Astronauts, Anti-Humbugs, Strangers in my living room.

I don’t think that love is like cracking your knuckles or the first glass of water when you’re thirsty.

I think it’s more like a popsicle that drips and drips and makes your tongue feel happy, or a watercolor sunset or the part of fall that still feels like summer. I think it's more like ice skating without falling, or the way that soft skin feels on fingertips.

I have a roommate that I don’t mention much, since she has a separate entrance to our apartment and we don’t interact very often. She certainly doesn’t know me as well as you do, except for things like how my shampoo smells and what songs I play in the twilight. Lately, I can tell that my roommate is lonely when I leave the house and she stays home watching wedding shows on TLC and Lifetime. It feels silly to feel sorry for a woman who has no one to cuddle with, when I have no one to cuddle with either, or at least no one that I like. But I think I cuddle with myself pretty well and I don’t know if my roommate knows how to do that. We don’t really talk about things like this. Instead, we talk about snow.

Maybe I just don’t understand the appeal of the Lifetime Network. Or maybe she reads Nabokov in private or smokes weed when I think she’s at synagogue.

Sometimes I’m bewildered by how many people there are in this green world, and even a few astronauts floating in outer space to boot. I think that people are like satellites or radio signals, instead of islands. There can’t just be one person for everyone, or even seven, with all of these wavelengths.

 I hope my roommate finds her station or her man on the moon or her white dress.  Even people with bad taste in television deserve to be happy if they’re kind.

I kissed a woman and a man and another woman and a man one night recently. I came home smiling like a school kid but I didn’t tell my roommate anything about it. She wouldn’t understand if I said that it felt like blankets, or the world exploding with heartbeats, or a marching band or the anti “bah humbug.” Even if she could understand, I still wouldn’t tell her. Instead, I ate salad for dinner and wished that I could watch Scrooged, rather than women yelling about bridesmaids, or horses, or weight loss, or lace on television. Instead, I talked about puppies playing in snow banks and my roommate talked about work Christmas parties and it really wasn't so bad after all.

I hope she has happy holidays, or at least Technicolor dreams.