(INTRODUCTION TO “DETAILS” HERE.)
There’s a fun game I play. It’s a game that’s all about how I’ll manage to get to the airport or home from the airport. I’m calling it a “game” because that makes it nicer to experience so often. Los Angeles has awful traffic - bruising for the psyche. And I have a mental rolodex of friends I could possibly ask to drop or fetch me, but I mustn’t call upon any one person too often, so as not to exhaust the kindnesses and braveries of willing ones who’ll face gridlock for me. Sometimes I take the Flyaway bus. Rarely I’ve Ubered (once for $169, which I contested, and they refunded).
I love when my friends drop me or fetch me because I can hug them.
I really like bookending trips with hugs. I’m eternally grateful. I will hug you goodbye from the airport, or hello, and I’ll wave to you as I’m swallowed into LAX, or emerging from it as if from the caves of time. I would like to be hugged because traveling so much is too much, and hugs regulate me.
Thank you dear friends who’ve hugged me.
When I’m outside of LA - for instance in Chicago this morning at 5AM - I must call an Uber and hope it’s never again $169.
Just as dawn was twinkling upon the remnants of a thunderstorm, I bopped outside The Residence Inn by Marriott, Room 1211, and I saw Gary idling in his forest green SUV. Gary was 65, let’s say. He was polite and took my bag and booped it into his trunk. He played classical music for me, and he managed the temperature nicely, but Gary did have an aggressively jarring type of acceleration. That’s ok, dude.
I felt forlorn this morning when I woke at 5AM (3AM PST), but Gary’s many-stringed music and temperate-car-climate buoyed me. The Chicago sky was newborn - spritzed by rains and thunders and lightnings - and that buoyed me too. As we pulled into Terminal 3, I was refreshed.
I hopped out of his SUV, and as Gary grabbed my bag, I turned - warm and bright toward him, I spread my arms, and stepped up…
For a hug.
But then… I remembered: Gary doesn’t know me like that.
My mind was tired. I did very much want a hug. But not from Gary.
I dropped my arms, snatched my bag and tossed a “have a lovely day!” over my shoulder. I never looked back.
And now I type this from Row 12, seat A on a small plane, anticipating the next hug. It’s like hug hunger.
It’s nice to give attention to hugs.
Not from Gary, which is totally ok, but from a friend who chooses to play my fun game with me and extend their bravery to the highways of 405 or 110 and beyond.
I adore friends.
Hugs.
Even Gary.
"I adore friends.
Hugs.
Even Gary." <3