25 in 19 days

I heard today another friend of mine is planning on leaving NYC. This brings the grand total up to about ten people who have either physically or metaphorically left the city—either leaving NYC completely or just not leaving the couch in their Park Slope brownstone, a spoil of the dating war, much like how the vapid use of the terms “monogamous” and “we” become entrenched in his/her vocabulary. The sudden use of those words also magically implying ten-fifteen pounds of comfort weight and a disdain for activities they once enjoyed, such as blowing lines off of toilet seats and finding remnants of last nights fun—still in bed, fast asleep via the alcohol coma. Funny how a full-time job and a girl/boyfriend will change a person’s definition of “letting loose”.

When I heard the news, I was in the library, trying to do work, but instead checking facebook and messaging half of my buddy list. I looked over at one of my friends and told him what I just found out, “You know, when I finally make it back home, I won’t have any friends left. Either their own sense of fiscal responsibility and a desire for a quality of life has made my friends leave or they’ve been claimed by the ring, and are in the midst of planning their weddings.”

“Come on, Shannon. You aren’t that much older than me. Are all your friends really getting married?”

“You’d be surprised. It’s the age between 23-25 where people magically start finding the person who they want to settle down with. I went from having all single friends to hearing incessant chatter about engagement rings and the politics of moving in with someone—all within the span of a year.”

He looks at me as if I told him Santa really exists.

“Dude,” I say, “I am fucking serious. I can tell you don’t believe me but wait! Talk to me in a year and half on your twenty-fifth birthday and then retake the inventory on singlehood.”

You know, this birthday is psychologically damaging for me. It’s like I couldn’t wait for my twenty-first birthday—no more expired drivers licenses saying that I was a very youthful twenty-seven year old, nor having to dodge places that were busted the week before in one of Guilliani’s “safer New York” crackdowns. The age equaled freedom, from the frat parties being the only place where an under-age gal could score booze, and being able to price compare Stoli and Grey Goose vodka inside the package store, and no longer needing to rely upon one of my friends who would grab the cheapest shit off of the shelf. After the twenty-first birthday, your life is marked by other milestones. College graduation, first job, for me, having sex—that make the birthdays afterwards pale in comparison. No longer do the birthdays signify your maturation, but instead what you accomplish.

Except for the twenty-fifth birthday—the birthday is a milestone in of itself. Because, no longer could you fudge that you are in your “early-twenties” and hide behind its implications of naiveté and prolonged adolescence. You are in your mid-twenties: two years closer to the average age of marriage, usually at “mid-career” status professionally, and often already a recipient or soon-to-be of a graduate degree. It’s an age that marks being a grown up.

Although I get shafted for presents because my birthday is so close to Christmas, I do have the one luxury that I get to watch everyone else grow numerically older first. And it’s great, because for an additional twelve months, I get to feel like the youngest—except this birthday, I don’t think it will be the case. And one of my favorite people in the entire world, who made my experience in NYC, is leaving.

I was telling my mother about it on the phone this evening, my frustrations with being in a graduate program that I don’t find interesting, how all of my friends seem to be settling down, and I am stuck in this limbo—in a foreign country I am hesitant to put down roots because I know I’ll eventually go back to NYC.

“You know Shannon,” she says, about an hour before I wrote this, “who’s fault is it? If you would just stop moving around and stayed put, then maybe you would find someone.”

Thanks Jewish mom. Because we both know if I pretended to be an English rose, and actually gave a damn about assimilating into a culture in which I represent the antithesis of, that the English boys would magically stop being shitty in bed, and have enough cojones to touch my breast during a heated three hour make-out. Or at the very least stop blushing when I mention the words penis and vagina, or when I answer truthfully that I’ve fooled around with girls. Or they just think I am a whore—if only they knew I talk brazenly about sex because my vagina is like a combination lock-- you only get access if you know the code. And these boys are very far off, so far that I’ve begun to develop a pavlovian response to the accent. I haven’t been this celibate this long since my fat days in college. And at least I had my wife to share my bed with then.

But that’s what I’ve been reduced to here. A regression due to the lack of accountability, much like that plagued me during my undergraduate days. My life here is fleeting—I hopefully will be working in London within six months—and theoretically could act with behavioral carte blanche here due to my transient status, however the fish bowl that is collegiate life prevents me from doing anything more than a little dirty dancing during the bops. Try finding a non-committal fuck buddy in the land of the serial monogamists while your friends watch, and then proceed to talk behind your back about who you are hooking up with, because you have been acting awfully friendly to that boy over there... I’m craving the anonymity of city living, being able to retreat into my room undisturbed, and run to the store in my jammies and not worry if I’ll run into my crush—which inevitably happens anyway.

Oxford is a weird place. I thought I belonged here, the bastion of the old skool, where the socially inept but intellectually genius were protected by the towering gates of the college that not even Rupunzel’s rescuer would be able to scale. But the longer I stay, the more I realize that I needed this break to make me realize how much I crave reality—even if mine involved a gold card, expensive shoes, and a job where I bought inanimate ad space for legal drug pushers (aka the American pharmaceutical industry). I’m not an academic. And I’m not saying this because I am discouraged with my almost-failing status in statistics. It’s just I’m coming to realize that this is my greatest joy: sitting in my room, writing all night, with cigarette breaks interspersed throughout the creative process. Plus, I am way too social—as indicated how I was a natural nomination for social secretary of my college.

But, like my therapist told me on Thursday, I need to stop shutting down when I’m confronted with my feelings of anger and frustration. Embrace it, channel it into something productive, and since I am here, I might as well try to kick some ass. And, anyway, London is only an hour and half on the train away anyway. But seriously, I’m really excited about going home. NYC is like the gal/guy you take for granted because you met them at such an early age and had no idea of the shit that is out there.

Off to Berlin and Prague in three days, and the wanderlust in me is excited for the change of scenery.