THE BREAD LOAF JOURNAL
Loitering as High Schoolers Do AHDYA ELIAS ETTEA | CALIFORNIA I was genuinely—and surprisingly—bummed to have missed my high school’s ten-year reunion. Hear me out, I was starved for social interaction during the pandemic. In fact, I am proud of that decision to cancel. If only I could make responsible choices for the betterment of public health. Perhaps it’s wise that I’m single. Best to stay out of everyone’s way. But, freshly single during a pandemic, this sitting with my feelings, yes literally sitting because there is little else to do right now, has most of all, left me obliterated. Worse, I regressed into, maybe, my adolescent self. “Why am I wanting so badly to go to this freaking reunion?” I text the old high school group chat. The typing bubbles rise and fall without any actual response, but I can feel my friends rolling their eyes. “Horny, huh,” Charles responds. My old friends know me too well. I stare at my phone a while longer responding to the group thread. We share updates about our life and bat away the gravity with callus humor. Yet, there’s only so many jabs in the vein of “Hey bro, have you even left your house in a week?” until we’re seriously worried about everyone’s emotional stability. No one wants to open up because is it worth complaining? We haven’t spoken in forever and this is how we want to make our new introductions? We know we’re all in the same boat. “But, hey, you’re all my friends and you should feel open to talking.” We text a little more. Open up a little more. Someone shares, “it’s easier to talk about this stuff in person, I guess.” A suggestion goes out that we have our own reunion, maybe sometime in July when Molly, in from Seattle, will be visiting family without her wife and kids, and most likely, just like in high school times, bored and likewise starved for social interaction. It was agreed: second weekend in July. Meet at some bar none of us have ever visited, meet everyone’s–or most everyone’s–significant others, make plans for next time, and call it an early night. That’ll work well. Perfect, actually. Charles, just back from his road trip cancelled mid-way by wildfires in California; Callie, who was dragged home from New York by her father after the love of her life died by suicide; Adam, who much to his character (god love him), had never left; Patrick, who we would have Skyped in, but by some magic, managed to return stateside despite the blacklisting of flights by each and every country; and myself, now single, whose world has halted in its own way, with little else going on.
8 | VOLUME VIII
