Why I Stay Home on Friday Nights

FOMO: Fear of Missing Orbs

It is Friday night and I am alone.  Not a cry for help! – I prefer this to any other sort of Friday night.  There was a time in my life that I went out every single night.  Fridays were different only in that more people would join me.  More people meant more possibilities, and more possibilities is what I wanted the most.  I don’t need to tell you that most possibilities are disappointments.  If you’re reading this, then you’re old enough to know. 

That went on for years, actually.  I’d only stay in if I was sick, and even then I might give it a go.  Even an early morning shift scheduled the next day wouldn’t stop me, and sometimes I’d drink myself straight through to Visine and mouthwash and Debbie at the front desk, none the wiser.  I couldn’t give up the night, not for Debbie, not for anyone.  I loved everything about it, and still sometimes find myself replaying b-roll footage of 4am drives in my black four door mid-sized, tipping my cigarette out of the window, the warm breeze creeping through and nuzzling me under my chin until I smiled.  Everything was an invitation…

The memories of it definitely outperform the actual experience. I am happier now, on this Friday night inside.  I feel safer.  I wasn’t safe then, something I knew even when it was happening but chose to ignore it.  I was just too invested in being young and alive and feverishly looking for whatever that meant.  It felt good, mostly.  Or at least it felt good to think it might feel good.  I don’t know.  But it doesn’t matter.  I’m here now, older, alone and inside on a Friday.

I’m not lonely, though.  In fact, I’m the least lonely I’ve ever been in my life.  That’s one of the things that lets me be inside on a Friday; not feeling lonely inside my body.  When your heart feels lonely you can turn to a ritual of manic searching, searching, searching.  The search is, like all searches, for the cure.  Of course I never found it, but I do think the searching itself was a sort of salve.  It was methadone to at least be out in the world.

Francisco Goya, Witches’ Sabbath, 1797–1798

I was out in the world earlier tonight.  I was by myself walking under those golden-orange street lights that make Fridays in summer seem magic and Tuesdays in winter seem depressing. I was listening to my breath, which I always hear but rarely listen to. As I don’t know anything about where I am right now, I was just walking because I felt like I was supposed to.

I’m at a work conference in a city no one wants to go to, in a “cute” area right outside of that city everyone thinks they want to live in.  It’s one of these fake boutique shopping mall cities that is just made of Hyatts and Talbots and Lululemon and un-appetizing restaurants called “Turquoise Agave” or “Alfie & Andi.” There are stores here that seem to sell children’s clothes made for adults or eyeglasses made for no one.  No real person, at least.

Everything here is made for the almost rich; the top of the heap of the lumpen who like to think that certain polo shirts, watches, and strollers will be enough to prove to the actual wealthy people that they aren’t as toilet-flushable as everyone else.  It doesn’t work. It does give them a place to dump their money in the nine years leading up to the big divorce. If the sun gets too bright or the emails too passive-aggressive, there are places of refuge. There are wine bars here that have bearded men with tattoo sleeves giving a sermon to a group of loser couples about how climate change has shifted the temperature 1 or 2 degrees which was just enough to make England a more hospitable place to grow Champagne grapes. 

Where do they get all of the bearded & tattooed pseudo-sommeliers for places like this?  Is there a whole fleet of them and their sisters (nose-septum pierced with horseshoe, dressed in Dickie’s, reasonably hot) who are shipped out to staff any new brewery or wood-fired pizza kitchen? Could there be anything more sobering than seeing someone whose entire aesthetic is built around an idea of “outlaw tough,” but is serving over-sized glasses of dry red to the yuck-yucking dullards at a place called “The Art of Burger” or some shit?  Note I said sobering, and not depressing.  We have to be done with the depression now, we already know the rules and the levels of the game, and to be still depressed means you’re still surprised.  Don’t be surprised, you already know what is happening.

I walked around and looked at all of that which this deranged world has to offer.  I went through my usual paces of scoffing and disbelief. I passed a shoe store selling a pair of “Pride” themed pumps for $280.  I laughed that rueful laugh about it, the one that tries to be as brave as the men and women at that shoe store who made such an important statement, and the one that fails just as hard.  What a world.  I really do despise what it’s become.  But I also don’t really know what I liked about it before.  I think I just knew less about it.  Lots more tunnels and nooks and crannies to get lost in.  I could drive at night and be untethered to everything else.  I could pass my usual town-lines and keep going, keep driving, never stop.  I could get lost and never seen again.

