I walked in and found a space at the bar, a place where there was no chair, no one standing or sitting, right at the start of it. I’d gotten to know Robyn (the bartender) a little bit and for all intents and purposes this had become my local hangout when I was in the mood to be social. I exchanged pleasantries with her while giving her my drink order and she seemed more interested than usual to chat. Typically it took a little warming up, but tonight it was as if we were old friends.

Robyn apologized unneccessarily for not introducing me to the woman on my right, and while I shook hands with this new acquaintance, she walked to the other end of the bar to pour a drink and continue a different conversation.

She had red hair and an obvious name; the sort that made you think ‘of course’ when she told it to you. She was tall and thin and attractive. She seemed to alternate between confidence and doubt. She told me she worked for Agent Provocateur, but that she didn’t want to be a panty seller all her life, despite really enjoying the company that she worked for. She told me stories of the men that would call just to talk dirty to the girls working, envisioning their pink outfits and fishnets as they asked questions meant more to ruffle feathers than to collect information.

We talked for a long while before a man walked in who she greeted and hugged. She’d made a phone call asking for company before I’d arrived and now we were in what could have been an awkward situation, but we all seemed determined not to let it be that. I talked to him while she wandered about a bit and I slowly withdrew from conversation in a way that was meant not to leave a wake.

Early in the conversation I’d told her I was leaving in less than a week; i’d thought it only fair. The introduction seemed to have purpose and so I thought it only right to be forthcoming. Robyn had been sort of dismissive when she’d overheard my mentioning it, saying “you’ll be back”.

When she (and her friend) got up to leave, she put her fingers in the back of my hair and said “it’s too bad you are leaving; we could have been friends” before kissing me on the cheek. I shook hands with her friend and they were gone.

Robyn came back down and said “I can tell she really likes you” and I thought ‘yes, if I weren’t leaving we could have been friends’.

I'm coming to an end of my gypsy travels (at least for a little while). The places I've lived for the last five months have all been furnished with other people things and I'm looking forward to being surrounded by own belongings.

Every place that I've rented has been missing something. Most of them have been thoughtfully stocked, with the exception of one thing that's obvious. The last place that I stayed had no spoons. The place I'm in now has no glasses (with the exception of two champagne flutes and a single coffee mug).

You have very little need for closet space and cupboards when renting furnished, so it was only a little bit of a surprise when I opened a door looking for a broom and found another bathroom that I hadn't known was there.

It's not an accumulation of things that will make me feel like home; i'm really not taking much from my past with me. When you rent a furnished place, you do your best to leave it the way that you found it, which involves carefully removing evidence that you'd been there. The furniture, the dishes, it's all pretty much the same as it was during your stay, but with someone else using it, sleeping in it, eating off of it. They'll have no idea that before you came, there were no spoons.

I've come to realize that I’m a hopeless romantic that falls for long shots and lost causes. I’m trying to change that, to think twice before acting, but the truth is I’d rather have something passionate than safe. I’d rather have a broken heart full of great memories than a whole heart full of forgettable ones.

Today is one of those days. The sort that you wake up with great intentions but somewhere along the way, things go awry. You think that it’ll be a good day, that you’ll accomplish things and be happy with yourself at the end of it. But then something comes along to challenge your ability to enjoy it all.

These are the moments that you wish that you could see the appeal in cliche or find the wisdom in bad music. These are the moments when you start to appreciate the philosophies of cultures that have been beset upon for ages and yet have learned to keep a stiff upper lip.

I’m not one for mantras, but it seems like a waste of what started to be a good day to not at least try and “om” my way back on track.

Today is a "moving" day, which means that I'm moving from one furnished rental to the next. It's not like when you introduce yourself to a new place with the boxes and little things that you slowly take over; it's more like checking out of one hotel and into the next.

