Tonight is the first night by myself in my new apartment.   Even though I’ve lived “on my own” for the past 15 years, I’ve never lived alone, alone, you know?  I always thought of myself as being grown and independent, but why does this feel so weird?  I guess because boarding school, college, my twenties…  all were filled with roommates and boyfriends.  But tonight.  Tonight I actually had to say goodbye to him. Simple little kiss goodbye – was the first time I’ve had to love someone enough to let them go.  And now I’m here, the whole bed to myself, a fuzzy Dennis  Leary crackling through on a station that isn’t recapping or forecasting football.  This is what I wanted, right?

But I’m a little scared because the person walking around in the apartment above me is stomping around, and it sounds like they are going to crash through.  And, there is the helicopter that’s been circling around overhead for the past 20 mins.  I really hope there isn’t a serial killer on the loose in the city tonight.  And, this building BETTER NOT have bugs.  I’ll be very, very sad.

What’s even more ironic?  I haven’t lived in the same city as my mother in 15 years.  But tonight.  She’s here.  Across town in a hotel on business, but she’s here.  She doesn’t know this is my first night living alone, so I didn’t tell her, and couldn’t invent a logical explanation to spend the $20 to park my car over night in her hotel (Which is way too “metropolitan” for her by the  way.  She keeps repeating to me that in all her years of travel, she’s never stayed in a gay hotel… and that this hotel they’ve got her at caters specifically to “them,” and for that reason she should be on guard.  As I explain to her that most of the so called hipsters in this city will seem gay to her midwestern-anti-sushi-eating sensibilities, in the back of my mind I keep trying to figure out what she thinks all the gay men will want with her anyways.  And I’m reminded of why I’m so happy to have escaped the little bubble my family lives in…But I digress.) So I’m here, little me in my new little apartment, in this big city.  I really do wonder what the future has in store for me.