There is not one among all of us who spent junior and senior year smokingsnortingdrinkingfuckingup who did not go on to clean up, to professional success and mortgages and sensible shoes and tattoos only high up arms and legs, where employers can’t see them. We did all that, and now we do all this. And God knows if the others want to go back to Narnia the way I do, sometimes. Only sometimes. But we have mortgages and bosses, and salad for dinner, and it’s okay. It’s all okay.

Addiction is a choice. It is in the mind, a state of mind. We need something to do, and we can do anything.

Together togethertogethertogether

May

June 2011

It had just started raining outside, and I had worked up the nerve to talk to Jay.

It had been six months and seventeen days since we last spoke.

Six plus one plus seven is fourteen, one plus four is five, and five is a good number.

I have to talk to him. I have to remind him I exist.

I logged in to various social media services every day, to check if he was around. I worried if he wasn’t.

But you were there today, a little green dot, and I worked up the nerve to talk to you because it had been too long, it had been half a year, and I missed you so terribly.

Tara: Hello, how goes all?

Jay: Tired, most of the time.
How are you doing?

Tara: Same. I love it.

Jay: Haha, and where are you?

Tara: Junior year at school
Where are you?

Jay: Delhi, India

Tara: Ahh my favourite city!
Aight, I’ll let you go. Just wanted to check in and see if the Mr Dhillon lives on

Jay: Haha, he lives on and is happy.
Stay with me, just a little, just for a while, before our cursory conversation is over and I have to wait another year to make contact.

Tara: I thought of you recently when I was editing college application essays for my brother and 23649298 of his friends

Jay: Hahahaha, welcome to my world!

Tara: I liked it! Now I know all the deep, dark secrets and desires of so many people! Good times.

Jay: Mm.You know the fake deep dark secrets they choose to reveal to make themselves look more appealing. The real stuff as we all know is well suppressed or well hidden. Usually under mounds of shame, guilt and insecurity.

Tara: Oh stop besting me and go away.

Jay: I do have the advantage in experience and age . . . God I feel old!

Tara: Haha, you should! I just turned 21 and I feel ancient!

Jay: Sigh . . . I’m over the hill.

Tara: Shaadi kab hai, Uncleji?

Jay: Oh God, don’t even mention that! I’m going down the arranged-marriage route—not a pretty process.

Tara: Oh dear. And how’s that going?