vicarious.ly (4 page)

Whatever happened to the days that the world was full of excitement and possibility? When I was a junior in college it felt like every day was an opportunity to change your life. Maybe it would be that day when that side project you were working on got noticed by others. Maybe it would be the day that you found out about this awesome activity to do around campus. Maybe it would be the day you met the person who you would never forget. Every day was full of hope and excitement of what the future could and would bring. Sure some nights I would go home empty handed, but at the end of the day I couldn’t wait to see how life played out.

At least I experienced happiness in life at one point. That’s what I keep telling myself every time I drink by myself at an airport bar or on the airplane. At least life was unpredictable and exciting at one point.

The day Kyla and I met in September 2006 is something that still hangs over my mind like a dream I just woke up from. If I could have died that night, I think I would have lived a complete life. I was just beginning my junior year of college.

It all happened on what seemed to be a standard Friday night. In the past year, Paul and I had used Facebook to crash parties where we knew a lot of the girls we were interested in rendezvousing with were going to be at.

A little background information, Facebook was still a pretty crazy place when I was a freshman and sophomore in college. I thought one of the coolest untapped features of Facebook were
Events.
It was the first time that party invites were being sent online for the public to see. A little known thing about Facebook events were that many people made their party’s public. Since then, these privacy issues have been addressed. I would spend the first half of a week finding out what parties people I wanted to randomly meet up with had confirmed reservations to. Then, in passing, I would talk to these people saying “hey I heard about this party on Friday, you going to be there?” The girl I was trying to get to know better would then say, “oh yea, you heard about that party?” I can’t believe more people didn’t do this to meet people.

Paul coined the term, “calculated spontaneity.” That’s what we were. Paul and I would go to parties with the intention of meeting up with girls that we wanted to get to know better. I was Paul’s wingman whenever he wanted to get to know a girl better. He did the same for me.

It was a rare night when Paul and I didn’t have an agenda for the night. One night we just went to a party for the hell of it, because one of our friends lived off campus and was throwing a massive kegger. It was nice to not use Facebook to try and meet somebody else. We were just hanging out with the guys.

Paul and I were smoking cigarettes while drinking whisky outside trying to look cool on this normal September night. We were talking to each other like we usually did about things that we thought were deep and emotional.

“Jake, you know what makes us a great match?” he said.

“Oh I feel like you’re about to get philosophical Paul,” I said.

“We hang out in groups of two. Anything more than two people is a crowd. Anything less than two people is lonely,” he said.

“You’re more coherent this time than the last time you mentioned something like this. Want another cigarette?” I said.

“Jake. Seriously, think about it. We have met so many women in the past year. It’s because we hang out at the side of a party smoking cigarettes. I know it sounds strange, hear me out. If you were by yourself at a party drinking and smoking by yourself would anybody come out and talk to you? Conversely, if a group of people were drinking and smoking amongst themselves would anybody else come and talk to them unless they wanted a cigarette?” he said.

“I feel a theory coming on Paul. I’ll answer no to both of your pseudo-questions,” I said.

“We make it easy for other people to approach us. We exhibit the optimal group size. We are different types of people. A foil if you will. Have you heard of the Nash Equilibrium?” he said.

“Oh here goes. John Nash. Yes, I’ve seen the movie
A Beautiful Mind
and yes I’ve taken a few economics classes. I think you used the Nash Equilibrium wrong Paul, as we communicate with each other. I think you meant to say that our friendship and the way we hang out encourages us to meet people of the opposite sex without competition?” I said.

“You always get me on technicalities. I’ll keep it simple. You like the exotic girls and I want a girl next door. We’re the perfect combination of people,” He said.

I’m not going to lie. Paul’s a good guy. He’s the best male friend I have in the world even though we don’t speak regularly. I’ll never forget how he told me he wanted the girl next door. Nor will I ever forget how he told me I wanted an exotic girl. Now he is married to his college sweetheart he met shortly after this night. That night was one of the last nights I saw Paul act in a manner that was so individually focused. I’m honored to have seen how great of a person he could be to a friend.

That’s not the point of this, though. I’m trying to explain how I met Kyla. I feel like I always get sidetracked when trying to write about her.

During Paul’s little soliloquy that night a girl bumped into my shoulder. A part of me wonders what Paul would have said that night had our conversation not been interrupted.

“You know smoking kills,” she said.

“So does secondhand smoke,” I said.

“I know, I think I should head back inside,” she said.

