Memories of an Invisible Crush

The other day I was walking from my car to a place that sells vegan burgers that are delicious and also somehow disgusting. I can’t explain it. All I know is that whenever I come home from a work trip to another city, all I can think about is ordering food from there, the fake cheese dripping off each sandwich, the overly sweet grilled onion sauce staining my fingers…

I had already ordered so there was no turning back. I parked my car and walked down the block that was at once familiar and forgotten. It had been two weeks since I was home, and then it was only for a week. Before that I had been in Europe for three weeks. I had not walked down this particular block for about a month and a half.

Everything was the same but different. But the same. I felt hyper-conscious of the moment. Alienated. I was new to this place. Yet I had always been here. I have just emerged from things tens of thousands of miles away. There is a kind of satisfaction I get from being new to a place, having a backstory that means that I come from somewhere else. Some call it terminal uniqueness and in that sense it’s not nearly as unique a character trait as some part of my would like to think it is. It’s already been made into a meme.

I was walking down the block en route from car to vegan burger when I had a memory of a person from high school, some thirty years…