I was getting old, too, but the strange thing was that I didn’t feel it. According to the professor of a Cultural Anthropology class I’d taken, American culture has no rite of passage, no formal initiation into manhood, no clear demarcation between childhood and adulthood. Maybe that was why, in many ways, I still felt like a kid. I did not feel the way my parents had probably felt at my age, did not see myself the way my parents had probably seen themselves. I might be living an adult life, but my feelings were a child’s feelings, my attitudes and interests those of a teenager. I had not really grown up.
And my twenties were half over.
I thought about Jane all night, thought about what this birthday could have been, what it should have been, and what it wasn’t.
I went to bed hoping against hope that the phone would ring.
But it didn’t.
And sometime after midnight I fell asleep.
Fourteen
Thanksgiving came and went and I spent the holiday in my apartment by myself, watching the Twilight Zone marathon on Channel 5 and wondering what Jane was doing.
I’d tried ringing my parents the week before, calling them several times, planning to wrangle a Thanksgiving dinner invitation out of them, but no one was ever home when I called. Although they’d invited me and Jane over for the past three Thanksgivings, we had never gone, begging off because of school, work, whatever excuse we could think up. Now this year, when I finally wanted to go, when I needed to go, no invitation was offered. I wasn’t exactly surprised, but I couldn’t help feeling a little hurt. I knew my parents weren’t trying to be mean, weren’t going out of their way to purposely not invite me — they’d probably assumed that once again Jane and I had plans of our own — but I didn’t have any plans and I desperately wanted them to provide me with some.
I still hadn’t told them I’d broken up with Jane. I hadn’t even called them since the split. My parents and I had never really been close, and talking about something like this with them would have made me feel extremely uncomfortable. I knew they’d ask a million questions — How did it happen? Why did it happen? Whose fault was it? Are you guys going to patch things up? — and I didn’t want to have to talk to them about things like that. I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’d rather they find out later, secondhand.
I’d been planning to lie if I’d gone down to San Diego to spend Thanksgiving with them, to tell them that Jane got sick at the last minute and was spending the holiday with her family. It was a pretty flimsy and pathetic excuse, but I had no doubt that my parents would buy it. They were pretty gullible about things like that.
But I never did get ahold of them. I could have invited myself, I knew. I could have just shown up on their doorstep Thursday morning. But somehow I didn’t feel comfortable doing that.
So I stayed home, lounged on the couch, watched The Twilight Zone. I made macaroni and cheese for my Thanksgiving meal. It was pretty damn depressing, and I could not remember having ever felt so alone and so abandoned.
I was almost grateful for Monday.
On Monday morning, David was there before I was, feet up on the desk, eating some type of muffin. I was glad to see him after the four days I’d just spent in semi-isolation, but at the same time I felt an emotional weight, a feeling almost like dread, settle upon me as I sat down at my desk and surveyed the array of papers before me.
I liked David, but, God, I hated my job.
I looked over at him. “This is hell,” I said.
He finished the last of his muffin, crumpling the cupcake paper and tossing it into the trash can between our desks. “I read this story once where hell was a hallway filled with all the bugs you’d killed in your life: all the flies you’d swatted, all the spiders you’d squished, all the snails you’d dissolved. And you had to keep walking back and forth down this hallway. Naked. Back and forth. Back and forth. Forever.” David grinned. “Now that would be hell.”
I sighed. “This is close.”
He shrugged. “Purgatory, maybe. But hell? I don’t think so.”
I picked up a pen, looked at the latest batch of GeoComm instructions I’d written. I was sick of documenting that damn system. What had once seemed like a great step forward, a huge increase in responsibility, was now a burden around my neck. I was starting to long for the days when my job had been less defined and my tasks varied with the day. My work might have been more pointless and frivolous then, but it had not been so stultifyingly the same.
“I think it might be,” I said.
It was four o’clock and the employees who were on flexible work schedules were starting to leave, passing by our office and heading down the hall toward the elevators, when David leaned back in his chair and looked over at me. “Hey, what’re you doing after work?” he asked. “Anything?”
I knew where this was leading, and my first instinct was to beg off, to invent an excuse why I couldn’t go with him, wherever he was going. But it had been so long since I had done anything or gone anywhere with another person that I found myself saying, “Nothing. Why?”
“There’s this club I go to in Huntington Beach. Stocked with babes. I thought you might wanna come.”
The second level. An invitation.
Part of me wanted to say yes, and for a brief second I thought that this might turn the tide, this might save me. I’d go out clubbing with David; we’d become good buddies, close friends; he’d help me meet some women; my entire life would change in one smooth, easy stroke.
But my true nature won out, and I shook my head and smiled regretfully. “I wish I could, but I have plans.” I said.
“What plans?”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
He looked at me, nodded slowly. “I understand.” he said.
David and I were not as close after that. I don’t know if it was his fault or mine, but the bond that had existed between us seemed to have been broken, the closeness dissipated. It wasn’t like it had been with Derek, of course. I mean, David and I still talked to each other. We were still friendly. But we were not friends. It was as though we had approached friendship but had backed off, deciding we were better suited to acquaintanceship.
The routine returned. It had never really gone away, but since David had started sharing my office I had been able, to some extent, to ignore it. Now that I was fading into the periphery of David’s life, however, and he into mine, the mind-numbing dullness of my workday once more took center stage.
I was an uninteresting person with an uninteresting job and an uninteresting life.
My apartment, too, I noticed, was bland and characterless. Most of the furniture was new, but it was generic: not ugly, not wonderful, but existing somewhere in the netherworld of plainness in between. In a way, gaudiness or ugliness would have been preferable. At least it would have stamped an imprint of life upon my home. As it was, a photograph of my living room would have fit neatly and perfectly into a furniture catalog. It had the same featureless, antiseptic quality as a showroom display.
My bedroom looked like it had come straight out of a Holiday Inn.
Obviously, whatever character the place had had was attributable to Jane. And obviously it had departed with her.
That was it, I decided. I was going to change. I was going to make an effort to be different, be original, be unique. Even if civil-service chic became all the rage, I would never again fall into a rut of quiet unobtrusiveness. I would live loud, dress loud, make a statement. If it was my nature to be Ignored, I would go against my nature and do everything I could to make myself noticed.