The Perspective from Another Horizon

 

Theory is one thing, fact another. 

Do you remember those old personality tests you'd take online? The ones that asked you questions like, "You're in a relationship and you learn that your partner has been talking to their ex behind your back. Do you: A. Confront them about it. B. Ask them if..."? 

Those drove me crazy as a kid. I had such a burning desire to understand myself, to know not just who I was but what type of person I was, combined with a dearth of life experience that made the hypothetical scenarios maddening. The invariable result of attempting those quizzes was realizing I didn't have the context to knowledgeably complete them and that therefore I couldn't get an accurate answer. Buzzfeed would never be able to tell me what my inner substance was. Not if I didn't know it myself.

This blog has been my growing-up space. Across the years it's chronicled when a great many milestones that were previously what-ifs became concrete realities, lived experiments from which I could draw conclusions and formulate new hypotheses. What would it be like to live on my own? I found out in Alaska, and discovered that I am a fundamentally weird person who always should have had plenty of personal space--but not too much of it. The theoretical version of me who basked in the glory of dominion over a whole apartment collided eventually with the real version of me who found that the endless days and nights of freedom quickly became infected by loneliness. 

I'd never again want to deal with having to live at someone else's whims or under someone else's rules. But I wouldn't mind dealing with having to share the television. Or having to keep quiet after a certain hour. Or having to leave some hot water. Not if it meant I had someone to come home to. 

But what about an adult job? my 28-year-old mind wondered as I flew hard northwest en route to an Alaska encrusted with ice and snow in the spring of 2017. Won't I just crumple under the pressure?

I adjusted.

But what about having to be in charge of kids? How can they trust me to do that when I'm practically a kid myself?

Duty is a powerful thing. The nurturing instinct is, too. I rose to those occasions. Over the coming years I learned what I'd do if I had conflict with a supervisor, what I'd do if I shifted to a different specialty in my career field, what I'd do if I visited a foreign country, what I'd do in a serious relationship. And what I'd do in another one. 

In August 2023 I left Alaska, in September began my probationary period of employment at the job I'd been half convinced was too good for me, and in February boarded a flight bound for Europe. One night in Albion was followed by another travel leg, this one diving deep to the southeast--such an odd inverse echo of the journey to Alaska all those years ago--and then in the early hours of February 22, 2024, I disembarked in the place that will be my home for at least the next year: Konkan City.

Being here has allowed me to answer a number of other heretofore-philosophical questions: What if I were wealthy? How would I handle that? What if I had servants? Would I be kind? What if I no longer got my treasured summers off? Could I possibly endure?

The truths gleaned from those queries are mostly good. On the work front, I have more resilience than I thought I did. On the wealth front I've not suddenly become a conspicuous consumer flashing his bank account to the world. No garish cologne or bulky cuff links. No gold-plated toilet seats here. 

And as someone who now pays the salaries of several other someones, and whose patronage is a regular and welcome boost for a few local businesses, I've discovered that the slight irritation I feel at so seldom being truly alone--between the guards at my residence, the drivers who take me around the city, the housekeeper who tends to my domestic tasks, and the cook who prepares my meals I am constantly in the company of people whose livelihood depends on my pleasure and who are eager to signal their concern with my comfort--has not diminished my inclination to treat staff fairly and pay them well. I'm friendly toward these people without being overly familiar, if only because social fatigue will burn me down if I don't have some time when I'm not on a stage. But I'm good to work for.

This place is very different from Alaska. Some things, though, are surprisingly the same. Iceport has just cracked the freezing mark while Konkan is veering closer every day to 100 degrees, and the quarter-million people who had the audacity to call my former home a city look quaint compared to the 25 million crammed into this section of the Sindhu coastline. I make double here what I did as a teacher. I somehow work less. Report cards have been replaced with expense reports, parent conferences with executive meetings where I say little as people astronomically higher on the income ladder than me lay out strategies for sales and engagement and whatever else we must do. But here, as there, I'm far from home, doing work my family doesn't really understand in a place they find exotic. Here, as there, I'm buoyed by a rewarding job. And here, as there, I leave that job to return to an apartment I inhabit alone. 

The true-love thing emphatically did not work for me. I thought I found it with Anthos, but what I found led eventually to me sleeping with an oversized show pillow so I could trick my brain into a few hours' relief from the crushing grief that followed his leaving. It took me a year after he was gone to return to a basic level of functioning, two years to let go of the flame I kept lit for him, the door I kept open. Just in case he realized how good we really were together. Just in case he one day understood that he loved me as much as I loved him. Just in case he came back. Just in case. A year and a half with him and two years wanting to be with him. I mourned us longer than there was us. And I never want to find that particular kind of pain again.

