Page 12 of Way Down Deep

Maybe that’s the whiskey texting, but I dunno. It strikes me as a grotesquely intimate thing to discover about you.

My immediate reaction when you asked was to type “home,” meaning Albuquerque. But when I think about it, I don’t feel what I’d expected. I don’t feel achy with homesickness, dying to get back there. The thing is, I don’t feel like I know who I am anymore, and going back there … I think it’d be really confusing and uncomfortable.

When I left, I thought I was a hip, successful, relevant member of a social tribe. Now I’m here, and I’m a lonely, half-competent-at-best, quite possibly alcoholic single father. There’s not a lot of overlap to those identities.

I feel like I know myself better now, but I like myself less. Or rather, I want to be my own self less. I don’t know how to translate my new self within the context of my old life. So no, Albuquerque’s not making the list.

So let’s just have fun with it, shall we?

First off, Patagonia, because it looks fucking gorgeous.

Morocco, just to wander around massive outdoor markets buying dried fruits I can’t identify and likely getting pickpocketed by trained monkeys.

Somewhere northern enough to see the Northern Lights. Maybe get drunk enough to weep with wonder while sitting on the banks of an Icelandic river or something.

New Orleans. I’ve never been, and that seems like my loss. It looks so sexy and strange and nasty and alive.

And finally, Paris. Personally, I don’t have any particular affection for the French, but my mom always wanted to go there. She bought way deep into the romance of the idea of Paris, so I’d go and do all the things I bet she’d have liked. Every touristy, flouncy, beret-capped Parisian thing there is to be done. And I’d buy a dozen girly postcards to bring home, and I’d pin them up around my house and pretend she sent them to me and imagine her wandering around all those places with a baguette under her arm.

Now you. Relieve me of this smothering curiosity, already.

7

Thursday

6.43am

I can’t believe I slept through your messages pinging. Usually I can’t sleep through anything, even if anything is nothing at all. But I woke up refreshed—more than I’ve been in a while. So I’m going to reward myself by answering right away:

I never thought of it that way. About that question revealing even more about me, because I never go anywhere. But now I’m wondering if that’s why I didn’t answer, before sending you the question. Like there’s a block in my mind, even when we’re just talking fantasy destinations. Even pretend plane journeys make me panic, apparently.

Either that, or I’m embarrassed.

You said such sophisticated, grown-up places.

And all I want to do is slip through the back of a wardrobe and into Narnia. Or climb a faraway tree and find revolving worlds up there. Or wash up in Oz in the middle of the desert that turns you to stone. Or ask the goblin king to take me away to the labyrinth right now.

Those are the places I would go if I could. Other worlds, vast and terrible and beautiful and weird. Places where magic is real, because oh I get so tired of all this relentless mundanity.

Not even just relentless, really—violent mundanity.

The kind that asserts itself aggressively, just as you think everything is going to be amazing. You buy that perfect dress and then catch yourself in a shop window, looking dull and lumpy and grey. The success you had turns into a grind; the beautiful flat you bought becomes a prison.

The ceiling leaks. The neighbours hate you.

Whatever future you imagined is now a long-distant memory.

I’d brave dragons in Earthsea to be away from all of that.

Is that so crazy? I think it might be crazy.

Let’s talk about something less crazy, like books.

Top five books.

8.27am

Don’t be embarrassed. Hell, I’m kind of embarrassed now, since you asked where I’d go if I could go anywhere and I wasn’t creative enough to think of made-up places.