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#Oldacquaintances. New Year’s Eve 2011. Bird was somewhere on a boat looking at whales swimming by in the Alaskan oceans. I was on my couch considering if old acquaintances should be forgotten. It seemed as though I had entered into a season of perpetual repetition. Recycling old curtains with no value and hanging them in old windows that had been broken beyond repair. The result? Rain on the inside. Drafts. Snow. Humidity. Torrential downpour all over my life. Winter. Summer. Spring. Fall. Indoors. Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes. Three hundred sixty-five days. A whole year and I was right back where I began: two hours before the conclusion of the first year of the second decade of the twenty-first century and I was alone again. The pizza was on its way. The wine was on the table. The DVD was ready to go and I was in the living room about to pop my pills.
That song, that horrible, horrible cliché of a song that everyone loves to sing on New Year’s Eve, “Auld Lang Syne”: it asks if we should move on, forget the old acquaintances, those little moments with people and things that happen in the five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes, the three hundred sixty-five days that make up the years of life. But it always assumes that the answer is no. The words are rhetorical, but the music, and how people sing it—decked out in party gear and donning colorful hats and their best jewels—is nostalgic, hinting that the old acquaintance is to be remembered longingly. What did I have to remember longingly? I started the year out of love, fell in love, was denied love, fell in love again, lost it, found it, and lost everything. Everything I had. As if I’d put it all up for grabs on a Vegas craps table. Now there was nothing. The same silence I’d started with. Only now it was much more depressing and nothing to even make a smart, chiding comment about. That past needed to stay where it was. To die. I could do that. Leave it all behind and make a resolution never to retrace my steps again. It was time to move on with me. With or without someone.
I loved love. I really, really loved love. At first flirty smile—love. At first sexy scent—love. The first moment you see him and you just know from somewhere in your navel that you must have his babies—love. Defy your mama—love. Defy your daddy—love! And who gives a damn if neither one of them ever speaks to you again because “he” is in your life and nothing else really matters right now, does it?—love. Cherry on top—love. Hand-holding on the Ferris wheel—love. Staying in bed all day and you don’t even care that your underarms smell like onions and his breath smells like onions (because he’s been kissing your underarms)—love. Red roses and chocolates on February fourteen—love. Love Jones with Nia Long standing out in the rain crying just before Larenz Tate sweeps her up into his arms—love. Sappy—love. Yes, clichéd—love. And we don’t care if it is clichéd because it’s our fairy tale and it can be whatever and however we want it—love. Just—love.
But I couldn’t help wondering whether it was all worth this pain. Maybe that kind of love wasn’t for me. Maybe, like that old myth said, I was meant to help others in their love, but never have one of my own. Maybe there was no man who could live up to the words of that song. Maybe I couldn’t. I’d tried e-mailing Xavier twice. To apologize. To see if maybe, just maybe, I’d made the worst mistake. I missed him so much. But he never answered. Maybe he felt I was the old acquaintance that should be forgotten.
I looked at the little blue NyQuil pills on the table. This couldn’t be my reality. Not again. I didn’t want to take them, but I couldn’t stand the idea of being alone. Not again. I wanted to miss this. To fall into oblivion and wake up in the second act of my life where I’d figured this all out. Alone and at least content. At least satisfied with me. Maybe I was what I’d been missing. Maybe I was the man of my dreams. Maybe the world had made me that way.
I reached for the pills. Grabbed the glass of wine. I was about to pop them into my mouth, but then the doorbell rang. I was expecting the gold-toothed pizza man with my delivery.
“One second,” I said, putting the pills back onto the table. I went to get the fifty dollars I’d left on the table.
The bell rang again.
“I’m coming!” I answered, running to the door. “One sec—” I opened the door, ready to hand Goldie the money and get my cheesebread.
“Hey, Rach.” Xavier was standing there, holding a suitcase.
“X?” I just jumped on him. Dropped the fifty dollars and jumped right on him.
“What? What’s this? What’s up?” he asked laughing. “Guess you’re glad to see me.”
He picked me up and carried me into the loft.
I was crying the saltiest tears on his shoulder.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, my voice broken after every word.
“I came to sweep you off your feet,” he said, holding me up in his arms in the middle of the living room floor.
“Sweep me off my feet?”
“If you’ll let me.” He let me down and looked into my eyes. “If you’ll let me sweep you off your feet, I’d like to do it. Will you?”
“Uhhh . . . Delivery for a . . . Winslow?”
We turned to the doorway. There was a skinny kid in a Morehouse T-shirt balancing a box of pizza on one hand.
“Oh, that’s for me,” I said, wiping my tears.
Xavier picked up the fifty dollars and handed it to the guy before taking the pizza.
“Keep the change,” I said.
“Wow! Thanks!”
I was about to close the door, but asked him, “Hey, where’s Goldie—the other pizza guy?”
“That fool had a date,” he said.
“Awesome.”
I closed the door, turned around, and leaned up against it. Xavier had already opened the pizza box and was sitting on the couch, flipping through channels on the television.
“Come sit down, girl!” he said.
“I want to watch the ball drop with you.”
