Hiding from the Sun and Other Things
I sit on my couch as social distancing becomes a hashtag and debate whether 7:30 pm on a Saturday night is too early to wash off makeup. There are things I can do in my apartment. I can finish the jigsaw puzzle I started months ago or read an unread book in my library. Instead I sit there, eyes on my phone, listening to the laughter upstairs, imagining they are having a party. I was sent home from work at 7:00, so I text a friend and wait for a reply, hoping he’ll want to do something. I wonder whether this night would be different had I introduced myself to the girl who lives in the apartment above mine when I saw her dragging her bed up the stairs a few months ago.
Often, friends ask if I like my living situation. They mean Los Angeles. They mean the studio in which I live alone. I tell them I like the space I’ve created in this city. I like that on busy nights at work I am spoiled by the money and friends, and by the comfort I’ve found behind the bar in a restaurant where so many lonely people spend time to feel a sort of togetherness. I moved into my studio at a time when I wanted to be alone. I saw it as something I could make my own. It would be a space in which I could center my bed along the wall that faces Melrose. In the last apartment I lived in, I could only fit a full-sized bed by sliding it against two walls. I wanted it in a spot where two could enter on opposite sides. A bed where one would never have to climb over another would somehow defy loneliness. More than often, friends ask if the silence in solitude bothers me and I neglect to include emotion in response. I choose not to acknowledge the loneliness of my intimate space where there are seldom times someone has their own side to enter on.
The restaurant’s numbers have gone down each day the past week. We are overstaffed since no one can afford to take the night off. When I am sent home Saturday night, it is too early to wait around for the friends still working. We work in a whirlpool, spending hours on our feet, using voices no one thinks are genuine. When a shift is over, it’s usually easy to wait around for each other because all we want is to have a drink and forget the night. I continue lying on the couch. The voices I’ve been listening to get louder as the girl and her friends come down the stairs and head out, presumably to a bar.
On nights that I spend with people I am too sober to enjoy, I question if it is all still worth the company we keep. Those Friday and Saturday nights I’ve convinced myself I am not supposed to be alone are just nights we drink too much and talk solely about the shifts we claim we want to forget. Would I be smarter to just go home? Is it worth it to say, “At least I am not alone?” Or would I still feel like some sort of outcast, imagining what fun everyone else must be having.
Hours pass and I still haven’t left the couch when I make plans with a friend and his brother. We agree to meet at a bar we used to belong to. It’s been a while since I was there. Months since I would wait till everyone had left and sweep the floor while the bartender wiped down the bottles and later pass out in his bed because I didn’t want to sleep alone.
Most days, it seems necessary to fill the absence. I create routines I think will help, spend the mornings rewriting the same sentence in different ways, telling myself I need to be alone to achieve this level of dedication. Some days, I make my studio messier so I can spend the next day cleaning. I am scared to admit there are afternoons I take out the trash and feel the Sun shining its guilt on me, telling me I should be outside. I glimpse the Hollywood Hills in the distance and think about going for a hike as I walk back inside. I think about going for a walk, a drive to a park where I can sit and read, even. I tell myself it’s the traffic. It’s staying out too long and having to look for a parking spot later. Really, it’s that I don’t want to do those things alone. When the time I have spent by myself starts to overwhelm me, I tell myself the rewarding part of the day is clocking in later that afternoon because I crave the human contact instead of my shadow.
I walk to meet the boys and imagine I could catch something worse at this bar than the virus everyone is talking about. The bartender no longer works there. He’s moved out of Los Angeles. I don’t miss the way he’d remind me those mornings where the exit to his building was. The bar is closed and the thought that maybe I should have just stayed home begins to take hold.
The boys pull up and we are quick to find another bar that is open. We become the naive still out drinking, discussing how serious this is. As the hours go by, I tell myself it’s fun to be out this late because I’m not alone. We play pool at the spot across from the bar that’s open all night. When the night shouldn’t still be considered night, I invite them over. I like entertaining and don’t pay attention to the time. They compliment the decor, ask questions about the art I’ve chosen on my walls. They tell me how spacious it is. I mention I recently moved my bed against two walls and chose a more open apartment over the fear of loneliness. There is still ample space at the foot of my bed. No one has to climb over anyone.
