Thanksgiving

Sometimes, at night, I put on a bandanna, to keep the hair out of my eyes. It's getting long in the front, and I think I look like Justin Beiber. It gets in my tea when I'm drinking it, and hangs in front of me when I'm eating cereal, so little flecks of milk get into the tips of my bangs. Once, at a concert, the music was too loud, and I didn't have any ear plugs, so I chewed a stick of gum until the flavor went out of it, and split it in half, formed two little balls of gum, stuck them in my ears to keep them from ringing the next morning. But my hair stuck to the gum, and I kept picking at it, wishing it would go away and wondering if anyone could tell it was there, and so I took the gum out and stuck it under the seat at the theater, and figured a little tinnitus was better then a lot of gum in my hair.

I could wear a hat, but I think the bandanna makes me look like David Foster Wallace, and I like that about it. My girlfriend doesn't know who he is, but that's ok--she's a scientist, and I'm an artist, and we keep each grounded. She reigns me in when I tend towards the solipsism that Wallace had warned of, and I try to get her to let go a little bit when she gets scared about what's going to happen after grad school.

That's about as ironic as the bandanna, and any comparison to DFW, because fuck if I know what I'm going to do with my life, and I'm terrified all the time.

Most of us are. We sat in my girlfriend's parent's living room and smoked and talked about our lives and what we were doing with them, and the machine that we were feeding, with little bits of our soul, day after day, so that people with money we can't even begin to fathom can accesorize their toddler's bathroom with brass knobs and silver trinkets and catered holiday parties for their fancy parents and their fancy friends and their fancy co-workers.

There were four of us. One was over the east coast entirely. My girlfriend and I were over the city. The fourth didn't know quite what she wanted but it wasn't this. What did we do? It's not like it was advertising, or finance, or law or medicine--nothing like that. Those are the kind of jobs that might suck the life out of you, a little bit, but at least you could count on a "return on investment."

I wanted to make that kind of money. I daydreamed about it, and there was a yearning, as long as I can remember, to have those brass-fixtured doorknobs and toilet fixtures, to have a view of central park from the top of a building, to come home to an impeccably kept house, to a staff and a wife that didn't have to work but could sit on boards of various charities, to have dinner on the table by eight and to summer somewhere ending in a "ton." I've always been honest about that.

I remember lying in bed with an ex-girlfriend, one of those times when we were trying to be intimate, her prying things out of me that didn't want prying, and I reluctantly offered, "well I do have class issues," and she looked at me and almost laughed before saying, "Hon, you have a Great Gatsby tattoo. I know you have class issues.

But we weren't there, none of us. I had one friend, maybe, that was almost there, but he was as stuck and miserable and perplexed as the rest of us, said it was a means to an end, that at least he could travel, but dammit if he didn't make it to the gym every night, the simmering resentment of long dinners with clients, of ties and blazers and wool pants and starched shirts and cocktail after cocktail, well he'd literally explode. He didn't even enjoy drinking anymore--the only time he drank was to win the trust and faith of anxious millionaires.

For all we cared about we did, we might as well be making widgets and sprockets, but we longed for a hula hoop that might set us free. Anything, really, anything at all.

We sat together, close, on the big soft red couch, with blankets, and the big soft red leather chair, and the paisley recliner, with crystal glasses brought out for the occasion, some nice pinot, some sparkling cider. One of us was knitting, and talking about how work was literally killing her. I shared the story about the time I ended up in the hospital, cellulitis of the knee brought on by too much work and not enough sleep.

I had just watched a documentary on Woodstock -- then and now, and when I closed my eyes, I could see Yasgur's farm, and the pond, the rolling hills in the distance and the second growth forest, and imagine a little house and two little offices, and a garden, where we could live and work and play.

Nora, sitting next to me, knitting, wanted to move to California.

Sheila thought we should all go into business together--just all pick up and move, and I don't know, buy some land, and she and Nora could run a hardware store, and of course Lee and I could cook for everyone (have you tasted her key lime pie? It's incredible; it literally convinced me to marry her). It sounded a lot like the Hog Farm Commune but it was probably just because I was stoned still, and had just seen a film about it.

I said I couldn't really see myself leaving the east coast. Aren't family and friends important? It was the day after Thanksgiving, and I was feeling grateful to have had my family and Lee's family at one big long table and all of the talking was a group effort and as much as her mother and my uncle could get on my nerves on occasion, they were family and wasn't it nice to be a part of, to contribute in small ways and big ways?

Sheila said that if we just went, maybe our families would follow us. And I closed my eyes and there were the red woods, and the ancient first growth forests, moss over everything, ever green, and soft trails not like the rocky trails of new england, and the constant drizzle that if you thought of it in a certain way seemed to feed everything, all the time.

But New England, and my sense of place--I was born here. Can you imagine? Lee's mother grew up on the west coast, and she grew up on the east coast, and there is nothing that will ever change that fact for them--do we really want out children to have a completely different frame of reference, a shared set of childhood memories we'll never ever be connected to?

Whatever we do, we need to work for ourselves, I said, on our terms. There was a general nodding of heads, Nora knitting next to me, Sheila curled up in the chair across, Lee blowing out the candles on the mantle that had burnt down over the last hour or two. Something that means something.

I'm leaving my job in a month or so. And I'm terrified, because sometimes it seems like a certain level of financial stability is the most important thing there is. But I've been reading and writing and thinking about reading and writing, and if making less money means there's more room for that, then I'll be that much happier, and I'll have that much more energy to give and I don't know, I'm crossing my fingers and maybe it'll be ok?

Nora nodded, her scarf was twice the length it had been when we sat down and she agreed that the happiest of our friends was the one who wasn't making much money, but doing the projects that he was interested in and sooner or later he'd probably be light years ahead of all of us because he got such an early start.

Are we that old? We are. The children that we knew when we were in high school, that seemed so much younger then are graduating college. Our friends are getting married. I'm getting married. And soon we'll be thirty, and when someone says they haven't talked to so and so in years, I can conceive of that, as much as I can conceive of not talking to so and so for as many more years, or seeing him briefly but not again, and losing touch over time, ten, twenty years from now, when maybe, finally, we'll be doing something that feels right.

It was getting on one thirty. Nora got up to leave. Her coat was on, the yarn in her bag, we hugged goodbye. We walked Sheila to the guest bedroom and Lee and I brushed our teeth together in the bathroom, washed our faces and crawled into bed. We slept through the night and into the morning, woke at ten to coffee and toaster waffles, a new day.

That evening, I walked my parent's dog, through the fallen brown leaves of the park, listening to them rustle over my boots as we walked. The trees were empty finally. It's almost December. It wasn't dark just yet, but would be soon, and the conviction of the night before was almost lost, but turning the corner I held the leash and smiled, remembering that once, the night before, I knew I had everything I wanted, and in that moment I still did, and would again.