2/1/99

It's so strange to come home to an empty house. Everything is just as I left it, the cat is eerily attentive. The TV calls to me, which is unusual--I've never really cared a lot for it, but now I'm drawn to watch these shows I wouldn't have touched during their prime. The Nanny, etc. I'm tempted to order cable so that I have more than 4 channels to surf. Watching TV with no cable is kind of like a 24 hour web cam; I have to check back every time I pass through the living room just to see if anything's changed.

I find myself at a loss for entertainment; in a moment where normally John and I would have gone to dinner or played pool, or even just spoken, there's a pregnant silence, as if my muscles are tensed for activity but my brain can't follow through. I need to expand my list of "at a loss" activities to include something productive. Right now it includes checking the TV for changes, checking my mail, checking e-mail, checking others' journals, checking my various pagers and checking the caller ID to see if anyone's called. Maybe I should check my New Year's resolutions and see how I'm doing. Perhaps a monthly update. I resolve to check my resolutions and see what I'm forgetting about. Maybe I should just practice my euphonium for a while, what a novel idea.

There's something calming about being alone here. I'm really not all that depressed, like I thought I'd be. I just feel sort of...apathetic. It would be easy for someone to live alone and never live it up, to go through the checklist of each day and then begin the next. I feel very quiet. I am one step closer to meditation than I was when I was spending time with someone else.

Last night I spoke to a friend I hadn't called in a while. We went over the details of our lives; his job, my school, his girlfriend, my love life. After this weekend I am feeling invigorated--it's that exhilaration that comes of flirting outrageously with someone. I talked with my friend about this guy last night and I felt like a young college student on the loose again, shamelessly toying with men and giggling about it with friends. I love it. This time it's slightly different: the guy in question is engaged and he's essentially toying with me, too, and I couldn't care less. The two of us have been friends since high school. A month or so ago, he told John that he'd had a crush on me "way back then." We‘ve always been coquettish together, but this weekend, I think T took things to a new level on the flirt-o-meter. I feel pleasantly out of control, like I'm getting too much oxygen to my brain. I keep getting that little warning buzz that we might be going too far, that I should stop him from doing something he might regret later on. But why? It's so goddamn much fun. And who knows if he thinks of it this way, maybe to him it's just joke-flirting, and by stopping him I'll make him think that I was taking it more seriously. Because I'm not. I'm having a blast. Adult flirting is so much nicer than adolescent flirting.