The Remote Island by Bryan Christian The burning question of the day: Life on Mars or Eleventh Hour? Plus: Britney goes on the record, USA may not renew Monk, and our Grey's Anatomy recap.
I had been planning the trip for months, a cross-country drive from New York to Portland, where I would be housesitting for six weeks. I would leave my live-in boyfriend, Jon, behind, but had promised to return. Then, a week before I was supposed to leave, we broke up. When I return this fall, he will be gone. Never have I needed a road trip more in my life. Cue a Sheryl Crow song. (But don't, please.)
Day 1: Brooklyn, NY to Cincinnati, OH
I leave at six a.m. I cannot get out of the apartment fast enough. This last week of living together has been a mess: days of silence, and one awful screaming match. We hug goodbye in the kitchen, and when I tell him everything is going to be okay my voice cracks.
In the car, I want to exhale but I am wrapped up tight inside. It's impossible to feel strong when I'm this exhausted. I start driving really fast, and make it from Brooklyn to the Holland Tunnel in fifteen minutes. Suck it, New York City rush hour. I may be down, the future may look bleak, but I am going to make awesome time on this trip.
Marquette, Nebraska
It's eleven hours to Cincy. For the first hour, I parse "lonely" versus "alone." Also, I wonder why they haven't invented another word for "single" yet. Could I call myself a soloist? A solo artist. I am totally Prince.
For about three hours I fantasize about making out with an old lover, which gets me through New Jersey and part of Pennsylvania. This is my first act of defiance, and it's less fun than it sounds. I never actually get to the sex part. I guess that's as far as I'm willing to go right now.
In Pennsylvania, I fill up my tank and it costs sixty-three dollars and I almost pass out.
For about two hours I think about how I am totally going on a diet starting right now. When the fighting started, so did the cheese and wine consumption. At a rest stop, I decide to go on the Subway diet. I look at that grinning picture of Jared on the sandwich board and I wonder if when he was five hundred pounds he would sit around wondering if he were "lonely" or "alone" or just "fat."
For the rest of the day, I play every Sleater-Kinney album I own really loudly.
Day 2: Rest Day, Cincinnati
I am staying with my old college roommate and her husband. She is six months pregnant and it is a joyous mood in the house. She and her husband call her belly "Lumpy" and we all take turns rubbing it during the two days I am there. I say things like, "I'm never getting married, ever," but still I envy that happy belly.
I do not feel burned by love but have given up on it nonetheless.
, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
