January 24, 2021 - She had this collection of trinkets and things; she’d hang them on her wall (I).

- Photograph by Adrian Moens.

I remember she had this collection of trinkets and things. She’d hang them on her wall and on Sundays in the fall for a while she’d invite me over just to sit and talk and drink tea and to look at the new trinkets that she had hung on her wall. She said she wasn’t really into collecting things –––– “random objects,” she had called them –––– she wasn’t into collecting random objects, but the more often she’d invite me over the longer we would sit and drink tea and the longer she would spend telling me about one or two or three or four (or more) new objects she had hung on her wall.

It wasn’t that I didn’t mind listening to her describe all of the objects that she had found and had decided to hang on her wall. It was just that I never knew how long she’d go on describing these things for, and sometimes it was tiring to listen to her describe all of these objects for too long; especially as the days grew shorter and shorter and as the weather grew colder and colder.

I enjoyed being in her company and I enjoyed drinking tea with her and I enjoyed the moments when she would ask me for my opinion on any one or two or three or four (or more) objects she had shown me while we were spending time together, but after a while –––– more and more –––– it began to feel like whenever I’d stay at her place for more than an hour, almost right away, I wanted to be somewhere else.

It wasn’t that the objects were not interesting; they were! And it was not that she wasn’t interesting, she was! But there was just something about the way that the energy between us would linger forever in the air and how there never seemed to be quite enough of a conversation thread for us to follow over an entire afternoon that made those Sundays with her devastating. Though neither one of us picked up on this for a while.

We needed something from each other and we couldn’t really figure out what it was. I knew that I had moved to New York over the summer and that she was the only person I knew from college who was living in the city; and so I looked her up almost right away, or at least a few weeks after I found my own place and got settled. She had asked whether I wanted to live with her –––– she had an extra room because her roommate was moving back to Cleveland and maybe I could stay with her for a few months and save money before I found work; and it would be like old times between us.

She didn’t know that I didn’t really enjoy the old times between us, but that was on me. I should have been more open and honest when we were in college about what I was feeling as we were talking with each other and going out and doing nonsensical things (bowling, laser-tag, seeing movies, going to the mall) with four or five or six or seven (or more) mutual friends of ours -––– though most of those mutual friends were actually her friends.

“That was actually,” one of those Sundays she told me, “when I first started collecting a lot of these objects that are on my wall now, in college.” I did not want to feign interest but that was what I did; I feigned interest. But there was something about her. And there was something about us; which kept bringing the two of us together. She kept asking me to come over for tea on Sundays and I kept saying yes and then showing up a few hours later; and then doing the same thing the next week, then the next week, then the next week, then the next week.

Very quickly we fell into a routine and a pattern in this way. And at some point in October I realized that the pattern had been broken and that I was actually beginning to understand why she had kept asking me to come over on Sundays and drink tea with her, and also why I kept saying yes, “I’ll be by in a few hours; I’ll be right over.” It didn’t have anything to do with the objects on her walls. And it also had everything to do with the objects that she had hung on her walls. They were everything and nothing. And I’m still trying to think of my favorite one.