Christmas

I woke up yesterday morning in Delaware on my mom's couch. We had opened presents the night before since both my sister and I had a train leaving early on Christmas morning to take us back to New  York. I got a window seat and looked out over the landscape of the Northeast, of cities in decline, of centers of manufacturing long abandoned, of rivers, shopping centers, subdivisions, of marshlands and trees without many leaves. There were quite a few cemeteries that our train rode past, cars parked throughout them, visitors leaving flowers at numerous graves, a lot of people out on Christmas morning remembering their loved ones no longer of this earthly world. I remembered a loved one still of this earthly world as my train breezed passed all of these scenes. I thought about Jacob a lot over the Christmas holidays. It probably didn't help that my mom made us watch Love Actually, which inspired all sorts of sentimental longing, nostalgic wandering, and romantic feeling in me.

The train pulled into Penn Station and I took the subway home, unloaded my luggage, my presents, showered, and then headed back on the subway, into work. 

Because I was working Christmas, because I was sad, because I was back in the city after spending two days in the suburbs, I wanted to rage. And, so, rage I did. C and I started inhaling dust-off in the bell closet fairly early into our shift. We started chugging red wine as well. We did poppers. We were on a mission to get as wildly fucked up at work as possible without getting fired. We bought some Lime A Ritas, a weird new canned concoction from Budweiser. We drank those and then with some other co-workers downed two bottles of cava, all the while hiding out of sight to inhale more dust-off. 

From work, already wasted, we hopped into a cab, headed toward Brooklyn to rage. I played Kendrick Lamar loudly from my phone and we passed the bottle of dust-off back and forth, getting more and more fucked up, killing more and more brain cells. 

I remember that Metropolitan was surprisingly crowded for Christmas. I remember that C and I did dust-off throughout the night right in the middle of the bar. I remember at some point doing a terrible karaoke version of Whitney Houston's "So Emotional." I left with C. We stumbled home toward Bushwick, walking down Grand Street. We parted ways at Manhattan Avenue, but not before I pointed out the location of my first apartment in New York, and also the location of my first New York boyfriend's then apartment, the two directly across the street from each other. It's a very sentimental conversation that these two buildings have with each other all of the time. 

I let these buildings continue their talk and headed home. I stumbled into the Dunkin Donuts by my house and had a conversation with a sausage and egg sandwich.