Long distance, pt.I

Turning 27 on a hotel room balcony overlooking a marina just off the beach under the sunset, no shirt on and some fine, mild rain coming down. The city is V**** and I think I’ve been here before, once, as a kid with my grandmother.
I go for the calendar on the lower right portion of the task bar- the Notebook warms up my thighs, my feet rest over the balcony’s glass ledge- just to make sure it’s indeed 2007. And it is. I put the computer away, close my eyes, savor the rain.

Regardless of having lost F****, regardless of having lost you and… heck, even regardless having lost someone like G**** (who’s still the one to call on my birthdays and will do so again in a couple of hours, I’m certain, to tell me she’s now engaged to some guy)… I still can’t believe I’ve actually come this far: I remember telling you I was dropping out of College some six or seven years back; we were crossing the street from that place I shared with some friends from back in High School and you had just called me “Such a smart boy” (in English, no less) for reading Gore Vidal’s The Golden Age, just because. Then you told me not to, because first and foremost you were not dropping out yourself and you had at least as much reason as I did for wanting to pull off the plug.

“We’re halfway through anyway,” you said.