I'm building a knit shop on Etsy, where there will also be an option to donate money for yarn and shipping, with which I will knit either a blanket ($15), socks ($10?), a doll ($15?), or a cap ($10?) for a child in need and send it to one of the US organizations that collects such items. It's an idea that randomly occurred to me upon realizing the Etsy is a very middle to upper class site, and there are a lot of people who can't give their children blankets at all, much less $50 Etsy creations.

I'm kind of kicking ass. I hit a huge sale that I just happened to stumble across and got a bunch of skeins that had me paying a dollar or less per one hundred yards. For normal comparison, one hundred yards of decent yarn typically goes for around $3.50. I have a budget up, I have a marketing plan, and I'm just about on schedule with my actual knitting...although I'd like to see if it would be possible to also sew simple headbands. Altogether, things are going...almost worryingly well.

eep

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My first instinct is to hug you. You, having been the first boy I ever wanted to slow dance with, the first boy my mom recalls me asking after, hold a very strange place in my personal history...and I can tell, by the peculiar smile on your face, that I hold an unusual place in your history, too.

But then, my mother was the catalyst for your parents' divorce. More than wondering how your two little sisters (for whom I cared very deeply, before K started hating me for what my mom did, and before S grew older and the memories of me faded) are, or what led you to my town, I wonder why you don't hate me.

So I don't hug you. The situation--finding you at my front door, after having spoken with you just once during high school and zero times, before or after that, since we were just kids who spent a good deal of time together--throws me off more than a little bit, and that might add to it, but most of it is this pressing question; why don't you hate me? Why do you look happy to see me?

The whole way up the stairs to my apartment--above which you have friends you're visiting, you tell me--in fact, all you keep repeating, between small bursts of updates and questions, is, "Small world."

"Small world." It comes out in a sort of breath, like you aren't even really thinking about saying it, but more so marveling in some universal strangeness, still processing the fact that I walked up, unshowered and holding a McDonald's bag and a chocolate shake, after several years of radio silence--and I suppose I'm marveling, too, although a bit more at the fact that you look like you're happy to see me, rather than horrified that I look like something that was perhaps dragged several miles by a runaway horse.

And then taken to McDonald's in consolation of the incident.

In fact, I almost get the feeling that I'm making you unhappy by leaving (to a small degree, of course), when I say that I have to get inside to take a nap (true; I was on two hours of sleep and had a midnight shift). I can't say I don't feel kind of the same, after waking up and having a moment to think about it. I almost message you several times, but don't know what to say. I wasn't brushing you off, I just needed to go because I'm always busy and also felt totally weird about the whole situation? Sorry my mother was complicit in the destruction of your happy childhood, hope we can catch up soon?

Not exactly a way to ignore how our shared history came to a halt, after all. It's an elephant that grows with every additional question.

And it's too small a world for that.

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So disclaimer, this is the intro to what appears to be a gay porno. HOWEVER, it's the intro, and there's nothing really untoward, other than discussing boners very vaguely and one lewd comment.

WITH THAT SAID, this is Oscar-worthy and you should watch it.

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Random snippets of a phone conversation with one of my most trusted friends, who lives nowhere near me and is not midday, although they share a first name.


1.
"I'm like, 'I have good news and bad news. The good news is, you're going to live a long and happy life. The bad news is, you'll be living it without me.'"

Steve finds this line hilarious, and repeats it several times throughout our conversation. I didn't even realize what I was saying, at the time, so, once it occurs to me, we both sit there giggling like we're six about the most terrible way to break things off with someone. "I'm gonna use that, for real," he tells me. I hope he doesn't, but I also kind of hope he does, because the phone call I'll get directly after the fact might be worth it.

"The octopuses invade, and they're like, 'I have bad news, and I have good news... Bad news, you're not going to live much longer. Good news is, you're going to live it with me...!'"

It gets to the point of total absurdity at an extreme pace. This is when it benefits to live 15 hours away.



2.
We're talking about me mounting a yacht on the side of a mountain as a mountain home, and how it's especially absurd because no one would know how it got there or why--how it would be a total mystery to anyone who visits the mountain, why there is a yacht on the mountain.

"In typical [Unicornasaurus] fashion, you ask, 'Why aren't there more yachts on the mountain?'"

This is probably the biggest compliment anyone has ever accidentally given me, because I would love to be seen as that belligerently combative about valid questions.

"That sounds like a line from a Wes Anderson film," I tell him, trying to stop laughing because he's stopped laughing, and continuing to prolong the laughter can sometimes be weird.

We discuss befriending Wes Anderson and bringing him to visit my mountain yacht house.

The idea of the yacht, of course, originated from my frustration with people who read "inspirational" books on success and still do nothing to actually achieve success, and how I was going to take their great ideas and make a bunch of money off of them. "And when I buy my first yacht, you aren't invited," I say, referencing the people I'm making a bunch of money off of, in this scenario.

Anyway, I would probably still invite them.

I'd have good news and bad news; the good news is, they'd still live long and happy lives. The bad news is, they'd be living them WITHOUT DIS YACHT.

FULL CIRCLE, ALL RIGHT

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