The Divorcee and the Divorced

Earlier in the day, I accepted a Partiful invite from a stranger so naturally, Tiff and I wound up on the second floor of a shoebox apartment at 2 a.m. on a Saturday.

Though, as the half-empty beer cans warmed in the plume of communal cigarettes and names exhaled over deafening music, I realized just how much I'd outgrown the rituals native to freshman year.

For one, I don't think anyone particularly enjoys trading saliva for watered-down liquor as much as they say they do. 

And, historically, these exchanges never lead to anything worth keeping. 

Still, I can't help but seek them out. 

Really, I do it all for the version of myself whose ankles inevitably retired after one too many sprains in three inch heels. And there is something to be said about the humanity of it all, that is, parting lips to deliver half-truths under the promise of intimacy. 

Nonetheless, Tiff and I were most amused by the woman who inserted herself into our conversation on our train ride there. 

As is the natural order of things, we primed the night by dissecting our love lives, asking at what point our disappointments become yet another data point in a study that had already concluded. By the tail end, we'd surmised that our post-grad lives were better spent in a flex apartment shoulder to shoulder with our dearest friends anyways. 

“I’m telling you. They don’t get any better,” she interjected. 

The middle-aged woman in the seat next to us had just returned from a Rüfüs Du Sol concert.

Apparently, she'd recently separated from her no-good, now ex-husband, whom she'd since spotted riding a scooter to Trader Joe's. Her friends, who accompanied her that day, hadn't fared much better, both discovering over WhatsApp that they'd been cheated on that very same weekend.

Her parting words followed all the way to the party.

"Stay single, girls."

Tiff and I much preferred each other's company anyway. We spent much of the evening wedged into a patio swing fit for one, knees knocking together as we watched strangers practicing the same limbo we had divorced in freshman year.

In lieu, we discussed what had come of our childhood dreams in an era where real connection seemed to have died alongside Club Penguin and Sillybandz. 

Admittedly, I'm not too sure which reality that night seemed more dire.