two days of the year
I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary back in the States after two years living in rural Japan. I wrote the first of these pieces the week I returned. I wrote the second this morning.
I.
By the time I awaken from my jet-lagged slumber, it’s too hot to run. I've been getting a full eight hours, just at the wrong time: 3 in the morning until 11. In California, the sun is golden but parched, not like the tropics, where I was before, where heat is first filtered through an everpresent wetness in the air.
Outside, heat waves emanate off the rust red deck, the one I daydreamed about lying on a week ago. I heave the sliding door open, sticky in its frame from last year's storms, then slip gingerly through the opening. As I walk, I take care to keep my bare feet moving to avoid burning them. I take a seat, the ground hot against the underside of my thighs. I look at our terracotta pots, where weeds tower over limp succulents. I gaze at the turquoise water of the swimming pool. On its surface, two insects are clinging to one another, drowning, flailing their appendages. I am impressed by their will to live. Magnified by the water, the shadows of the bugs are enlarged. Their reflections remind me of specimens under a microscope, wriggling and unaware against a monochrome background. The sun shines zealously. I retreat inside.
In my childhood mirror, I am fatter than ever. I stand with my heels together, spine straight, and look at the place where my thighs meet. I turn sideways and hold my lower stomach in my hands like a pregnant woman handling her belly. My fingers are gentle, but I am disappointed there's something to wrap them around. I face forward. I picture an imaginary rectangle boxing in my shoulders and pelvis. I compare myself to a brick. For a moment, I think of gymnasts on cereal boxes--sturdy, stout, robust--then I remember that does not describe me. I draw in my breath and search for my ribs. It takes a while to spot them. I vow to eat less.
In the evening, the restaurant I suggest forgets my father’s order, twice. My mother and I eat timidly, slowly, in case his food shows up soon. It doesn’t. While we wait, father warns me about fraudulent scams. The FBI maintains a list of over 60, and he has read through each of them carefully. My mother notes that the restaurant serves white rice, which is the least healthy variety. They check their phones. It never ends, they remind me, referring to the list of things left to do. It comforts them to say aloud, like confirming a universal truth. The sky is blue. The earth is round. It never ends. It never ends. It never ends.
An hour passes. We take my father’s food to go.
On the drive home, despite knowing better, I say something mean and unwarranted. I am sick and tired of hearing prophecies about the end. I am sick and tired of preparing for them. I am upset because I have learned to make decisions for others’ benefit, and am only now realizing that they don’t care at all.
I cry about this later, briefly, then at length. In the kitchen, I tell my mother about my grief. She says nothing, shutters the blinds for the evening, then ascends the stairs in silence. I try to be angry, but only muster remorseful. Children, in their naivete, are so ungrateful. Here, I am a child again.
II.
I wake up next to a man I love, then celebrate this by trying to meld our bodies into one. I fail, inevitably, but the attempt satisfies me. With this taken care of, the business of maximizing Sunday begins.
There are only two things I’ve been stringent about since my return to the City: evading the MUNI fare whenever possible, and having a pastry every weekend. Le Dix-Sept Pâtisserie, ten minutes away, sells them for $8 each, barely less than my hourly salary this time last year. I buy a chocolate pistachio brioche and try to feel giddy about being newly rich instead of feeling guilty. I mostly succeed. It’s all so luxurious: taking Ubers, watching theater, eating berries that someone else has washed for me. I am bowled over by gratitude.
When L orders, he says something funny and makes the shopkeeper laugh. My chest twinges. I am enamored by his likability. I scoot my chair closer to his so our thighs can touch and take his hand in mine under the table. We make our pastries kiss, then follow suit.
E’s house delivers more pastries, as promised: kouign amann, custard buns, the famed Arsicault croissants. I meet new people and catch up with old friends. We talk about spacesuits, unhip fetishes, and this week’s rotation of sorrows. N tells me about his adult problems. I tell E about my young adult ones. Friendship, I’m learning, is mostly about trading confessions. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.
The afternoon is a wash, undeserving of more than this sentence. Dinner is vegan sushi. We go as a party of four: two guys, two girls--me and L plus two friends he met at a love algorithm party. The guys know each other, the guys and girls know each other, the girls begin the night as strangers but are soon overcome by the mysterious bonds of sisterhood and quickly begin agreeing on most things. The table discusses gear, chivalry, and moving too fast. We eat fake tuna and yuzu cheesecake. We try to be honest and sound smart. We mostly succeed.
After-dinner drinks are floated, which L and I decline in favor of absconding. We’ve been overusing the word “abscond”, not because it’s definitionally accurate, but because pretending to be coy provides a certain thrill.
L takes me to his new apartment, which is a grand total of five blocks south from his previous place. I am its first-ever guest, at least for this iteration of tenancy. I wander through the apartment in my underwear and picture myself living in it part-time: eating fried eggs at the breakfast nook, brushing my teeth under the bathroom’s fancy ceiling heater, falling asleep in the bed I’ve come to like more than my own. It’s perfect, except for the central heating being broken and the taps producing exclusively cold, cloudy water. But in addition to chilly and dehydrated, we’re excited. The cabinets have built-in sliding trays, the deck is big enough for furniture, and the landlord forgot to mention that the backyard extends down an extra two levels. When L goes look look, just like you have and reveals the lemon tree at the very bottom of the yard, I am moved by the symmetry of our lives--how all of our good things also become each other’s.