This is my living room. Sometimes I look at it and say, “Of course this is your living room.”
Although I have a roommate and most of this is her stuff, except that chair— that chair is mine.
I can’t imagine feeling an apartment entirely with my own decisions.
Anyway, tonight we were at a concert, a performance, really, and one of the performers sang a song about lost love, and it was very vaguely emotional and narrative; there was a verse about buying each other hardback books and writing inscriptions and when he sang these lines my eyes got wide and I grinned and looked at Jen and when the song was over she very deliberately walked over and whispered, standing over my sangria while I looked up at her, “I forgot to tell you that some of his songs are the boy version of your blog.” I know I whispered back, still in shock, as if to say, Why didn’t you warn me? I grinned back at her and made my eyes all buggy while he brought the other guy back onto the stage. Marry him! she pssted across the way at me, Marry him!
I nodded that of course I would, and then continued to read the subtitles of the movie that was projected above them. I decided this would be the test of how engaging each song was, if it took me away from reading the movie above their heads, it was good.
Do you know what movie this is? That’s Marcello Mastroianni I told Lindsay, who shrugged. I think it’s Fellini but I’m not sure what.
Then the other guy sidled up to the mic and started to sing a Sinead O’Connor song, and he won me back.
It was amazing as only that song could be, and I loved it, reminded myself to look it up, and also the quote from the movie about real happiness is being able to tell the truth without making other people suffer, and then I grinned. I wonder if my future husband liked this song as much as I did. I sat up straighter, warmed from the sangria and floated along, wondering why she couldn’t eat her dinner at a fancy restaurant with that guy. I wondered how I looked, sitting there, and is this not what it is to be a woman, sitting up straighter while other men look at you? And also, when you break up with someone is your first instinct to eat a fancy rest-a-raunt? Mine would be the opposite. I would sing something like, I can eat at McDonald’s now and you won’t judge me.
I thought about the words, nothing compares to you, and realized I felt that for no one, that I didn’t relate to the words at all, not this moment; usually yes, but not right now. I inserted a few men into that sentiment to test it out. No. Nope. This didn’t feel sad so much as interesting, but I loved the idea of it all the same.
