The trip that started it all - 2.14.04

Denver, Colorado
April 24, 2006

Here it’s been barely two years, and there are probably already a lot of details lost to history or mixed up in my memory. So it’s definitely time I write down what I remember for sure about what was, ultimately, just a fairly mundane day of travel (thank heavens!), if a long one. Well, we all have objectively mundane days in our past that nonetheless mark wonderful memories. And February 14, 2004 is mine, or at least one of mine.

I had spent that last night in Arlington on the couch. The blue couch, the one John slept on back in our first apartment in Alexandria, and which he bought from me when I was getting ready to go to Taiwan. My bedroom was stripped down to the bed, which didn’t even have any sheets on it, so the couch it was. It somehow seemed an appropriate way to check out anyhow, though I can’t really explain why.
John and I had spent a pleasant evening on the couch the night before, watching Family Guy episodes and also entertaining a friend of mine from my old job, who had come by with a parting gift, a book of Chinese fairy tales which I got around to reading a few months later in Longtan. It was a pleasant enough last night, though a rather quiet one. These things do usually end on a fairly quiet note, of course. You can’t really have your grand finale at the very end, since you’ve got to clean up after it!

I don’t think I got much actual sleep on the couch that night. I was too excited and, of course, a bit worried. But I do seem to recall the good excitement outweighing the bad excitement by quite a bit. The previous several months had not been easy ones for me, and they were over! That apartment was a beautiful one. All I lacked was a steady job to enable me to continue living in such style. I had come heartbreakingly close to changing that several times, but it just hadn’t quite worked out, and many an early morning had found me staring out the sliding door at the pool and the other side of the apartment building wondering how on earth I was going to get through this latest challenge.

I know I shouldn’t whine about that in retrospect, of course. It’s over, and I’m on to much better things. Nevertheless, the memory of worrying about my future is a key part of what was on my mind that morning when I saw the sun coming up through the curtains over the frozen pool below and the concrete jungle of Crystal City for the very last time. I’d seen it so many times before when I really didn’t want to, but this one time I was delighted to see the sunrise. It meant a rather difficult and depressing – and far too long – chapter of my life was over at last!

There was no rush to get moving once the sun was up. I didn’t have to be at BWI until about 11:00. But then, I also didn’t want to just lie there now that the big day was upon me! I got up and busied myself with tidying the couch, which of course didn’t take long. My luggage was there in one gigantic pile on the floor, ready to go as soon as I was. I had just consolidated it down by one bag the day before, so that I could – in theory, at least – carry it all at once. I could pick it up and go whenever I wished to.

But I had farewells to say. I could hear the shower running in Riki’s bathroom, and I definitely wanted to say goodbye to her. We’d known each other for over four years, and had roomed together for more than half that time, albeit nonconsecutively, and it was definitely the end of an era. I also had a small breakfast ready to go – a fruit bar and probably some juice and one or two other things – in the kitchen. So at some point I helped myself to that, while waiting for Riki. Or maybe it was just after she left. Minor point, but a point I can’t recall.

Riki did, in any case, emerge from the narrow hallway, dressed for work, and hugged me for the first and only time. Odd duck, Riki, but she certainly was a sweetheart all the same. Now safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t miss out on that event, I headed for the shower. That, of course, was a non-event. Then it was on to saying goodbyes with John, whom I had also lived with for quite some time by then.
He was in his room, surfing the net despite – or perhaps because of – the early hour. There wasn’t a lot else to do, and he was off on another of his short term gigs overseas that very afternoon. In any case, he showed me his then-favorite web game, something like 20 questions where you were guessing the identity of either a dictator or a television character. Or rather, you were Stalin or Fonzie and the computer had to guess. It was actually pretty entertaining, surprisingly enough!

Next I remember being on my own in John’s room, checking e-mail. He was in the shower, or downstairs, or something. I don’t like long goodbyes any better than anyone else does, so once I was done with surfing, I called for a cab and then headed for the living room. John was nowhere to be found. I did try to carry all my luggage out at once, but it wasn’t to be! It was just too much. Traveling light isn’t my strong point. In any case, I got all six bags out there in several back and forth trips.

John turned up again down in the lobby. I think he’d gone to the Seven-Eleven for coffee. The cab was there. With all my bags finally out of the elevator, John helped load them into the cab trunk with me. His parting words: “Well, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” True, that, and quintessential John humor. He hugged me goodbye and the trip was on in earnest at last.

I was a bit numb on the ride into the city. Six years of memories, spread out over nearly ten years, all coming to a fast end. I wasn’t sorry, but I did feel odd. Sort of like I should have been feeling much more emotional than I was. But I had been in the emotional process of saying goodbye for about two months by that time, ever since that night in December when I stood alone in my room and made up my mind to take the job in Taiwan and to start in February rather than May. It certainly had come up fast! Even before that, I’d been profoundly unhappy in DC for much of the previous two years. So this goodbye was really a very long time in the making, and I wasn’t sorry at all to see it arrive at last.