A Tiny Step

You spend your whole life wanting to know someone, wanting to love them. But in the end, what you’re left with is nothing but ordinary comfort. A support network into nothing, nothing, nothing. He said they wouldn’t be ashamed of you, that they wouldn’t call you a little slut, like his last girlfriend. You wanted to tell him how comforting this was, but instead you sit back into the sofa and place the balls of your feet on the table, try to look sophisticated or at the very least calm.

You’re sitting at the end of a long night. Your boy keeps drinking red wine. You like how you don’t have your own glass, gives you liberty to sip from his. If you sip from his glass, then the calories don’t count. If you sip from his glass, then you can stop drinking whenever you want. No obligation to finish the last drop. This is your promise, your goal. And though it’s not that big, it still gives you hope to keep on, to continue the mission, the necessity. Whatever that is.

*

A few hours later M will call you. He’s in Hollywood, talking about how it’s more and more like Disneyland every day. He’s not sure if the people around him are all tourists, the hordes, but he’s pretty sure that there are too many of them. He tells you he never wants to go into Hollywood again, and you nod. Even though he’s talking on the cell phone and can’t see that you are. It’s one of those things you don’t consider good etiquette. It’s one of those things you don’t even consider.

The light in the back yard mystically turns off. Or maybe somebody turns it off. This makes you nervous, so you try to think of something else, another train of thought. Maybe bunnies. M’s left you to help cheer C on, but since you have tons of writing to do and a step outline to finish for your screenplay and a million other things that you can't even remember, you stay still. M told you straight out that since you’re not coming to keep him in check, he’s probably just going to stay out until the club closes at 4AM. This is expected, but you also know that if you want to hang out tomorrow night with friends and possibly Sunday, then you need to have a night to actually get shit done, though now you realize that what you’re doing isn’t exactly getting shit done, it’s more like talking about getting shit done.

Which is a step closer to actually doing it, but a very, very tiny step.