They came and went. They went and came. It was a relentless revolving door of getting to know people and losing people and forgetting people and starting the bullshit all over again. Telling stories about the scars on your knees, or finding out what type of shampoo someone used just by smelling their hair but never actually taking a shower in their bathroom — no one ever let you get that close.
We were always surrounded by people yet invariably alone. No toothbrushes were waiting for you anywhere but your sad little bathroom with the grout that needed cleaning and the trash your roommate never took out. No one noticed if you wore the same outfit two days in a row. Girls dreamt of being asked to post-coital brunches but always left with simple, “See you around, then”s, walking dejected down stairs, willfully ignoring how shitty the guy’s apartment was and how the hallway smelled like sour Korean food. The He in question was always It, The One, something to hold onto that never wanted to be held. The boys here were excited puppies, running into oncoming traffic, and the girls chased after them, wanting to help them or save them or keep them from worse options. “I’m amazing! Don’t you see?” they yelled, but the boys kept speeding towards cars.
Even the good things only lasted a matter of weeks. The matches that seemed perfect and in any other world would make for a relationship of a year or more disintegrated from the boredom created by the knowledge that you could have something new and different whenever you wanted. It was like being at an amusement park with the expectation of riding everything. And there were so many options, so many fucking roller coasters, that you never needed to ride the same one twice, even if its speed or style or whatever a rollercoaster is capable of giving someone in its own roller coaster way, struck the rider as special or unique. It didn’t matter; it was onto the next fucking rollercoaster.
Everyone was beautiful and that was the problem. They dressed well and listened to music no one had heard of yet. They read novels on the subway and went to art shows that filled up the streets like block parties. Everyone was “Up and Coming” and everyone was breaking hearts.
There were different types of people here, but everyone wanted to date their type over and over again, as if the formula worked, as if the sense of what they wanted was actually what they needed. The gold-diggers liked the finance boys, even though the finance boys were losing the gold and hanging themselves with dog leashes in their penthouse apartments. The finance boys liked the girls who had big tits and didn’t read The Economist. The models dated other models or older guys with money. Everyone else wanted to date the models, even though half of them didn’t speak English and the other half were still hovering questionably around the age of eighteen. The art kids dated other art kids. Everyone wanted to be understood but no one wanted to understand. Everyone wanted to fuck.
We all knew each other and the pond was shallow — about the size of a bathtub filled with crowded, expectant children. Dating friends of friends was unavoidable and forgivable; the trappings of social mores had faded away. You came to expect things while living here, like the noise, filth, and godforsaken winters. And dating people who had fucked your close friends and whose friends who had fucked friends of your own. This TV melodrama was never even dramatic; it just became part of the scenery, like limbless homeless people begging on the subway or European tourists walking in place on the sidewalk.
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God how I hate hipsters. Nice writing, though.
This is good, seriously! Thanks