thing to say because you don’t go looking for a long-term relationship. You try out a bunch of short-term relationships and maybe one of them will stick. You can think you know what you want but you’ll end up settling for something else and that’s fine.
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We’re the ones who’ve always known exactly what our future will look like. A few lonely nights. Some fun. Memorable events we’ll talk about when we meet up. Sorry (not sorry!) to anyone else in the room if you feel left out of the conversation, but you weren’t there.
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I’m the one who goes home early, wakes up early the next morning, turns on the vacuum cleaner, and my three cats all look at me like I’m an asshole. I say If you buttheads didn’t shed so much hair I wouldn’t have to vacuum all the time. I make a mental note to talk to myself more often because it sort of feels like therapy and I’m alone a lot these days.
