On The First Of July
Last year this night was just as sweltering. I couldn’t sleep if I put any pressure on my stomach. But it’d been at least six weeks by then, long enough to get used to facing the ceiling. At first it felt too exposed, but you can train yourself to get used to that kind of thing.
I lost my virginity on the first of July. I think. At the time the date seemed set in stone, or if not stone, then at least carved into the insides of my skull. To be remembered for all time. But dates fade.
I used to have one of the windows open, with the mosquito net pulled across. Once it got past midnight and the dull, polluted air rose, a blissful breeze would fly in. Stir the dust on someone else’s piano, TV, wardrobe. Sitting up and watching the chimneyed skyscrapers, I would feel lucky, I would be calm, if only for an hour.
It was the first of July I went to Waverley Abbey for the first time. There’s a wall, what was a wall, now sunken, reclaimed by the earth. I lay next to it with new sunglasses that made me feel self-conscious and thought this could not possibly be my life.
In that Chinese bedroom I looked at my laptop, still linked to British time. I guess I needed a reminder, some place to channel any homesickness, just in case I felt any. But this time last year, this time last year exactly; all I could think was: July. You made it to July. You never thought you’d get that far. And I suppose something about the patheticness of this achievement hit me at that point. I’d made it to July, but could I make it to August? Then September? Through to October, to Christmas? Next year, the year after? Hands shaking, bent over countless sofas beds chairs massaging my face to make me think of something//anything different? For once I felt like I needed to talk to someone about it. But my flatmate was asleep, he didn’t know what to say about this illness, because I didn’t know what to say about it. I let him sleep.
This year I’m in Munich. The scorching heat drove me from water fountain to water fountain, until I gave up the ghost, retired from the sights and found a Biergarten. I Skyped that same flatmate, now in a bigger flat, a bigger life, but still so similar. He had a new haircut, marking a major life event. He messed it up at least ten times. My hair, blonde under the yellow umbrella, is now too short even to ruffle self-consciously. He told me about the developments in his life, I told him about the developments in mine. The connection broke down, as it always does, but he messaged afterwards, saying
And I thought how few people would say that, say it and really mean it, even close friends, even those who smile and hug you when you announce a new job or a date with a girl. Not many. Few enough to really count.
So it’s tempting, again, another First of July, another moment of objective disbelief. But in truth, it never helped. Life is almost always giving unlikely gifts and snatching away the ones you least expected. So this year, an updated slogan: This is my life. This Is.
