Post-NY

A Love Letter to My Sick Boyfriend, In A Post-New York World

My Darling,

I have no idea how to take care of you when you’re not feeling well, especially in Los Angeles. Driving over to your place really isn’t an option, what with the 101 freeway acting as a long, traffic-jammed barrier, separating my home from yours.

If we were still in New York, you would live in Bushwick, and I would live in Manhattan. Had you fallen ill there, I would simply have to bribe the guy working at the bodega below your apartment to run you up some Advil and Gatorade and ginger ale and saltine crackers, which would undoubtedly hit the fifteen-dollar credit card minimum. He would grumble, but it would be worth it.

Or, I could hop on Seamless and order a nearby deli to bring you some matzoh ball soup. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to order from Carnegie Deli, even though theirs is the best, because they don’t deliver below 50^th Street. Nonetheless, I would make sure it was the good kind, with no carrots, and a good ball-to-broth ratio.

But if things were really dire, I suppose I could brave the J train at rush hour, and take the 45-minute journey from my office to your building. Maybe if I transferred right at Delancey Essex, I would be able to get a seat before all of the hard-core bridge-and-tunnel-ers began their commute home. If not, I’d probably end up squished between three or five winter coats, none of which would be familiar in smell, texture, or heat. I’d manage, because I do really enjoy being with you.

Then again, that might look too desperate, too much like an act of love. After all, we’ve only been dating for three months. Hopping on either the brown or the orange lines after 7 p.m. is the kind of romance reserved for at least a ten-month commitment. Come to think of it, I might miss the yoga class I normally take in the Flatiron District, and for what? To drop off some orange juice and vitamins, only to contract whatever disease you currently have and re-distribute your germs to everyone else on the subway that evening?

So. I won’t come to your apartment, or attempt to take care of you. Because this isn’t New York. Los Feliz doesn’t have any soup that isn’t Thai curry, which, while delicious, probably won’t make you feel any less like vomiting. Taking PCH to Santa Monica and cutting up Sunset wouldn’t do either, because I might actually see my next birthday before I arrived at your doorstep. I could try to get off somewhere before the 405, but taking side streets runs the risk of me stopping at In N Out Burger for the third time today, and my Pilates instructor would be furious.

I really hope you feel better. Please know that I love you very much, and were we not in Los Angeles, I would be a much better girlfriend.

Love always.

Bored.

Boredom is a different kind of depression. It almost makes me miss the wild nights I spent getting loaded on the Lower East Side. At least back then I was trying. I used to wake up with a sore throat in the bathtub and thank whatever god I believed in that I didn’t die or lose my wallet. Now, I mostly just watch re-runs of old sitcoms and bake gluten-free muffins. I go to the gym. I clean my bedroom and take trips to the outlet mall with my mother. I sleep all day, even when the weather is nice and the beach is only ten minutes away. I apologize a lot, for taking up space. I take up space anyway. I don’t pay my credit card bills. I don’t write. I don’t do fucking anything.

Last night, I sat on the rooftop of an apartment building in Los Angeles, palm trees like Grim Reapers guarding the edges. I wasn’t the one drinking. He was. I was thinking back to the windowsill at the bar below my apartment where I tried to die all summer. Back then, my lungs were made of the La Brea Tar Pits. I didn’t eat for three whole weeks. I wore these same blue shorts that I’m wearing now, because I didn’t care about anything, except drinking whiskey.

He grabbed the bottle of wine, took three deep swigs. He fell asleep as soon as we got inside. I didn’t. I stayed awake, Googling things like:  WHEN WILL HUMANS KNOW THAT THE SUN HAS BURNED OUT? WHAT ARE SOME SIGNS THAT YOU’RE DYING?

Here’s what I learned about the sun: If the sun turned off like a light switch tonight, it would take us 8 minutes to notice. But that won’t happen. Instead, it will get too hot, slowly, over time, and the core will collapse in on itself in 7 billion years.

Here’s what I learned about dying: You will sleep all the time. You will refuse food and water. Your fingertips will be cool to the touch. You will withdraw socially, and your energy will be low. Your breathing will slow down. Your body will die from the outside in, like the sun imploding, only faster.

It took me 10 days to leave New York, but I didn’t notice I had really left for six whole weeks. I woke up one morning and realized I didn’t have anywhere to go, that I hated how hot California is in February. I stopped applying for jobs and started driving aimlessly down the 101, east on the 23, west toward PCH. A woman at Rite Aid called me a cunt. I got a kidney infection and ate popsicles on the couch for three whole days. I ate just to eat, but really, I hate the food here. All greasy avocados and huevos rancheros, some inexpensive Chinese food, a few pieces of kale.

“I think I’m dying,” I told him on the rooftop, and he put down the bottle and ran the backs of his knuckles down the side of my face.

“You’re just bored,” he told me, and I believed him.

But.

Isn’t that kind of the same thing?