I decided that to celebrate my birthday I would take an entire day to have fun by myself.
The night before, I prepared. I made sure that the dishes were washed, that my clothes were put away, that my desk was tidy. Not a single feeling of guilt would be allowed to enter my consciousness. It would not be allowed, and it could not happen, because what needed to be done was done. After noting my plans for the day, I went to bed with an unfamiliar sense of anticipation.
The next morning, I had breakfast with my partner and then got ready. I prepared two cups of coffee and put them in a thermos. Sure, it could have been more luxurious to go to a coffee shop and have the coffee prepared for me, but I do not have fancy taste in coffee, and I've found that, especially at cute coffee shops in the city, the coffee can be too sophisticated for my taste. My trusty French press makes it precisely to my liking. Coffee would be my sidekick on this day of debauchery, and I was not willing to take risks with it. I changed into an outfit that was so "me" that wearing it made me feel more like myself than I actually was.
Before I left, I scarfed down a large bowl of microwaved frozen mixed vegetables. This was critical digestive preparation for a day like this as a 34 year-old.
~~~~~
On the walk to the train station, I was stopped by a large bush of bougainvilleas in front of a neighbor's house. They weren't in the way of the sidewalk, but they deserved my coddling. My thumb glided across a pale pink petal, as veined and thinning as an elderly woman's cheek. The dead flowers crunched under my shoes, lifeless and light, like gift wrapping tissue paper strewn on the floor of a baby shower.
~~~~~
I made it to the train station in good time. With a comfortable five minutes of leeway, I took notes on the last year. This year, I have been partially employed, finishing up old projects while trying to look for a job that would begin a career. I applied for over 20 postdoctoral research positions, in my field a tacit requirement for becoming a professor at a research institution. After only two interviews and no offers, I gave up for the time being on a career in the academy. In the last couple months, I applied for over 150 jobs in industry and got two preliminary interviews.
More disorienting was the very act of applying. For most positions, I wrote a cover letter describing how my skills made me suitable for the job, how the mission of this company was exactly my mission for my career, and how my academic and professional experiences led me directly to applying for this position, whatever it was. Each story was slightly different, and after rewriting the story of my goals and values so many times, the realization gripped me by the throat: I lost my understanding of what it is that I actually want to do or what I actually liked. Whether you asked Freud or Hull, desire or drive—whatever you wanted to call it—was fundamental to an individual's psyche. I had lost touch with its signal.
Today, I was to be alone, away from household, communal, professional, or volunteering obligations, to refine my sensitivity to this signal. I would lean into the activities I desired, and, by reaping their consequences, would reinforce the my signal detection mechanisms. This, in addition of course, to having a grand time.
~~~~~
The little girl sitting near me on the train wore a flouncy, tulle skirt in the same color as my neighbor's bougainvilleas. "We are in a train, and it is underwater?" she looked suspiciously at her father.
"Yes, now we're underwater," he responded.
"But how can I know we are underwater? I don't see any water," she said.
"Well you can't see any water because we're in a tunnel."
"But how--? How can I know we're in the tunnel?" Her exasperation was palpable. "I don't see the tunnel!" I marveled at her tiny, nimble ankles, wiggling and impatient for the real excursion to begin.
~~~~~
Outside the train station, I dodged ambling city folk, street vendors, and overturned e-scooters on the sidewalk. I passed a man bent over in his wheelchair, adjusting his bandages. His leg was exposed, cracked open like a geode. I briefly made eye contact with the woman next to him, and as I passed, she called after me, "Don't forget that you're beautiful. You're beautiful like a butterfly, or something."
I winked and pointed at her, "No you!" She was in shadow but I think she grinned.
I was turning away when I heard her voice again. "Actually did you know that, like, butterflies eat their own shit?" I looked at her again. "Like to keep their environment clean, I think."
"Whoa, that's crazy."
I walked a few more blocks away before stepping into a side street to take note of the conversation.
~~~~~
I stopped at a coffee shop with the intention of using the restroom, and incidentally drank the best iced hibiscus tea I'd ever had. To my right, I could see, out of the corner of my eye without looking too obviously, a young couple. The man had a grease on the sleeves of his oversized flannel shirt, and he gave the lady beside him a smoldering look that didn't seem fit for being in public. She raised a single eyebrow at him and tipped her head back to sip her drink. She was cool. He was lucky, and I could tell by how he scowled and scratched his head that he knew.
