Midday I get a hunch that my childhood friend is in the city, which is strange because when I say city I mean New York and when I say home I mean Springfield.
When men take me out and they can’t think of anything better they ask me which Springfield. I say, “pick a state.” It keeps the conversation in the present-tense, so we can keep the talking portion of the night light before the disappointing portion.
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I’m staring at the woman with Rod Blagojevich’s haircut when I get the feeling about my friend. In fifth grade he used to call me Radar, which I thought was a fitting superhero name until Wikipedia told me radar helps airplanes move in the right direction.
Some days I’ll get home and go straight to staring at my Twitter feed. If the timing is right, I’ll break the record of wit and brevity. By the time I think of something, it’s under a hundred new posts.
“If you want to write poetry,” Jamie said, “try Craigslist.”
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Jamie says I should call him to confirm he’s in the city. But I don’t want to hear his voice knowing that it tells someone else “I love you.”
The woman with the Rod Blagojevich haircut has her laptop open on the dining room table. She eats and smiles at the screen, mush and teeth. She has a daughter teaching English in Korea. When I ask her what they Skype about, she looks at me like I was born in the nineties, and tells me to watch my tongue.
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