Trust your needs to feed you
Morning time at L. Trela’s. I cannot sleep and L. Trela is the only other person I know who may be awake at this hour. I dial her number to find out that she is in fact sleeping, but she invites me over anyway. I know there’s at least an 80 percent chance of receiving breakfast when I get there, and so I arrive moments later, jumping as she emerges from some bizarre entryway I’ve never noticed before and scares the shit out of me. What’s up, she says. What’s going on? Trela’s a funny one to pin down, because she’s one of two or three people I know over the age of 40 who righteously holds on to the ideal that she’s actually 17 years-old. That’s all well and good, but that worldview seems to come particularly unraveled when she’s hustling down Lark Street at 2:00 am, threatening to drive herself home after a night of heavy drinking. And that’s kind of the thing you tend to notice about L. Trela: it’s less that she’s in active pursuit of the imagined lifestyle of an adolescent and more that she seems to be holding onto some kind of death wish. All of her stories, you tend to notice, end in horrible disaster, and it’s not difficult to see through the active lifestyle veneer, which presents in crystal three dimensional clarity, a life out of control. Mostly though, she’s into it if you eat the pizzas she always making, and I can adequately fulfill that roll, looking up between bites, as I pretend to be listening to what she’s saying. But today I arrive to little fanfare. She looks at me blankly before asking what I’ve been up to. Oh, nothing, I tell her. I went on vacation to Cape Cod. The details are not very thrilling. We have no idea what to say to each other and the effect is unnerving. Gone today are Trela’s horrible anecdotes and misadventures. Even the things she’s telling me are benign and lightweight-seeming. What's going on here? I want to know. What the fuck? It’s no use, though, and so I leave after a short visit, feeling somehow defeated and grim, cast out into the day with a bad feeling. Thanks a lot, L. Trela; thanks for nothing.

Friendships are weird thing, situated as they are on so much precarious footing. Move one rock and the whole arrangement comes crumbling down. It’s easy to get swept up in the romanticism of a world built around good intentions, structured perfectly with people who care. But mostly it’s not like that. Mostly, it’s cruel and unusual. Although, mostly unusual. Back in the car, I realize why I’m feeling so strange: I’m starving.