Once in a moment of levity I said to Gavril, whom I dated before Anthos, that I didn't feel fireworks with him but that if we found ourselves stuck together in an arranged marriage I'd be all right with it. And his goofy Chinese ass, rather than being offended, responded with authentic surprise and joy. 

"That's the sweetest thing anyone's ever said to me," he beamed.

At the time I worried my relationship with Gavril, which had so much in the way of common interests and temperament but so little in the way of unbridled passion, was too comfortable. Too sedate. Too much like...well, an arrangement. But a scarce two and a half weeks after my thirty-sixth birthday I've decided that what I feared developing with the partner I affectionately called "Chinaman" is now precisely what I'm looking for.

I want an arranged marriage.

Or, at least, a marriage that is an arrangement. A marriage in which, to quote the great Clarisse Renaldi describing the dynamic to her granddaughter Mia, "we grew very fond of one another."

I'm not seeking, to be sure, an economic understanding or something equally detached. But I'm thirty-six. Thirty-six and tired of walking through the world by myself. Thirty-six and aware that each of us only gets so much time. Thirty-six and mindful of the ever more perilous math around how old I'll be for the milestones of prospective children if I have them next year, or the year after, or the year after. Thirty-six and ready to build a life, with a partner who wants to build the same thing and who is tired of falling asleep by himself. I require a man of agreeableness, similar tastes and outlook, financial stability, and goals similar to mine. Those qualities being present, and a basic level of mutual physical attraction with them, love can happen along the way.

This feels like a tall order in a world of hookups, foot fetishists, and men in their thirties who write "ur" en lieu of "you're" in text messages, so I've enlisted the services of a professional matchmaker to help arrange this arrangement. Such a solution is expensive and might not work, but hey: I can afford it. And when we're all running out of time, time spent trying is time spent well.  

I've been so blessed in so many ways. Maybe someday soon I'll have someone to share it with.

A New Life

                                       

It's a strange thing when your dreams come true. Then they're not your dreams anymore, are they? They're just your life. Good and bad, thrilling and infuriating, exceptional and mundane. Your day-to-day routine is shot through with these moments of surreality, little thrills that make your stomach leap like you're on a rollercoaster while a little voice in your head squeals with glee. And then you remember that you left your lunch in your apartment. 

It's been a long, long time since October 29, 2022, when I last posted here. A bit over a year in chronological time. Something on the order of a few centuries in terms of lived experience. Back then I was in Alaska, contemplating the master's degree in special education I'd begun working on the previous summer, and actively mourning the man from whom I'd been separated for nine lonely, excruciating months. His spectre was with me all the time then, haunting the kitchen where we made chicken-noodle soup together and the bed where we laid and the empty present that was supposed to have been our beautiful future. His was the face of a million wonderful possibilities lost. 

But time, as they say, heals all wounds. I'm not sure how much stock I put in the fullness of that convalescence, though it's undeniable that with enough distance, enough months, enough years, the hemorrhage turned into a trickle. The blister became just a sunburn. And in my broader life, as I've always done, I kept planning and striving and building. Hoping that one of my many glittering dreams would spring to life and carry me to something new. As it happens, not one of them came true; two did. 

In April, just in time for my thirty-fifth birthday, I learned I'd been offered admission and a full scholarship to a university in Scandinavia that offered a master's program about which I was very passionate. I duly gave notice to my school district, put in extra hours with after-school tutoring to shore up my bank account, and was knee deep in a student-visa process when a second e-mail found its way to my inbox at five in the morning on a beautiful June day. I read it over and over again, scarcely daring to believe the words were true. 

"We are pleased to offer you..."

Everything. They offered everything.

I first applied for a job with Global Company, an international public-relations firm, in 2019. I had a successful interview with them the following year, but then the pandemic rolled through everyone's plans like a boulder through bowling pins and the corporation whose lifeblood was international travel found itself dead in the water. An indefinite hiring freeze accompanied a general battening of hatches. An apologetic message informed me I'd interviewed well and that they'd be back in touch when things settled down. I simply forgot about it because they never reached out again. 

Until they did. 

The starting salary in the June missive was so eye popping I had to double and triple check it to make sure I had the digits right. And what about that comma? Was it supposed to have that many zeroes? I called my mother in tears because everything I'd wanted my entire adult life had just been handed to me in a few short paragraphs, but the tears of joy lasted only moments before a thought boomed loud as thunder in my head: I have so much to do.

