Justin Bieber - "What Do You Mean?"

I haven’t had a bed in weeks. I am beginning to wonder if this is why I feel so unstable as of late, so unmoored in some ways.

There was a bedbug problem. Welcome to New York. The bed got thrown out, the exterminator came a few times. I have been sleeping on the couch since, which is fine and not that big a deal, but I have felt slightly crazier than usual these past few weeks and perhaps it actually has to do with a bed, that not having my little nest to return to each night has me frantically flapping my wings, a lost bird, wondering where my nest has gone to.

The wings are flapping though. All of a sudden, I have reached an absolutely restless moment at my job, something I predicted would happen at the end of the summer. Prediction proved correct. I am plotting steps on how to either get involved in a different job within this same agency that I like a lot, or, failing that, going elsewhere. The hunt begins. It never ended. To live in New York is to be engaged in a constant predatory hunt for that next thing, that next step, something else, something better. Even once you get your name in lights, you’re looking for how can you get a bigger sign, a brighter sign, an LED sign.

There is that. There is also that guy, that beautiful, beautiful guy. He makes me feel nervous, awkward, and wildly insecure. I like him so much and I am scared of how likely it is to end in disaster, because of how gorgeous he is, how smart he is, and probably most of all how he is my co-worker. I make the best life choices, in case you didn’t know that about me already.

We hung out a few nights ago at a bar by my house. When we parted ways afterwards, we made out on the street corner. Kissing him is the greatest high for me lately. I get positively ecstatic. It’s the joy of getting something you wanted so, so bad, of finally getting to taste the thing you had been so hungry for. I told him that I wished I had a bed to invite him back to. He told me he wished the same.

So, yes, I’m getting a bed immediately. Or actually probably not, because I am insanely broke and this next paycheck is going toward rent and my trip to New Orleans. So I might be sleeping on a couch until mid-September. But I need to figure out a way to not make that happen because this fling might not extend until then and I want so bad to roll around with this person in my bed which I have yet to acquire.

There are other things going on, so many other things, a best friend leaving, generalized stress and panic among friends, work drama, parties, so many parties, and life, this glorious, messy project of being alive and finding your way in the world, of trying to at least.