Christmas

I slept on a couch in Delaware this morning, a couch in the living room of my mom's new condo. The couch was too small for my entire body to be able to stretch out on. I slept in a curl, the shape of a letter that changed throughout the night, a restless tall person sleeping on a too small couch, a performative version of a Ouija board, what the letters spelled out I am not entirely sure but I think I figured it out on the train ride home. Last night, I also wasn't high for the first night in quite a while, which surely added to the restlessness. It wasn't the best night's sleep, but, because of that, was a good night otherwise. My mind was on fire, feeling reinvigorated in the way that it often is on journeys to my mom's living room. I rode the Acela down with my sister on Saturday morning. She slept most of the way and I looked at the faded industrial landscapes of northeastern cities and towns, thought about this world, the places I have lived, places I have been to, places I would like to go to, clearly both literally and figuratively here. I projected the path of my life along that of this train route, particular towns, their decay, a type of beauty I wanted to see in my own life, me aware that the town's residents moved elsewhere, wondering what directions my life should head in, where the residents of particular towns, if they were smart, if I was, would relocate to. There is a particular poetry in chemical plants and warehouses with broken windows that inspires all sorts of thoughts about the nature of America and life and what one is to do with their place amongst this mess of things.

I don't know. I never do. But I gets hints of it sometimes, often on train rides, whispers of what it is that things mean and what I should be doing with this knowledge.

At my mom's house, we watched a lot of rented movies that we had walked to a nearby Blockbuster to rent, one that was somehow still open, but one that was basically closed, the last day that they were renting DVDs being Christmas, the store soon to close. I wasn't sure why these employees would bother to come in on these holidays given that the store was about to close. They were all nerdy people though and talked loudly in too nasal voices and with too much enthusiasm about movies. I couldn't imagine where they would be with this place closed, understood in some ways why they were here still working holidays even though they would be without this shit job in about a week. When I was on a break from college once, my dad dying of lung cancer, I worked at a suburban Blockbuster with a friend I didn't really like that much from high school. Their reality, its sadness, was a little too close to home. I thought that I had escaped that, realized perhaps I did not. I thought about the job I still do, how it's not what I want to do, how it's still shit, how it's still a service job, of being servile to people with more money than you. Though a part of me knew I didn't really wish for it, the more reckless part of me wished that my job was also ending in a week like these folks' , wished someone would force that change upon me.

I got caught up on a lot of movies I had wanted to see. I nearly finished off a bottle of red wine while my mom nearly finished off a bottle of white wine while my mom's husband sipped a beer while my sister drank a Coke Zero. We ate and talked about things, usually talking about things via talking about television shows that we liked, movies we enjoyed, trying to find some common ground via halting, easy steps, particular television shows shorthand for particular values, ways of looking at the world.

I woke up this morning shortly after six having to pee, but held it because I didn't want to wake up my family yet. I got up and folded the sheets from the couch, played on my iPhone in ways that I would like to do much less of I have decided. I saw a red line on the horizon outside my mom's third floor condo, small town Delaware outside, an uninterrupted horizon. Dawn broke in the most beautiful fashion and when I realized how beautiful this thing was I grabbed my glasses and saw clearly the light frost on roofs below that had formed in the chilly night, the smoke coming from just a few rooftops, and a beautiful line of fire at the edges of one end of the sky. Day was breaking. It was Christmas and it was an absolutely gorgeous sunrise, the type that I could never see in the city, despite having seem some beautiful sunrises down Montrose Avenue as I walked to the subway station early in the morning; this was a beautiful widescreen sunrise. A long stroke of red forged its way against the night sky that was pushing back against it, saying not just yet.

This had a really stirring effect on me. I was moved for the first of many times this day. There would be many more deep impressions made today. Rewatching The Trip, parts of it deeply, deeply touching to me. I cried a couple times today reading and rereading one particular story in the New York Times Magazine, the entire issue stirring emotion and strivings to live better in me, though this one really digging that knife in deep enough to provoke tears once in my mom's living room and again when I reread it as I was passing somewhere through the New Jersey landscape on the fast Acela, towns blurring past. This was eight right before or right after passing a sign on a bridge over the Delaware River which made me very emotional for its truths about life on this planet, a sign saying in very large letters: "Trenton Makes - The World Takes." I decided I am getting a new job. I don't know what. I thought a lot about how I could work on boats. I wanted to do something with my hands. I don't want to work in the service industry any longer. There is a certain indignity about having to satisfy the needs and moods of a consumer that I find too degrading when I think about it for any sort of actual period in a real fashion.I watched the first few episodes of Louie on my sister's recommendation tonight with Jacob, and, holy shit, what an insanely fucking brilliant and harsh and truthful show. I am deeply impressed with what I have seen so far. I haven't seen a television comedy so honest before. Louis C.K. talks about the terrifying aspects of life, that we age and that we then die, really talks about how terrifying and sad and cruel life is, but because his truths are so real, so depressing, there is nothing else to do other than to laugh really, really hard, because to do otherwise would be to perhaps lose it, that the only way to face such sadness is with laughter, that it's the only successful defense that leaves one both alive and able to get out of bed and continue to go about our lives.

I came home and Jacob and I exchanged presents. We put a turkey in the oven to cook. While it was in the oven, we fucked on our couch, had dirty sex, the Christmas present I was too timid to ask for but that one I wanted more than anything, just real, passionate fucking, the type that we used to have constantly, but now which happens pretty rarely, us way too domestic and coupled, boring. He slapped me with his dick and I sucked on it, forced it down my throat until I gagged, wanting all my sensory feelings to be consumed with a hard dick, for that to be all there was on this planet, my mouth bobbing on a cock. He rubbed his dick against my ass as he sucked me off. I fucked him. I was covered in both of our cum. We took a shower. We ate the turkey and drank Bordeaux.

Trains provide this fast narrative, clear and linear, which then make it seem like life should unfold similarly. I am back in New York again, sadly aware of this, wondering how to continue this barreling drive, how to pass through scenery fast, how to reach intended destinations.