The Space Between Us
It’s weird being a person.
Colored lights hover around an open-air bar like fireflies. Friends are huddled around tables and standing in small herds, engaged in the theatrics of adulthood. A group of us have migrated from a friend’s apartment, graduating from the sunlit fuzz of afternoon wine to the buzz of a crowded bar.
A crush I have had for four years stands across from me. I notice him and then pretend I have not, so as to avoid the potential mess that I associate with the idea of my partner noticing me notice him, the two of them standing just a few feet away from each other, though pretending itself creates a mess of its own, my body immobilized by the mild stress that pretending—to be, to not be, to see, to not see—manifests. It is awkward that I want to have sex with someone who is not my partner. It is awkward that my partner knows this. It is awkward that my partner is okay with me having sex with other people, but I have yet to do so, because, beneath it all, I feel too awkward to do anything unexpected. A part of me feels embarrassed, as if the traditional expectations of monogamy, though I do not agree with them, judge, in the end, some kind of moral truth that I still measure myself by: A normal person should not yearn to have romantic episodes with other people. A normal person should not have the same crush after four years. A normal person should be able to bury desire. And everyone wants to be normal, I think, even if we pride ourselves on being different, even if we know that nobody is normal, that fantasy and psychosis is a part of the human condition.
A friend of mine speaks to me in Spanish. I answer in Spanish, unable to think of something to carry the conversation much further, for my attention is still focused on pretending. She and my partner leave to order drinks, followed by another friend. I look in the forbidden direction, slightly up and to the left, and see that the crush has left.
I sit down next to two people I know, their speech aflight at a speed I cannot board without disruption. I listen and smile, waiting for one of them to reel me in. They are speaking in another language, something Slavic or not, and for a few seconds I worry about how I look, wondering if I am the only person not engaged with another. Even if I was speaking to a friend just a minute ago, someone might see me and think: LOSER! I am an innocent sardine stuck in the sea of humiliation, waiting for a hook and line, until I remember that nobody is paying attention to anybody else, and that I am not a fish, I have legs, which means I can stand and join another conversation. For now, though, I sit.
My partner hands me a beer and stands with our friend, chatting. Cold, effervescent wheat floats on my tongue. I consider standing with them, but my brain feels fogged from the day drinking, the exertion of Spanish beyond its reach, and I do not want to change the language, so I smile instead. He smiles back. The black of night spreads all around us as a chill brushes my skin.
K, the husband of a friend and a friend himself, returns from the bar with a lime-green cocktail and a shot of mezcal. I thank him and hold the tiny glass cup between my fingers. Sipping from it feels like sipping from a candle, kisses of volcanic wax coating my tongue. I ask him how his month has been. He tells me that it has been good, though, as usual, he has been working too much.
It seems like that’s how it always is with running your own business, but I hope that eventually you’ll be able to relax, I say.
It’s not even the business, though, it’s just me. In theory, I could relax, but my mind is so focused on producing and winning—even if I tell myself to take a day off, I can’t. I think it has to do with coming from an economy that developed so quickly.
K tells me that the economy in Lithuania was “learn fast and grow fast or be left behind,” and that growing up with less most likely led him to always believe that he had to earn more. I tell him that I feel the same way, though I have been, by all means, attempting to rest full-time. After planning a career hiatus that I had saved for over the span of several years, all I could feel, after an initial week of euphoric freedom, was the guilt of not participating in the transactional economy, as if one of my main value metrics, developed without my choosing, was how much monetary value was created by any given activity. I felt silly existing without the anchor of money, without the idea of “I am earning this much” to verify that I was leading the actions of a responsible life. Though I intended to take this time to identify the directions I wanted to live towards, for my career and my spirit, my creativity and my purpose, the main thing I found myself thinking about was the money I was not earning, or the money I should eventually earn. He tells me that he understands exactly how I feel.
It’s so boring, I say, thinking like this.
I wish I could change myself, he says, and be more relaxed.
I tell him that it’s a start, at least, realizing how his thoughts and behaviors have been shaped by late capitalism and hustle culture, and then add: Although, I don’t really know anything. The more I live, the less I feel like I know how to be a person.
He laughs: It’s weird being a person. Sometimes I feel like I need alcohol to be myself.
Because you feel anxious?
I don’t know. Sometimes I just feel like I don’t know what to do, or what to say. What is anxiety for you?
