alright so i gotta share today, apparently.

lunch with your sister-friend happens, and she's telling you about dominic pettman, and you note it down, and finally get into that japanese restaurant everyone's always been raving about. lunch and analytic conversations. how do we complain about our twenties? today's topics include: the Vicodin Effect of Traveling (when stupid decisions seem perfectly rational), whether or not one should measure their happiness in accordance to how successful a crush is going (i think the conclusion was that, yes, this is justifiable, and more importantly, uncontrollable), and then spend half an hour analyzing each other's cultural cuisine, and what that says about identity.

OH MY GOD, MY TWENTIES ARE SO HARD.

this is followed by a comfortable sit down at the library. fistful of (academically irrelevant) reads in your hand (you've just printed articles that sounded so interesting, and have nothing to do with your major, probably), and are camped out in a cubby reading up on the taxonomy of bruises, and mindy kaling's new book. give it a text message or two, and you will find yourself walking down the street, towards your fellow twenty year old girlfriends apartment.

earlier, you will have said, "today is gonna be a good day."

sunsets without your having realized it, as you pull your knees to your chest, watching red painted toes gaping through your black wool socks. beer bottles on the table, and hearts on sleeves, two girls (who are very bad at being girls), delightfully spill repressed secrets on boys, sex, and the remarkable transition one makes from a weird high school nerd into an intellectual college babe. "you're a girlfriend, and i still like you" one shouts to the other. "you're really cool and totally hot" the other shouts back.

stumble across to the hip side of town, and share evening lattes and muffins with your best friend who just got off work. take a walk through said hip side of town, and up at the local vegan-feminist majority-lesbian cafe, and wait for an old third-party friend to arrive. chili. grilled cheese. cookies. memories of a couple years ago, of the future, of the friends we love, and hate to love, but love when we hate. "what is wrong with people?" is the layer that blankets the conversation (it tastes bitter)

and then we get to some weird, hip loft, with christmas lights clung by authentic spider webs, and a chalkboard sign that has the word, "BEER" earnestly, half-heartedly, genuinely, scribbled on. friends in a corner, bundled together in a couch. wit and laughs, and then your friend notices something allen ginsberg on the table, next to something asimov. "i'm going to steal this" she says with a giggle. she stole it.

skinny hipster, collared shirt, black sweater friend, leans over the couch, and whispers in your ear to suggestively advise you that, "there are a lot of boys here" and you look around the various jean jackets, black skinny jeans, and striped shirts, simultaneously think, WHERE? and god, i love this city. and then it begins.

one by one, some various twenty year old, or other, with their scraggly legs, and obnoxious hair, and oversized everything, tumbles onto the floor with the same pathetic story. born and raised in bumfuck, somewhere, of this northern country, and they've come to educate themselves in the artiest city they've heard of. teen pregnancies, fumbling sex (they call it frantic fucking though, alliteration is important), and an inclination to holler at their fellow colleagues, and say things like, "right on" instead of, "okay." they are enthusiastic about the state of the world today, and they laugh at the wreck they see in it. so they go, and they read, and your brain is having the most wonderful time figuring out what's happening. because what's happening is that these kids, and their simultaneous pathetic backgrounds, are coming together to channel something in them, that wants out. something that burns when all eyes are on them, and breathes when the applause begins. so they sit there, and some people read your mediocre secrets (it's no fun if you're lying to us, and some are lying, and we can see right through the-), and some let out real secrets. but all are letting it out. in that loft, in space, at that time, with that train passing right bye, right behind the goddamn window, as she's standing their reading a poem. and as you spot the crowd, girls in tights sitting on the ground with various scarves tied around their heads, boys with ties, and necks, and collars, and a disdain for showering, and the pillows and blankets that have been set behind the self-constructed stage, featuring gear for a band that's labeled it's drums with, the words "man + legs," you are thinking how obnoxiously transparent, this total, total, love for the "golden age" (the age that was never yours), is, and you think, my city is alive, and weird, and creativity has a home here. it can be harvested, and spawn truly, weird, weird, things. (have you heard our music?) but these are just kids. kids with the same fears, who wake up with the same shock of having just had sex. and some of their shit is kind of gross, and self-indulgent, and kind of bad, and kind of good, but they are cultivating something you feel in you every single day. at least these losers are touching theirs. no one, not even i, am touching mine.

so you tell your friend about how the girl kept looking straight at you, and how it's a thing white hipster girls do, when they see you in your dark skin, nose piercing, and blood red lipstick. how they, "see something in me, that's just not there." "yeah, excuse me, but i don't have a loft party to go to" your friend says. she laughs.

and in that deadpan voice your friends have been encouraging through out the night, you continue, and say, "i mean, all i want is to be eating cheese. even when i'm eating cheese."