On Friday, I was listening to David Gray at work and his voice brought me back four years to Beijing. I found myself thinking about my birthday that year, drinking deadly blue martinis with Canadian military police, playing darts in a seedy bar, and thinking 26 was old and what the hell was I still doing there without a real job and a real life? And listening to that music, I miss those times, I miss that freedom, the freedom of four in the morning with nobody around who knew me well or who could talk about me later to others who knew me well. At the time, the thing that made me feel most lonely was not having history with anyone there but now, four years down the road, in Vancouver where I sometimes feel drowned in the ties that surround me, I feel only nostalgia for those times. I think about how I learned how easily women can betray other women because of the power it momentarily grants. I think about how I felt listening to a guy play guitar and sing songs in his huge empty grey apartment, badly-lit, cold and impersonal, feeling free and talking bullshit late into the night, eating imported cheeses, olives, prosciutto, and spilling expensive French wine on my shirt. And I remember the tepid sun of the dawn when sneaking out quietly, subject to stares from the Chinese guards who thought I was a local, probably loose and immoral.
posted by Tina on 3/12/2006 | 0 comments | #