MTV, You're My Hero

I've gotten into a really bad habit of watching MTV music videos in the mornings while eating heart-to-heart cereal before I go to work. It's even gotten to the point where I am late every morning because Daughtry's singing to his new audience or Gwen Stefani's pulling two Asian chicks up a building with her hair. It's really an awful way to start the day, and it's a habit that at this point I'm not willing to give up. Sometimes at 8 a.m. some dating reality show will come on and they will kick off the music videos early. This always makes me angry for some reason, like one is actually better than the other.

And sometimes the moment I get to work I close my door, separating myself from the rest of the world by a sheet of glass and some wooden panels. I always find myself thinking that there's no real reason to feel this way, that everyone has good intentions and are just trying to move through life without running into too many sharp edges. But it feels empty to me.

When I was younger my best friend and I used to love watching music videos (never at my house because it smelled and acted old). If we weren't watching TV we'd hang out in her basement playing on her small trampoline against the cold, hard concrete. But if her mom or housekeeper came to do laundry we'd have to relocate again. We were in constant search of somewhere to go without being found.

In the summer we would go out to her bay house in Chesapeake, Maryland and kill jellyfish and go out on her dad's boat. I remember her mom staying in and reading while we went outside into the sun. We'd swim in the pool next to the bay when it got too hot and smelly to go in the real water. We'd hide in the woods around her open, glass house and pretend that nothing else existed. I remember the huge, thick trees and how the bark would shed off onto our hot, salty hands. And we could never figure out how to shake it off.

Now we are on opposite sides of the country and that voice is heard from an e-mail about how the weather in L.A. is sunny or how she's gotten new furniture which means she's staying out there. And I close my office door and write her an e-mail explaining how there's noise outside and I can't concentrate on writing a good one. Then I delete it, remembering that she is in Japan enjoying the cherry blossoms with no real internet. And I remind myself that this is how it's supposed to happen. We all move away and live with real furniture in real cities. Mainly, I just miss her.

And we make choices as to who gets to stay close to us. He's coming to visit this weekend and again it's time sucked into 48 hours, coffee shops, maybe the movies, and the planning for our upcoming summer road trip together. It's my apartment, warm from his laundry and cooking, his feet under a blanket next to mine. Those same feet that I traded shoes with at a party in Boston the first night we met. The night I rushed back from Philadelphia after my uncle's funeral and rain that delayed my plane for almost 4 hours. It's feeling that independence and separation I've worked so hard to have slip away into something new. And it's discussing plans of him turning down a job in Greensboro to move here to be with me. We've decided that staying close is better than keeping that drive down route 29 across state lines between us. Because at some point all the phone calls and e-mails aren't enough.