Ready! Reset! Go!

 I think we can all agree: it's been a crazy few years. 

My radio show was canceled, but then we successfully relaunched ourselves and have grown into a podcast network with our own smartphone app. A reality star and tabloid fixture decimated a generation of establishment Republicans and ended a 25 year Clinton dynasty before embarking on what can only be described as a turbulent and tumultuous rollercoaster of chaos. Inexplicably I wrote a movie that was actually produced, fulfilling a lifelong dream but then earlier this year all my personal plans for the future were shattered in an instant when the love of my life suddenly died. 

So when X Files creator Chris Carter reminds everyone that there is a nutty conspiracy theory floating around that the relaunch of the Hadron collider in Cern in 2015 sent us into an alternate reality Hellscape, you start looking back on the shocking number of relevant pop culture figures who died in 2016 and think, "Sure. Why not?" After all, to quote George W. Bush at the Trump inaugural, the last few years have been "fucking weird."  

Me thinking about the last six years

But now we have a new old president and a vaccine that is powerfully ending an 18 month pandemic as isolating as a dunce corner timeout. It's summer and the sun is shining and things feel really truly optimistic for the first time in a really long time. Maybe it's too much to hope for that the rollercoaster is finally pulling into the station and we can transfer to a different ride more to our liking. Or maybe it is just the calm before the next series of last gasp loops and turns. 

I started to write about the city opening up a few weeks ago. I walked through Bryant Park and it was full of happy people. For the first time since March 2020, I was annoyed by how many people were in my way on the sidewalk. It felt good. The old New York was back and just as obnoxious as it ever was. And me too, I guess. But then I got busy at work and didn't actually do anything more than walk through a crowded park so without stronger literary inspiration I let it go. But tonight, I am going to a party and that in and of itself should be cause for celebration. 

As the fallow nature of my blog can attest, I haven't been nearly as social in the last few years as I once was. My blog has transitioned from a mixed emotions accounting of various nightlife adventures to quite literally a morgue. Though I confess pride that one of my only true talents as a writer is to capture the essence of another person with pinpoint accuracy, that Eric' husband liberally quoted what I wrote at his international Zoom memorial was bittersweet at best. I may not know myself but at least I have some sense of the people I love. Shame it only comes into focus after they are gone. But I think it is too soon to hang up my hat as a social animal and relegate myself to the grim task of high quality obituaries. So tonight, I'm off to a party. 

In the past year and a half, Matt Kugelman is the only person I have seen socially. Last summer, he coaxed me out to dinner on the streets of Hell's Kitchen. I was wary, but Matt was tested daily at work and I had been a literal and figurative homebound hermit, my only source of entertainment a series of increasingly ill-advised self haircuts that only confirmed that staying home was the best plan. But Matt is social and friendly like a golden retriever with a squeaky ball in his mouth, so I was persuaded to join him for what turned out to be a totally safe and perfectly fun meal outside in a Manhattan gutter. 

Today Facebook served up a photo of us together at a party in 2009. I joked that I would be wearing the exact same outfit tonight, to which Matt replied with a Romy and Michelle "Me Too!" meme. That would be hilarious if I didn't still own and wear that $9 Gap polo. Matt and I don't have everything in common but I realized today seeing that photo that our strongest bond is probably that both of us established a casual look that we will never deviate from, for better or for worse. Take any random photo of either of us, together or apart in the last decade and I dare you to guess the year. Good luck, 

But life is about change, right? Going to new places, seeing new people. But is that really what we all want now?  After the year we've had just seeing the same old people in the same old shirts is more than good enough, and probably exactly what the doctor ordered. This timeline sucks and anything that looks like Earth One these days looks pretty good to me. So tonight I am off to Matt's birthday party, as I have done year after year after year after year. In this case, familiarity doesn't bred contempt, it engenders relief. It's the shiny golden promise of the same comfortable old thing again and, well, as William Mulholland said at the opening of the Los Angeles aqueduct, "Here it is. Take it." And thank you very much, I think I will. 

I just need a minute to dust off this outfit first. It's been a while.