As she said that, she took the cigarette out of my mouth and stomped it out with her foot. I looked at Paul and then I grabbed into the contents of my back left pocket where I kept my cigarettes. I took another cigarette out and lit it. I looked into this girl’s eyes and said,

“Hey I’m all for health, but please tell me why you had to violate my personal space like that? By the way my name is Jake.”

“I’m Kyla. Tell me something about yourself I don’t know already,” she said.

“I like linguistics and you were interrupting my conversation with my roommate Paul. Isn’t that right Paul?” I said.

“You’re Jake. You have this project Eden going on. You like whisky right? Oh wait, this is the third time I’ve met you this year and you won’t remember the next. I’m just running an experiment on how many times it takes you to remember me.”

I can’t tell you what went through my mind at that moment. Of course I knew who she was. She was in my freshman level Ancient Languages class. Well, a class I took for one week. I never forget a face. I stayed silent.

“Come on Jake. I don’t know how, but I’ve met you a few times over the last few weeks. Every time I see you, you’re wasted beyond belief. I’m just making a point here. It was nice knowing you,” she said.

I knew she was the girl from Ancient Languages. I tried to think of a response quickly.

“If we’ve met so many times, what do I say next,” I said.

“You’ve always just told me until next time. Then you disappear,” she said.

Ancient Languages was a course I dropped my first semester freshman year. I dropped it because I got into an economics class I was dying to get into by a world renowned econ professor. Thing is, I remembered who Kyla was.

“You took Ancient Languages last year. I remember you contributing to group conversation before I dropped the course,” I said.

“Wow,” she said.

“So you do remember,” I said.

“I just never thought you did. I didn’t think we even interacted directly,” she said.

That’s how I formally met Kyla outside of a forced academic setting. It had been two years since I had seen her in that class. I couldn’t forget her, though, and I let her know that. The next day I felt like it was such a mistake to reveal so much so quickly.

Kyla and I spent the rest of the night talking to each other about how the past two years had turned out. Truthfully, we didn’t know anything about each other. At the very least we did acknowledge each other’s existence two years prior even though it was just a chance happening.

Over the course of the night she told me that the Ancient Languages course depleted all her interest in linguistics. I told her, even though I dropped that course, my main focus in life was linguistics. Of course, Eden came up that night. Near the end of the night I asked her,

“So, have I been like this every time I have met you?”

“No. I never would have expected so much from you. I thought you were just a guy who toyed around with the people around him. So I have been trying to toy with you,” she said.

This whole time I forgot about Paul. I told Kyla I would get her another drink and then looked around the house for Paul. Turns out, he was having a blast with some of our guy friends right by a keg. Paul gave me a salute. That meant that it was just me and Kyla for the rest of the night. It was getting pretty late. Before I knew it, it was past 2am.

“So, we’ve been sitting here for the past few hours discussing things that happened in the distant past,” I said.

“It’s pretty late. I need to start getting home but all my friends already left,” she said.

I took that statement to mean the oldest trick in the book.

“I’ll walk you back. You told me you live on campus right? Want to take the scenic route?” I said.

“As long as the scenic route doesn’t involve going through graveyards, she said.”

Kyla and I took hours to get back to her dorm that was about half a mile away. We walked to the St. Charles River, walked past the Business School, and pretty much covered so many miles of land that we didn’t have to traverse through. We were chasing the sunrise.

That night was the first time I saw the sunrise in the arms of somebody else on the Charles River. We had breakfast on campus before I dropped her off at her dorm. I don’t remember what we even talked about all night except it seemed to mean the world to me at the time. I slept the rest of the next day. Paul woke me up at sundown and asked me how the previous night was. When I spoke to him then, it was the first time that I told him about Kyla. It was a story that I would repeat so many times until people wouldn’t listen to me anymore.

I know, I have been sounding jaded lately. I’m trying to be positive. It’s hard, though, when I remember times from the past that usurp anything that I have experienced recently. Sometimes I wonder if I experienced too much too soon in my life. Oh well. That night and the six months that followed are times that I do no go a day without thinking about. It’s just disheartening to think that nobody else other than me in this world remembers those days.

Holiday season is the one time every year that I have all the time in the world to think about how my life has progressed. I know many people who work all year to savor the holiday season. I’m not the opposite, but I am nervous about it every year. Maybe it’s because I never quite know how I am going to react to the increased free time.

The extra free time does lend itself to some new opportunities to do things that are out of the ordinary. Some of the most memorable events of each year have happened during the holidays. Now that it’s the time of year again, it does make me think about memorable events from the past few holiday seasons.

