A daily fiction writing exercise — one page on the first song that plays on shuffle.
New York City had never felt right. The faster he moved to keep up with the pace of the city, it seemed, the faster the city got, and he’d always been tired. Los Angeles hadn’t been right either. It wasn’t just that everyone was wearing a mask — it was how proud of their masks they were. When he was focusing on editing, which he could do remotely, he’d spent four months in Marfa with a girl he’d met at Coachella, but that wasn’t right either. He’d dated a married woman for a couple years and gotten to be a visitor in her affluent Midwestern suburban life, but that that felt as wrong as any of the others. The year after that, he’d taken the advice of an associate from Berkeley who was convinced that the digital nomad lifestyle was exactly the fix he needed. He’d lived out of his car, out of AirBnbs, out of the homes of friends and lovers, but that was even more exhausting than NYC. In the end, he felt that each option was more wrong than the last.
They didn’t stay wrong the whole time, of course. There would be a period lasting anywhere from a month to a year in which he’d be convinced that he’d finally figured out what home meant to him. Lit by the glow of newness, everything would seem simultaneously exciting and relaxing, as if he could be happy living exactly the way he was living. Then the shine would wear off, and he would see the cruelty around him and feel trapped.
The closest to right had been London. He’d lived there for three years in his early thirties, and the glow had lasted the whole first year and a half, the longest it had ever lasted. It was busy, there were things to do, but not in a coastal U.S. way where everyone was obsessed with what everyone else was doing. People in London had a bubble around themselves, a distance that they carried with them, that made sense to him. If it hadn’t been for the constant gray and for the early-night winters, he may have been able to stay in London for the long haul. As it was, he’d moved on from there to Barcelona, where the mood was so easy that it had felt like he was moving through molasses.
Growing up, he’d look at his mother sitting on the other side of the couch. She would always be lost in a movie or a book. His whole life, she’d wanted to be somewhere else. He’d resolved to never let that be his life — he’d never be trapped. Here he was, forty-five and a lifelong wanderer, missing the couch. He didn’t want to move back to Dorchester, but he would love to sit reading an Amazing Spider-Man next to his mother, daydreaming side by side. He’d seen so many things that nothing excited him. He’d seen so many things that nothing calmed him.
