I’ve not gone out for two weeks now. I didn’t think it would be this easy. I expected to suffer. Withdrawals, ego death, something like what happens when you try to take a tolerance break from smoking. There have been no such stings. Sure, I’ve woken with dried blood on my pillow, and I’m starting to dream again while I sleep… but what this reminds me is that I am typically dreaming awake when I dance, a kind of new knowing that I think I already knew. As I know there will be more weekends, more parties, there always have been and always will be more. We don’t ever have enough time together, but at the same time, there is so much more time than we could ever know what to do with. So long as I’m living I’m not missing out on anything at all. I am only an indistinct figure in the club scene anyway. Neither the disco balls in the Northern dark nor the Southern live oaks with their curtains of Spanish moss notice me at all. I am only a tourist. Even at home I’m passerby.

Here is the world I’ve been visiting instead of the dancefloor: sometimes Savannah, sometimes subterranean. Ivy-covered Southern Gothic homes and empty paved streets. Long stretches of highway, dark beneath and above, the half moon growing and veiled behind a glowing curtain of cloud. A bitter sobering breeze, an empty neighborhood street. Silence, nights spent alone in contemplation. The warmth of an electric fireplace or an oven left open. I’ve sat and drank with my aging parents, my babbling niece with her one tooth1, we drank and played Scrabble until the night was aging too.2 There is as much magic here as anywhere: in the lonely dark, the huge open uninterrupted sky and the city of human design and human ghosts. I’ve started turning from the light and directing my shadow to dance on the wall, larger than I, more abstracted than I and more beautiful for it. And I do not know who or what or where or how I will be. This not-knowing I wear comfortably, it exalts me, I adorn myself in it as I do every day with heirlooms and artifacts of those I’ll never know again: an ex’s ring, an old best friend’s gifted bracelet, my huge fur heavy with spatial memory. Gold is brushed bronze with love and age. In other words, all of the magnificent yesterdays weigh on today and erode the way tomorrow.

This “now” is my destiny because I have chosen it, consciously or not. My tonight is mine and it’s special because it won’t ever come again. And here is some splendor of this night of mine: on River Street everyone walks bundled up like it’s already winter: puffer coats, hats with puffs on top, mittens, little children holding hands and trotting along. Last waxing gibbous night my parents and I walked in search of a good burger, a cold drink, a memory we can hold onto until we meet again. I smiled at the brilliant lights of the market and felt comforted by the presence of nostalgia I can’t explain to anyone. I took puffs from my vape in secret behind them. They know I smoke but I’m committed to keeping it from them as much as I can3. We pass people lining up to get into the modern rooftop bar, in the sports bar we land in I regale my parents with censored tales of nights out. All of a sudden and surrounded by life like this I feel nothing resembling a desire to dance and be seen. Those hours are just as important as these, they’re mine by chance and only briefly, and once they pass I know others will arrive but they won’t be the same.

Conversation slows as we await the check in the pub and I point out what we’re thinking: those adolescent years are long gone now, but they’ve also returned again, recent again, just like then I am earnest and between my parents and we are all enjoying our solitude together. In a way I’m older than my parents. When they bicker and when they cuddle I smile like watching my own children on the playground. When they die I’ll be as altered as a father having to bury his own son. This too is abundant, ever-present. For there will always be succession.4 And loneliness. And cruel diseases. And indiscriminate bombings. Human loss is my tragedy and yours, a ruthless game we all have to play. Though everyone is a little different every time I return I wonder, do any of us really change? Even when I was small and innocent, wasn’t I the same mysterious bastard that I am now? Don’t we all resemble the ugly and the joyous parts of our predecessors? In the same way one knows from the first moment of eye contact with a stranger — this is someone I’ll love forever. Even and after we part for the last time.

It occurs. I know because it’s happened to me before. And like a Biblical beast there are countless memories within me that refuse to be digested or excreted. Nostalgia, like a pain of the stomach, can be painful if you let it. But in love as in war pain can also be a reminder that one is alive. Death has not yet come. There are still more moments ahead, more stunning sights, more holidays, more laughs to elicit, more and more and more life to be lived!

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And my home like every home is a grave that’s yet to be dug. My parents are aging, my brothers are maturing, our next generation is growing and I go onward with them. Despite our differences we are as human as everyone else. Meaning we all are always missing out or losing grip on something sweet we cherish. Someone is always gone too soon. We are all fighting a dialectical drive to seek more and stay put. To accumulate and abandon. One is pointless plus powerless without the other. So long as the other exists, there will always be a tension, a sense of loss, a wondering: what have I relinquished by holding what I have?

There isn’t any way of knowing. The nights of Southern silence have shown me this, which I’ve already known. And though I don’t know who I am, not really, I know what I do: Leave. And love. And mourn. And remember. And forget. And return. And leave again. The stories I tell are the same that have always been told: Night falls, and one of us is always leaving, and we are always being left behind.

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There haven’t been any nights out for me to report on. Only the nights within. So I kept this piece unlocked for all to read. My many thanks to my paid subscribers and also my apologies. Message me if you feel some kind of way and I’ll be generous.