Four

Four years ago Michelle helped me do the interior design for my apartment. She couldn’t take that the only things that I had in my apartment were an airbed, bookshelf, nightstand, and desk. I hadn’t put any effort into making my place habitable. That’s what happens when you rarely spend any time at home. The way that I saw it was that once you make the decision to furnish your place, you’re locked into a certain style for a long time. When my apartment was bare, I could let my mind wander and think about the possibilities of how I was going to decorate it.

Michelle wanted to put an end to my indecision. After our yearly visit to the MFA that year, I had her over for a few drinks. We sat on folding chairs while looking into the open space between us. Our voices would echo off the walls the place was so empty.

“You’ve been here for about six months already and you haven’t made an effort to make it look like someone even lives here,” she’d say.

“I’m a minimalist,” I’d respond.

“You need help. This will be fun come on. Jake, you would love this place so much more if you could call this place home,” She said.

We went back and forth through emails and meeting sessions mapping out my apartment and designing what the place would look like. With Michelle’s help, I settled on a very Scandinavian look. I ordered all of the furniture and had it delivered by mid-December. I thought having the holiday season to set some furniture would be a great idea.

That never happened. By the time the holidays came I felt so lazy that I would just sit around in my apartment daydreaming about the past and future. All of my furniture and decorations sat in the corner of my apartment untouched. Before I knew it, the New Year passed and I hadn’t set up my apartment. Shortly after, I had to go back to work and continued traveling. To this day, Michelle still teases me about how I don’t know how to follow through on so many activities that I start. I don’t really mind it when she pokes fun at me as long as she doesn’t mention Eden.

Three

Three years ago Paul came over to Boston to tell me that he was going to get married. I told him he could have saved the time and called me. He was an investment banker working in Manhattan at the time, I knew that time was something that was extremely precious to him. He told me that I was missing the point.

“Jake, I came here to ask you to be my best man.”

I just looked at him for about ten seconds in silence. The whole time I was thinking there was no way in hell he was being serious. Why me? Hell, we barely even spoke anymore. I guess all those times we spent together in college talking about life must have stuck somehow. Also having a newly minted fiancé and working God knows how many hours per week might not have been conducive to new interpersonal relationships.

“Of course I’ll do it Paul. This is absolutely unreal,” I said.

I gave him a hug and went over to my liquor cabinet to pour out a Jack and Diet. I brought him a folding chair to sit down on.

“Hey Jake, you do a redesign of your apartment recently? It seems like you have furniture all in a corner over there,” Paul said.

We spent the whole day talking about how life would change. Paul helped me move my furniture according to the blueprints Michelle and I designed a year beforehand. By the time we were done we decided to call up a few friends we shared from college who still lived in Boston. We went out and hung out just like old times. Those types of days just don’t come by as often as they used to.

Two

Two years ago I went to Paul’s wedding and gave a toast. I spent months thinking about what I should say. I didn’t get very far until the weeks leading up to the wedding. When it finally came to speaking at the reception, it was absolutely unreal. Life was changing for Paul, but not me. I’ve been seeing people embark on the next stages of their lives and I’m really happy for them. I just feel like I haven’t gone anywhere.

Paul’s wedding wasn’t during the holiday season but it happened close enough to it. His wedding was in Chicago and the reception was at Union Station. It was a smashing party thrown by his wife’s traditional Catholic and conservative parents.

Michelle and I went together. Michelle and Paul never were close friends, but they did acknowledge each other’s existence, especially since we would all spend so much time together in our dorm room. If it wasn’t for Michelle, I think that night would have had the potential to be catastrophic.

Paul warned me that it would happen and yes, Kyla was there. She was dating, now engaged maybe married, to a Senior Analyst Paul worked with. The guy actually didn’t seem half bad. He was taller than me, more athletic than me, funnier than me, so at least it made me happy to know that Kyla has good taste in men.

Halfway through the reception Kyla and I bumped into each other while getting drinks. Kyla and I would run into each other on campus randomly throughout the last year of college but we never said anything of value to each other. I would generally be smoking on a bench on campus and we’d say hi but never get past a few lines of conversation. That time was the first time since that catastrophic night that I would look straight into her eyes.

“Jake, it’s been years since I’ve seen you. My boyfriend told me that you were going to be the best man. Nice speech, you’ve always been very articulate,” Kyla said.

“Thanks. Who would have ever guessed that this would be the place that we first saw each other after graduation huh?” I said.

People tend to overvalue the probability for coincidences happening. Believe it or not, even though this world is vast and expansive -- social circles are not. Your friends of friends will drive much of the social interaction and people you will meet throughout your lifetime. The internet has only accelerated this trend. Even knowing that little fact, it still was surprising to see her in person again.