~~~~~
At the perfume boutique, one of the fragrances bit me in the nose. The embossed card next to it cited "notes of radish."
~~~~~
Another shop sold oddities, including taxidermied frogs and octopi preserved and floating in some kind of brine. The shopkeeper told me to ask him any questions if I had any. I didn't see him offer this service to the other customers, and I wondered what about me made him think I would have questions about this stuff. Maybe it was my outfit or the look on my face.
~~~~~
At bag shop nearby, I saw something that was even more of an oddity to me. The shop sold keychains to attach to your bag, but the keychain was in the shape of a tiny bag. This tiny bag-shaped keychain had a zipper, and thus itself also functioned as a bag. I could not imagine what one would put in it. I noticed my aversion to this self-referential bag/not-bag and felt a little old.
~~~~~
Wielding a gigantic croissant and my thermos, I meandered to the park, five or six blocks away from the train station. The warmth of the sun splashed across my face as I made my way up the hilliest part of the park. Conversations bloomed all around me, and in my excitement to hear them all, I caught only snippets.
A young person passing by confessed on the phone, "I'm just a really pure, innocent guy. But low key I'm also like really irresponsible."
On a picnic blanket, a woman was passing her phone around to her concerned friends. "I'm totally justified in ghosting right? This is his picture, like the one I asked for, and this is his profile pic. Literally AI."
Two women in their forties or fifties sat on the grass, gazing at a distant something. "I just... Ever since 2008 my relationship with her just hasn't been the same." The other woman tightened her grasp on her hand and asked, "Do you regret that?" I never found out.
Further up the hill, I found a spot with a view of the skyline. I usually see it from the other side. Someone with enviable hair asked me if I'd like to buy some chocolate or mushrooms. I declined, took out my notebook and pen, and put on my headphones. There was no way to eat the croissant such that the shards didn't fall all over my notebook. I brushed them away and reviewed my notes on my interaction with Butterfly Lady.
Something told me that if I'd asked, she'd have plenty to say about butterflies, beauty, love, life, euphoria, and ingredients that turn legs to ballooning stone. I wanted to ask, but it just wasn't time.
Within the next year or two, my partner would likely end his position as a postdoctoral researcher here, and we would move again. At 34 years old, I was tired of moving. I wanted to stay in one place, get to know the terrain, the little shops, the stories that made the place what it was. I wanted to know the weird sayings and inside jokes than only the townspeople knew. I wanted to know a place so well that its tensions and joys were kind of mine too. Maybe then I could help or at least have a positive causal influence of some kind, more than volunteering at the soup kitchen once a week.
I worried for Butterfly Lady in the same distant way I worried about things for most of my life. I scribbled about the ignorance in abstract knowledge and about self-imposed alienation, the trade-offs of the modern life I was living, about the impotence of an adult in transition.
I took my headphones off. The problem was not solved, but at least I had words for the way of life I wanted.
~~~~~
Two things I wanted were fries and a drink.
I found a bar in a quieter neighborhood a couple miles from my apartment. There was a seat at a small table in the patio, directly under the heater. There, I munched on a Caesar salad and tater tots with an orange sauce that was tangy and creamy. I wish I could remember what it was called. In between bites, I took sips of a melon liqueur cocktail that made me put down my book. I rotated the spindly stem of the glass between my fingers and admired the liquid in the glow of the candle. Its bubbles winked as they passed by.
I overheard the story of a young artist's trip to Europe, where they had their first experience (and their last, they promised their politely aghast friends) doing meth. Two tables over, I saw a man realize, as his date arrived in a ruby dress that was too fancy for this bar by several orders of magnitude, that he was a little underdressed. A little further away, a group of friends took turns gushing about a pottery collection that one of them had just shown at a gallery.
It never got busy enough in the bar that I felt the pressure to leave. When I finished my last sip and left, it was dark.
I got on the bus, and then got off it early, about half a mile from my apartment. I wanted to amble at my own pace and try to catch a glimpse of my neighbors' cats in the windowsills before the day was over.
