Otherplace: Viola - Our Gulag Meetup
Dear Seb,
I am here in my living room, and I’m trying to not read any more news today. I am worn to a nub from all that is going on out there in the world, abroad and at home. Certainly there’s always been a sense of the horrors that are going on globally, because that has never stopped being a thing, but at least we used to be able to pretend that things here were better. Now of course the lie of that belief is being made all too clear, as citizens are being brutalized by masked thugs, tossed into the backs of black vans, beaten in their homes, or just outright murdered in the streets.
What is going on, Sebastian? Where did everything fail so spectacularly? Don’t answer that, it’s rhetorical. I am not ignorant of history or of how America has always covered its darker nature with a sparkling coat of red, white, and blue paint. Still, it’s completely disheartening and crushing to see all of that evil bubbling up to the surface, and it won’t soon be cleared away, I fear. It is not the fatalist in me saying that it will only get worse before it gets better. Like I said, I’m not ignorant of history.
We should see each other this year, before we have to have proof of citizenship to cross state borders. Get together and pretend it’s old times, when our biggest concerns were making rent every month, and getting our term papers finished in time.
Iris has been staying here with me more often than not these days. She has her apartment still, but there is more than enough room in my house for both of us. I’m sure you would joke and say that I am becoming domesticated, but I think that I actually may be, and it’s not that bad, really. I have begun to enjoy folding our laundry, and I have set aside half of my dresser as hers. She continues to bring a bag with her when she comes from her apartment, like she’ll be staying in a hotel, but I am stealing pieces from it each time she comes, and slipping shirts and socks and underwear into the dresser drawers in the bedroom.
She may not be aware of it, but I am moving Iris in with me, one piece at a time.
I watch your weather on my phone, because I am nosy. I see that your heat wave of the high 30s has broken, and you’re headed back into the 20s and below. I’m sure that you spy on my weather as well, because I know how you are, but in case you haven’t been recently, I’ll tell you that it’s a typical San Franciscan winter here right now: 60s and cloudy. I may even decide to put on a light jacket when I go out this afternoon, if the mood strikes me.
I’m a terrible friend, Sebastian. You are aware of this already.
Do you think we’ll meet up in the same gulag some day? Be chained together at the ankles, breaking rocks next to one another in the hot Texas sun? I don’t know why I chose Texas as the site of our upcoming incarceration. Just feels appropriate somehow.
These are terrifying times, Seb. Hang on to yourselves out there.
Yours in continued and growing anxiety,
Viola
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