“Small world. Paul says you’re a management consultant. Whatever happened to your interest in being a professor?” she said.

That’s what everybody who hasn’t seen me in a long time says. Weren’t you supposed to be this or that? It’s that feeling you get with people when you haven’t seen them in a long
time, you want to pick things off right where they left off. If you’re close enough friends that’s possible. The rest of the time, it just leads to an awkward exchange where you update each other with your lives. Then you try to bridge the gap between the person who you remember and the person that is standing right in front of you. Thinking about being a professor made me think about a distant past. I glanced at Kyla thinking about that night at the public garden.

“That ship sailed a long time ago,” I said.

Kyla and I walked over to the edge of the dance floor where Michelle and Kyla’s boyfriend were waiting for us to bring them the drinks they ordered.

The conversation just seemed hazy and unreal, like this wasn’t the way that Kyla and I were supposed to interact with each other after all this time. Part of me just wanted to tell her about all the nights I spent thinking about her, about how I’ve been daydreaming about the day we saw each other again for years. In the moment, things felt so much differently than I could have imagined. This Kyla right in front of me felt so different than the person I remembered. She was gorgeous, our conversation was effortless, but something was missing. It didn’t feel like her eyes pierced into my soul anymore. Maybe that’s too much to expect from a person.

All the things that I had been planning to say had I met Kyla again evaporated as I was speaking to her. I spent weeks thinking about this rendezvous. “Have a great night Kyla,” I said.

“How long have you and Michelle been together?” She said.

Before I could answer her, Michelle grabbed my hand and took the cocktail I picked up for her. We went over to some of Michelle’s friends who were dancing together in a circle. Weddings are her thing. She gets extremely emotional seeing people be happy together. She loves thinking about fairytale endings.

I spent the rest of the night going back and forth talking to Michelle and some friends I hadn’t seen in years. Every once in
awhile Kyla would drop by and say or a word or two, but we never had another sustained conversation.

I found Paul in the corner of the room with his Dad. I’ve never seen him so happy. When Paul’s dad left our little circle Paul told me,

“Jake, you can spend your entire life chasing a girl like Kyla or you can go for Michelle or a girl like her,” He said.

“Michelle and I are as platonic as it gets. Kyla and I are as fictitious as it gets,” I said.

“You forget that people actually like you. I have to remind you that you’re my friend. I think you’re scared of actually acknowledging that you mean something to other people. Really, thanks for the speech. Thanks for everything. I’ll never forget it,” Paul said.

His wife came over after our little emotional exchange. Damn, they looked great together.

Everything about that night was perfect as long as I forget about Kyla. It’s strange, I can’t describe just how that situation with her was a letdown but it was. I wasn’t quite disappointed, Kyla was friendly, we made some conversation, but something just felt strange about the time we met. It didn’t evoke the sense of passion I thought it would in me. Maybe she’s better in my imagination and memory. Thinking about that is a little sad. Who is Kyla?

One

One year ago Punjab came over to the United States to show his wife around the city that he used to live in. Even though I had been working with him for almost three years, it was the first time that we met in person. I’d seen pictures of him from the firm’s website, but seeing him in person was something new. First of all, his voice sounded much different in person.

By then it was nice to invite somebody into my apartment when it was all furnished and homey. It’s something that I don’t do often. Punjab and his wife started talking about their travels around the world. They told me that I should visit them in India when I got the chance. That’s when it hit me, even though I hadn’t met him in person until then Punjab was one of my closest friends.

It’s a pretty brief memory of what happened last year, but it’s what sticks out the most.

Now

When thinking about recent years, I’ve realized that the things that I remember the most are the life events of other people. I know you shouldn’t draw comparisons between your life and the life of others, but I don’t think anybody I know have seen anything of value from my life in the past few years. The only thing I can think of is the changing state of the interior of my apartment. Other than that, I have had no life events.

Michelle said that people used to come to spend time with me because they’d experience a person who was so full of adventure and conversation. Now it seems like I just play a secondary role in even my own life. When it comes to life events, I experience them vicariously through the other people: Paul’s proposal, Paul’s marriage, Punjab’s vacation. It’s sick. I’m nothing but a secondary character in their lives, but they are the primary source of the recent memories that I keep close to me.

This year, I’m trying to do something a little new. This is my fifth year in my apartment in Boston. Today was the first time that I have ever bought a Christmas tree and decorated the place for the holiday season. It’s not that interesting, but it’s the one milestone that sticks out from this year. I took a picture of myself by the tree and emailed a Christmas card to all the friends I haven’t talk to in a while. That’s a start. Happy holidays.