Don’t Tell A Soul

Did you ever drink Alizé? It’s a sweet concoction of cognac and fruitiness. I used to drink it all the time in college. Back when I lived in JP, I’d come home from school, stop at the liquor store on Centre St., and pick up my little bottle. I had three guy roommates at the time, and they all thought it was the most disgusting drink ever. Every guy thinks it’s disgusting. But that was fine, because they never drank my stash.

So I was in Ralphs the other day, and saw a bottle on the shelf. Wow, I haven’t had that in years, I’ll pick it up for Thanksgiving! One sip, and I almost spit it out, it was so syrupy and intense. But I drank the glass anyway (I’m drinking it now!) because it’s funny how even taste can bring you back in time.

Alizé is the cold of Boston. AOL dial-up on my old Gateway computer, and not being able to afford anything at Urban Outfitters. The aforementioned roommates who hated me, and wouldn’t let me turn the heat on. Smoking in the hallway, with my Armenian coffee, hogging the phone, and bitching about them loud enough to hear me. My boyfriend was B., but I was still missing J., and still calling K, and still wondering why D. tried to kill himself by jumping in front of the red line. They all dead-ended, didn’t they?

The past seems to be a subject I am most prolific writing about. Never the present, never the future. The present is never good enough, and the future is always blank. Maybe I idealize the past, but the future is blackness, and it always has been.

I have this thing about anniversaries, I always remember the dates of memorable things so I can dwell on think about them later. Some are happy, some are sad, and some are more important than others.

A year ago, today was a Monday. I know it was Monday, because the night before was a perfectly mundane Sunday of doing my nails and watching The Sopranos. No premonitions, no nagging feeling something was wrong, no compulsion to pick up the phone and check on things. Nothing was wrong until Monday.

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Crawling at 20mph on the 101, only two almost-accidents today! Cold War Kids on my stereo, impending family visit on my mind. That night, a frenzy of closet organizing becomes an hour of sitting down looking at old stuff. A Massachusetts state Liquor ID, 10 year old Polaroids, an address book from 2001, and an old postcard from Paris: Many nights alone in a dark room await us. Sometimes it’s sad to remember, but then sometimes it just makes me laugh.

I can’t believe I was in western Mass. for a month, and I didn’t see a single person I went to high school with. I kept thinking that, any minute now, I’d come barreling down the aisle at Big Y, and bump into someone I once knew. Maybe I’d see an old boyfriend stopped at a red light, or share an elevator at Mercy with someone I hated in 1992.

It was weird to be back in Springfield, with its intriguing mix of the redneck and the thugged-out. I listened to a lot of Rock 102, and spent a lot of time cursing that Garmin doesn’t let you set an Avoidance for “ghetto”. At least they have a Starbucks now, and multiple Indian restaurants, which is more than can be said for the last time I lived there. It’s always nice to be back at first, to visit the places I missed, but I never see anyone I knew. There’s lots of people I’m curious about too! Like, did that girl that my Mom always told me would end up a cashier really do that, or is she a stripper now? What did our valedictorian do after Harvard? And what does that guy who was so hot in high school look like now?

It amazes me how many people are not on the Internet. What happened, did you do absolutely nothing with your lives? You never signed up for a blog, or received even the slightest mention in the college newspaper? How do you live in such obscurity that even Google can’t find you? I was so ready to see you all too, so ready to drop into your lives for a moment, just to satisfy my curiosity, and to be sure to mention I was just visiting. Too bad you missed me.
 

500 miles on my car: I was driving home from work, listening to Tricky covering Public Enemy. I was 31 years old, in Santa Monica California. I’ve been driving for 5 months.

Trying to imagine 5 years ago: I’m 26, and I live with 4 housemates in the Mission Hill part of Boston. They launch fireworks off of the porch. One girl eventually goes crazy on me, and we manage to not speak for about 3 months, despite living in such close quarters. She won’t even let me use her coffee maker. One of them is such an environmentalist that she won’t turn on the air conditioner in the room she shares with her boyfriend. He doesn’t push the issue until August. I rent a lot of videos that summer and watch them in my room that is painted the color of cooked carrots.

The ghost of 10 years past: 21, I must have been going home for the summer from Hampshire. I must have been staying up all night drinking instant iced tea and working on my web sites, from the confines of my mother’s apartment in western Mass. I think that was the summer I ended up going to San Francisco, and had many adventures.