There's always a moment of disconnect for me; where I've left behind the last place, but haven't gotten to the new one. It's a moment of not belonging to anything, anywhere. It's both liberating and disturbing at the same time. I feel a sense of abandon when I hand over the keys to one place and get in my car to drive to the other, like I've just agreed not to be tied down to anything, tethered to anyone.

The last place that I stayed was in a building that I'd lived in before and so it was strange and at the same time familiar living there. When i arrived, I thought that I was glad that I wouldn't be there for long and now that I've left, I feel that I could have stayed a little longer.

I've always wanted the gypsy life, but when I imagined it, it was with someone. For eight years we plotted an adventure together, but recently we went our separate ways and so I'm doing it alone. Instead of it being in one forward direction, it's been back and forth, settling the legality of ending a marriage, dividing possessions, returning to the scene of the crime to hash out who and when and why, and what next.

Adventure rarely comes when you've plotted for it. It doesn't wait for a clear day to begin and it's rarely the way that you imagined it. But that's what makes it an adventure, isn't it?

I've been living in furnished places, looking at other people's things, living in the moment for four months now. It's been an adventure, but I'd like to wake up one day and remember where I am without thinking too long on it. I'd like to sleep in a bed that's mine, cook in a kitchen that I know where things are.

I'm living where we used to live, you and I. It's the same building, just a few floors higher. It has the same view. It's different though and I wake up lost now and then, thinking that it looks familiar but something isn't quite right. The things that I used to like about living here seem foreign now, and when I walk through the lobby it feels more like a dream of the past than like the present. I remember late nights out with friends trying to beat the sun rise home with the same hazy quality covering as there was when I stepped into the elevator this morning. If today were a movie it would be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

I'm living like a gypsy; everything that fills the rooms where I stay belong to someone else. They are nice things, but they aren't mine. They aren't yours either and they were never ours. Maybe that's why there is a strange comfort as well as a slight dissatisfaction in it. If My life were a book, today it would be A Moveable Feast.

I'm not sad, or melancholic, just pensive. I think that coming back here is like living next door to the house you grew up in. If today were a song, it might have been Fairy Tale of New York, but it isn't and I'm glad that it's not.

She said “I wish you weren’t leaving” and I asked if she was going to ask me to stay. “No”, she said “there is something almost Hemmingway about your adventure so you go see the world, boy”.

affectionate stranger

affectionate strangers
I went and got my hair cut yesterday and had one of those experiences I dread; where the woman cutting it feels she knows better than I how I should wear it. She cut it shorter than I wanted (it’s quite long, typically) and all night long it seemed to invite people playing with it, brushing it out of my face, tugging at it as though that would make it grow.

I went out dancing and there was a woman in pig tails determined to talk to me. She passed inches from me and paused for a moment to look me dead in the eyes, before hovering nearby for some time. I was talking to my friend Mallory, but when she went to the bar to get a drink the woman with the pigtails came to speak to me. I couldnt for the life of me make out what she was saying, except that she was 40, she had just come from something having to do with the NOLA Red dress run and that she didn’t normally wear tennis shoes to the bar. She left after a few more awkward attempts at conversation, but she was always close by.

She hovered about for a bit and then on her way out she passed by, swept my hair out of my face and kissed me on the cheek, lingering for just a moment as though something more might come of it.

Mallory went prematurely gray in her early 20’s and wears it like a badge. She’d been discussing the fact that it invited people playing with it, as though touching it would prove that what they were seeing was real. She’s not a fan of affectionate strangers, she told me after mine had gone.

I've come to realize that others know that my wanting to avoid being cruel can be preyed on, used to manipulate me. I've fallen for it so many times in the past, but now, taking a step back, i'm realizing when it happens.

 When people go their separate ways, you can't usually expect one to console the other. We have to find people in each of our own lives to listen to us, bring us comfort. To ask each other to do that can be cruel, in that you never learn to live without the other person. You must learn to eat, breathe, live and love without that person, just like you did before them. 

 Tears and prayers and excuses after you've already made up your mind won't make things better, and there is such a thing as it being too late.