I returned the scholarship. Rescinded the letter of acceptance. Cancelled that visa appointment at the embassy, because my little blond ass certainly was not going to Sweden. A fully funded master's degree sounded nice, but doubling my salary to take a job I'd dreamt of since I was twenty sounded better. And with those decisions made I closed the door on an entire life. Packed up my beautiful apartment in Iceport, said goodbye to countless friends and colleagues, spent an achingly gorgeous Alaska June teaching summer school to a group of high-schoolers who made me grateful for the gift of being an educator. And then got on a plane. 

It's difficult to describe how bizarre that takeoff was. I began this blog as a 19-year-old college student who wondered if he'd ever have a career or independence or personal dignity or even his own living arrangement. I achieved none of that before Alaska. And Alaska gave it to me in spades. In a very real way Alaska defined me as an adult entity, because it was where the grown-up version of me emerged and where the entirety of my professional life prior to last summer occurred. I'll always hold that place, and those six years, close to my heart. Even as, from an aisle seat on an eastbound Delta flight, I bid them goodbye. 

The next few months were downright unreal. I spent August visiting family and friends, then in September moved into a fabulous corporate-housing unit for the probationary period of my employment, when I worked with domestic clients so management could view my output in real time and ensure I'd be up to snuff when the stakes were really high in an international context. Apparently I did okay, because after a Southern State fall so magnificent it routinely brought tears to my eyes and after the inestimable privilege of Christmas with my family, the word came down from admin last week: all systems go. 

I passed the tests and checked the boxes. Now it's time to get aboard another plane. I'll be going farther away than I've ever gone before, to a land of beauty and antiquity and pride (and, as it happens, a growing tech industry, which is why there's a role for me there in the first place). In the midst of this enormous victory, I'm struck by the degree to which our stories can shift and, with them, the self-definitions those stories give us. Two and a half years ago I was BB the teacher, whose passion was special education and whose greatest dream was to build a future with Anthos in Triantaphilon. A cozy little life in a cozy little city. Me with my stacks of papers to grade and my boyfriend zipping through work I could barely understand on an expensive computer screen. 

Is it weird that, even with the possibility of that reality long dead, it's an image I still find so wonderful? Anthos had his faults but he was an amazing man, and making pennies as a SPED teacher didn't bother me if we had his huge paycheck to fall back on. Now Anthos and I have been split for two years, that cozy little city has been replaced by one of the most massive metropolises in the world, and Anthos's paystubs aren't quite so awe inspiring. How could they be? I make more than him. 

Now, after all this, I don't really know what I expect out of life. And increasingly I'm not trying to expect anything in particular, which is difficult given that I've obsessively plotted next steps and new aspirations since I was about fourteen. A few years ago, though, I really thought I had it all figured out, and then that lovely frame collapsed and reconfigured in ways awful and awesome. 

Do I want to meet a man? Sure. Do I think I will eventually? Uh...sure. But there's a lot to enjoy right now about just being BB, and a lot of new responsibilities on my plate besides. I'll find the right person eventually. At present I'm preparing for a move to the other side of the planet, readying for an on-site role I'll assume very soon, and enjoying the freedom that six figures on a W9 offers.

I feel triumphant in this moment. But also scared. The elation of my arrival here has since been mixed with a healthy dose of "Holy shit, what did I do?" even though I'm happy with my choices and know I made the right ones. I visited my younger brother Thomas over the weekend and it was hard to say goodbye. I pulled him into the closest version of a bear hug I could manage, laughable with my slender body and his huge frame, and couldn't help the tears that started to flow as I pressed my face into his shoulder. 

"I'm going to miss you," I croaked. He's twenty-eight years old now and a professional in the medical field after a youth that looked perilously unmoored. He has a girlfriend, an apartment, a professional progression in front of him, the whole shebang. I couldn't be prouder. 

"It'll be okay," he responded. "Now remember that you have a horse cock and pull yourself together."

"You have to come to Albion," I said. "It's halfway between us. I'll take time off work and we can meet there."

"God," he said, shaking his head with a laugh. "'Let's meet in Europe, halfway between us.' How is this your life?"

How indeed? 

As to this blog, who knows? I thought I was done with it, and then today I just wanted to write. Maybe I'm too much of a storyteller to ever really stop. But in keeping with my evolution where such things are concerned, I'm going to let it unfold as it will. The kind of monthly updates I did in previous years feel unlikely at the moment, but anything could happen. 

As the Spirit moves me, so I'll do.