The Wednesday Theory

February twenty-fifth. The thing about going out on a Wednesday is that you have to make a decision, and the decision is: do I actually want to do this, or do I want to be the kind of person who does this? On Wednesday night those two things feel interchangeable. By Thursday morning they are very much not.

I kept my coat on for most of it. This is not a metaphor. The bar was one of those places that hasn't quite committed to being warm, not cold enough to complain about, not warm enough to fully settle into, so the coat stayed, and I stood near the bar and half-listened to a conversation I was technically part of, and drank something that came in a glass and cost more than I needed it to. At some point I put the coat over my arm because it felt like the socially appropriate gesture of arrival. I put it back on approximately four minutes later.

The four minutes the coat came off.

I was home before eleven. I am not going to claim this is a moral victory, but it did feel like a small and private one. The collapsed bowl was on the windowsill when I came in, same as always, catching the streetlight, entirely unbothered by the night I'd had. Gerald had a new leaf unfolding, I noticed it only because I was standing in the kitchen for a long moment, coat still on, not quite ready to be home yet even though I was already there.

Wednesday night, approximately 10:47pm. I had a very early morning.

Something about February makes me want to go out and then immediately want to be back in my apartment. I think this is just February. I am choosing to believe it is just February.