Our trip to New York two years ago was not entirely fruitless, and certainly life changing.
The people there were quite different from the people I know now. Not that I would trade my friends or want to replace them at all. But I long for something different, something more. I want to be more than the sum of my internet and RPGs. Show me something new.
One hopes that one can negotiate the new fatherhood thing into friendships with many like-minded folks. Perhaps folks who aren't utterly consumed by their children, which seems to happen when there's nothing else - a path that runs parallel to the one I'm on and gets closer every time I write about getting new friends.
But I'm looking for a nice weekend/weeknight camaraderie. I thought that maybe the people that I don't know down the street might be candidates for this with their exotic plastic pumpkin displays and their giant rooftop spider. I don't know if I've met those directly responsible in my many walks with Abby to see the decorations, but those whom I have met are not the type of folks that I want near my kid, let alone the kind I would spend time with.
What I need is a Stan and Judy of a closer living variety. Preferrably with kids that are Abby's age. Who leave the house frequently enough to have cause for casual visits. Who like to watch trash TV and fantasy and not necessarily because they play RPGs, but because they enjoy the action movie. And can eat pizza or escargo or Thai and either like it or not but try it all. Maybe they even like things that we don't yet know we like, but are willing to drag us.
Those people in New York all knew each other. A cadre of super-affected high-tension web workers in a towering city breaking bread together in their own modern style, clubbing each other, living in each other's spaces. Close and not, always someone to talk to. About something.
They ride in their taxis and get fired in the dot-com washout. Live in closet apartments and take jobs as waiters to pay shared rent on a single bed with triple occupancy of necessity. Every fruit shipped in, every tree planted, every breath borrowed from the Brazillian rain forest.
But who would talk to someone who writes these things?