I figure I would have been asleep before the bars closed that night had I stayed home. In a few days, would I still care about spending that Saturday alone? We stay up talking, drinking. I let them smoke cigarettes in my apartment till the morning while I close my eyes at times, never once wanting them to leave.
The morning has been wasted that next afternoon. I regret not putting the ibuprofen near my bed. Sundays are days off from the restaurant and, of all days I spend alone, the ones I worry about least. There is no guilt in the things I do the night before, using them as a reason to do nothing the next day, though there should be. I lie in bed, think of what I had planned, what can be rearranged after I’ve slept too long. That night, an order goes into effect that all bars are to remain closed for the next two weeks.
The panic sets in when restaurants close, too. I’ve lost my source of income. Furlough becomes my word of the day. These are the things that matter now. I want to be different when I realize I am an extrovert, scared of the phrase social distancing. There is no waiting around for each other anymore. There is no flirting with coworkers or guests. I wonder if the parties upstairs will continue. The stay-at-home order is given and I am left alone in my studio, where the smell of ashed-out cigarettes smothers me.
Once I have filed for unemployment, I fly home because I don’t know what comes next. The LA freeways are desolate, the way they are on Christmas mornings. My first morning in New York, I sleep past 1:30 pm in my childhood bed that has always been against two walls. As I wake up, I remember how it makes me happy to hear the rain hitting the window. Each day, I drink coffee out of the same mug and read in our porch whose walls I painted burgundy during another time when I felt alone. Except I was not actually alone that summer. I was home with parents who cared about me. I missed a boyfriend I had decided meant more than that.
I tell myself it’s the time change when I wake up anxious and annoyed that I’ve slept the morning away. It’s not nerves about catching the virus; I am isolated from human contact. These are nerves that follow me and question how I will fill the days avoiding my thoughts. There are no distractions now, I fear; there is no routine to fill the loneliness.
I write at the desk where I once wrote stories about teenage girls finding loneliness because isn’t that what we all wrote about when Anne Lamott told us to write what we knew? I find an old diary in the drawer of my desk. I flip through the pages, read the sad girl quotes I wrote down long ago, and think that maybe I’m doing the same thing now, writing these sad girl essays in hopes of other people reading them.
On the last page, I find the start to a letter I wrote in barely illegible cursive, saying “Before you look at what’s inside, know this is not me anymore.” I look at the date and who it is addressed to and remember I once thought to give this to a boyfriend I had been with for three months. I want to shake the girl who wrote that and tell her boys don’t cure loneliness.
We drink a bottle of wine with dinner each night, but that is one among three. I ask my dad to buy liquor one day and, for the first time in weeks, I feel some sort of buzz. It comes from mixing vodka with what’s in the refrigerator when they’ve gone to bed. I make sure it doesn’t look like I’ve drank a lot as if I’m that young girl again, except now, I worry they’ll judge me, not ground me.
I wonder how much longer this will go on. Would it be different if I weren’t too scared to stay on my own? How has my apartment gotten on without me? Have my plants finally died? Has the dust finally settled?
After two weeks in New York, I cancel the return flight to Los Angeles. I realize the routines I’ve adopted here are okay now; there is no judgment in doing the same things each day. There is some twisted comfort in knowing I am bored and lonely on those weekend nights, along with everyone else. There’s no one out having fun anymore, the girl in the studio above mine is as lonely as I am. I can stay inside and I’m happier when it rains because I can listen and find warmth inside, far from Los Angeles where the sun must still be shining.
-Victoria Crowe
Victoria Crowe is a writer originally from New York City. She studied creative writing in San Francisco and has since moved to Los Angeles. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and finds her poetry is usually decent after a bottle of wine. She is currently finishing up her second novel and afterwards plans to start her first.