I think it’s like that, I say. When I don’t know what to do with myself, when I am worried about things that are not real, although sometimes it feels like the worrying is not about anything in specific, as if there is a blanket of static in the air and the static prevents me from seeing what is in front of me, from rooting myself in the present. It is especially strong when I forget that everyone everywhere experiences the same things. The other day a friend of mine told me that she felt like she was pretending to know how to be a person most of the time, and she was tired of it. She surprised me when she said that, because I never thought that she felt that way, too, but that’s the trick of the mind: We always assume that everyone else knows how to be, and that we are the only ones that haven’t figured it out yet.
I feel like I am not very good at knowing, either. She helps me, though, K says, looking over at his partner. Sometimes I will be in my head, confused about something, and she’ll smile and say: “It’s like this!”
K’s eyes flicker over towards A. She laughs at something a friend says and leans over, a slim frame of black and silver. I admire the way that he looks at her, and admire her for being who she is.
It’s so silly, I say. We’re all out here trying to do the same things, trying to be people, and yet, it’s so messy being people, like: I will never be able to know you the way that you know yourself—how you experience the world—and you will never be able to know how I experience it, either. The best we can do is say things to each other, but even then, you are hearing something I am saying and I am hearing something you are saying, which is not the same as saying it, or thinking it. You are literally perceiving what I am saying right now, which is weird, because I forget about that. In my experience, it’s like: This is K, this is what he said, this is what he meant, but it is all an interpretation. I forget that we are interpreting each other all the time. There is always space between us.
Right, and sometimes I don’t know what I want to say. Like, have you ever had the form of a thought, but it doesn’t actually shape itself into anything? I’ll have that sometimes, and then someone will ask me: What are you thinking about? And I don’t know what to say, because whatever is inside of me has yet to metamorphose into language.
I laugh: I think I have too many thoughts—and I pay too much attention to them.
Really? You always seem so clear, he says. I think that the way you carry yourself and the way you are is really authentic.
Maybe I’m like that around you because I don’t feel judged, I say.
I tell K that I remember the first time I met him. I had been hanging out with A and M, a mutual friend of mine and A’s. It was my first time in their apartment and, accordingly, I was eager to display my positive self, the self I tend to express when I am out in the open world, because what we express tends to multiply. So I expressed every admiration I felt: for their dog, for their furnishings, for the home they built for themselves that was, in every detail, the home of two tastemakers. When I did so, both A and K responded with the kind of enthusiasm that fills your bones with fluff. I felt safe. Both of them appeared to be indiscriminate with their kindness, and so I felt free to be the person I am when I am kind to myself, to make stupid jokes and dance like a renounced nun.
I remember that, he says.
K’s eyes glow atop his skin like two bright stars in a field of wheat. A walks over to us with a white chalk smile, bright and nostalgic, and I think to myself that their eyes are the same. Their skin, too. I wonder how everyone I know who parties, travels, and lives a somewhat unconventional life appears younger than their age—perhaps youth has less to do with the tautness of skin than it does the bounce of spirit—and then I remember that botox is as widely worshipped as sunscreen. I consider when I will start worshipping myself.
Coca? A asks. I doubt and then nod, suggesting that my partner might want some more, too.
We go, and then they can go, she says.
We trot down a stream of concrete blocks to the first level of the bar and weave towards the back. A wash basin, urinal, and sliding door are covered in curtains of red light, graffiti and stickers stuck to the walls. I knock to see if anyone is inside, then slide the door open and closed.
I lean on the wall as A pulls out a small plastic bag, confessing to her that I felt so awkward when we first arrived, playing peek-a-boo with a crush I have had for longer than I would like to admit. Her face curls up into the bright folds of a spring dumpling, exuding a laugh that warms the sides of my face like steam. She tells me that she felt the exact same way at a different bar just a few nights ago. We talk about the embarrassing humanity in having a crush, about the desire to experience—which has more to do with the creativity of desire than it does the actual experience—and all of the peculiar ways in which something so small can feel big in the moment, though it is is objectively small, a crush, the kind of thing that is impartial as to whether you are five years old or forty.
I hand her a small ring of keys. The amber light falls on everything, cloaking us and the walls, and I cannot help but feel that we are living inside of a picture, one small frame in a gallery. The enclosure of the bathroom stall feels like a comma, separating us from the rest of the party. She says something that makes me laugh. I say something that makes her laugh. And then we both laugh again, I think not because of our words but because of our laughter, which feels funny and light on its own, bouncing off the walls like colors on a canvas. Though the stall is spacious and we are standing a few feet apart, it feels as if we are tucked into a shell, such that the space between us is barely there; not distance, but fluid, holding us like children in a womb. ☷
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With love,
Your favorite capybara ☼ AKA Travis Zane
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“perhaps youth has less to do with the tautness of skin than it does the bounce of spirit—and then I remember that botox is as widely worshipped as sunscreen.” amazing start to finish