How to Boil Water

D and I never had a mountain of things in common. The bulk of it centered on entertainment. We both liked dancing our asses off at Luca's, a lounge/club in downtown Oakland. We both liked eating new types of food. We both liked to shop, and we both liked The Office. For some reason that crazy little hour long NBC show brought us together every week, even in the midst of trouble.

When we broke up the first time and I moved to Brooklyn, we both stopped watching. Maybe he stopped because the introduction music reminded him of my "Office Dance". Maybe I stopped watching because I missed his overly-boisterous laugh that tromboned out causing us to miss major plot points. Things fall apart.

So we ended up being about a season and a half behind, and mutually decided this month to rectify that with a running Office marathon (via Netflix). Season 4, disc one came yesterday.

D picked me up after I'd had time to come home from work and change. For a while everything felt normal. Everything felt untouched and aside from his new car, nothing seemed different at all.

"You hungry?" he said.

"I could eat."

"Thai Cottage?"

"Hell yea."

Without words we both already knew what the other wanted to order (tofu chili basil for me, spicy wings of paradise for him). We started towards Pearland and as I saw the traffic speckled horizon my stomach began to drop. Oh yea I thought, we're going to our house...his house...The House.

The house where truth was rudely shown down on every single existing flaw in our relationship like over head lighting on a room full of trannies. The house I left incomplete and half empty while our nosey neighbors watched...surely whispering to one another.

"I should tell you right now," he mumbled, "The grass looks like shit."

I laughed.

I can only say that walking back into that house after 2 months felt like walking through an old neighborhood. I felt the same way when my mother and I went back to 68th avenue in East Oakland to the house both of us grew up in and realized someone else now lived there. I looked around and saw the small touches he had added, the gross addition of bottles of alcohol at the bar in the dining room, his collection of vintage 70's TV show and movie posters he'd hung in the game room and of course he had inched the red leather sofa we'd picked out together closer to his plasma TV. I hated when he'd done that before. "This room doesn't have to center around the dummy box, ya know." I'd say. He'd nod.

We watched a few episodes of the Office, although I didn't do my Office Dance. He still laughed boisterously and I still forced him to rewind it and "shhhh, so we can hear." Some things were very much the same.

Still, I can't help but feel nostalgic and a little left out, as I'm sure he does every time he notices small changes in my life take place without him. It very much felt like a pot of water I'd walked away from and revisited to finally find a few tiny bubbles making their way to the top.

Pearland, TX, USA

This is Pearland, TX. I live an exit away from the the above 6 President Heads. I venture into Pearland to get groceries and other needed supplies. I haven't seen a corner store in over two months.

At night I hear nothing but the occasional bird or dog bark. Every day during the week I leave my house, sit in traffic for 45 minutes, listening to family-safe talk radio. I go to work for 8 hours, a position that doesn't stimulate me in the least bit, although I am grateful to have work at all these days, and drive home in the same 45 minute traffic. As we make our way from the freeway exit to our garage the only variation is that occasionally we stop and pick up our mail. D waves to whatever neighbors are outside at the time, something I find to be pointless and annoying. If everyone was so interested in getting to know each other, we would actually KNOW each other.... We pull into the garage, and the rest of my day is so predictable that I sometimes forget what day of the week it is. Weekends include less traffic, different clothes and more food.

I'm not going to pretend that I like Pearland, TX. I don't compare it at all to Central Houston, which actually has life and goings on. Pearland, TX is the most boring place I've ever lived in my life...and I once lived in Merrietta, OH. This place should come with a disclaimer.

WARNING: In exchange for a low mortgage and a back yard, emotional and economic fees include but are not limited to; lack of stimulation, decrease in sexual urges, higher risk of living next door to a serial killer, lack of cityscape, roaches the size of house cats, overly friendly neighbors, and the unrested desire to hang or be hung from the shower head.