It has to be something that happens to every civilization everywhere in the universe. We just want things to get easier and more connected and then they do and we say, “why not?” And then suddenly we go a little too far and we lose all of the useful parts of public life and supplant them with whatever the fuck it is we have now. I think this is why we always argue about what is good and bad and wrong and right. We want some things to be all good, and some to be all bad. But a lot of things are good for a bit until they’re bad. But people still keep thinking they’re good out of habit.

I walked around and thought about my father.  My father would have never wasted his time having the thought that I wrote out in the last paragraph. It is amazing I was not punished more often as a child, and if I could go back in time to whoop my ass I would. But my dad only whooped my ass sometimes. Mostly he worked and said little. He is stoic and powerful, but also has a tenderness that is getting harder for him to hide as he gets older.  I feel sad about it, the fact that whatever world he grew up in trained him to stow away that piece of himself.  I realized that he rarely ever did what I was doing, which was walk alone at night.  Not out of fear for his safety, but only because my dad cannot think of a reason to leave the house after you finish work and come home for dinner.  Unless someone was in jail or the hospital, it was dinner, toilet, couch, bed.

As a default, I usually consider myself weaker than my dad.  But perhaps this world has forced me to form a different strength; a different husk that serves to protect me from a different kind of intruder.  It is unfortunate that most of the things other people admire about you are so automatic to you that you can’t admire them for yourself.  My dad probably never enjoyed his strength, I don’t even know the name of mine.

I know I will need it though.  The world is congealing into two orbs, and I hate them both. I hate them both because it seems like the dumbest thing of all to think that your orb is the better one. Thinking about this, to me, is a form of prayer.

I was only able to see this undeniably spiritual part of existence once I admitted that I hated the world and had no good suggestions on how to improve it.  I walk around this fake suburban commerce district and loathe each and every pair of Sperry’s Topsiders I see.  I hate how none of these people dread going back to work on Monday the way that I do. I hate that people at this conference seem actually enthused about these activities we have to do that keep us from spending time with our mother before she dies.  It’s all so frivolous here, structured, safe, and make-believe.  Like the whole thing is rigged up from cardboard and can be disassembled in the morning.

But what, then, do I lust for if not the order of a place like this?  Should I still pretend that I want the world to be covered by eclectic neighborhoods filled with jazz clubs and attic-galleries and cafés built in re-purposed water treatment centers?  I hate that world, too.  It has all of the messiness I claim to want, but that messiness is apparently too messy for me.  And also fake.  Everything, apparently, is fake. Compared to me.  I’m the only real thing there is.

But I know I’m a fake too.  I know this because I am the only one who sits on this brain throne and knows all the secrets this mind palace holds.  Let’s just say that there is a lot of intrigue in this palace, if you know what I mean. I am fake, and I hate the world. I hate the world, and I hate the world that exists in reaction to the world, and I hate the one that exists in reaction to that. 

Must sound a lot like depression, and it did to me too.  That’s why it took so long for me to admit it to myself.  I thought that if I finally admitted it, I’d have to kill myself which I find scary and probably very painful.  I avoided it as long as I could until I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I had to face it, not when I got sober, not when I lost something I could never replace, but only when I realized there was nothing else to do but think of that. Boredom is what opened the gates of heaven to me.

It was that painful, scary admission that allowed me to turn back to religion.  It allowed me to see that everything that turned me from it - made me question it in my teens, rebel against it in college, and scoff at it in my twenties – all of that was part of the religion, all part of God.  If you’re a non-believer, you just felt a certain way when you read the capital G in my writing of God. That’s fine. You can think it’s not for you, and I hope that whatever you have instead is serving you well. But I hope you don’t just roll your eyes at it because not believing in God is what you think is true. Because that would be a disaster, and you know it. If you’re my age you have about 15,000 days left and so really think hard if you want to spend those being right or being…whatever it is you are. What are you, anyway?

Probably unsatisfied. That is what I felt. The feeling of always being unsatisfied is the first step to salvation.  It is the understanding that this world cannot possibly offer you what you are looking for.  This belief is central to all religions. This belief is central to my faith, which is my own.

This belief did not make me a saint or a martyr.  In fact, it made me mind my own business more than anything.  When we understand the swirling liquid eternal carousel we all spin on, we have less need to prove that we are good or evil.  We just “are.”  I think that most of the people in this world who spend their times obsessing and lamenting over politics are children, and I think the ones who have given up on it like me are also children.  The only difference is I know I am a child.

This belief did not make me happy. This belief did not make me good. All this belief did was make me free. If you are feeling trapped, maybe you can admit to yourself why. It might just free you.