MOVING IN STEREO

She's So High

"She's blood, flesh and bone

No tucks or silicone

She's touch, smell, sight, taste, and sound

But somehow I can't believe that anything should happen

I know where I belong and nothing's gonna happen"

She's So High

Tal Bachman

I was ready for work early that evening, so I decided to lay back for a few minutes and relax on our bed. I glanced around the room before closing my eyes and thought how much better life was, how much had changed. A little over three months had passed since Sofia had moved in, and the small, near-empty apartment had come alive. Really, everything had come alive.

Before we met, I had taken a decent-paying job at an insurance company to supplement my radio board operating job I worked at night. The toil of one allowed the enjoyment of the other. I rented an apartment in the city to be closer to both and nearer to people in general. Admittedly though, I still had few interactions. It felt somehow more comforting to be near a crowd rather than in one. The city seemed a cold place for the lonely, but it was a place where I could see and be seen without ever being forced into interaction. If the apartment was a little expensive,  at least served that purpose. With both my incomes, the rent was never a problem anyway.

The apartment building was on a slight rise that overlooked a busy street. Our particular apartment was on the ground floor and had a low brick-walled patio that looked out onto a side street and the small parking lot at the rear of the property. Inside, the ceilings were low and the furniture sparse, but it worked because I was not there that often anyway.

The kitchen cabinets were bare, mostly, the silverware drawer being the only fully occupied drawer. I kept a stack of paper plates at the ready behind the small bar dividing the living room from the kitchen. Outside of that, there were several mismatched bowls of various sizes and colors and a set of wooden spoons. They all waited in a baby blue plastic drying rack resting on one side of the double sink. The refrigerator was almost as desolate as the cabinetry. I had taken to shopping nearly every day since a small market had opened up in a shopping center right across the street. Planning meals was not yet my thing, and grocery shopping was one of those mundane activities that I felt kept me grounded and moving along. If I was hungry, I would have to eat. To eat, I had to shop, deal with people or not. Sure, there was always bar food, but I had become tired of that. I was working hard on learning to cook, and it was not nearly as easy to do as I suspected. Most of my dishes were best described as concoctions. Cooking for one was always a pain in the ass.

One bedroom I slept in, the other was empty save a stack of unpacked boxes, primarily books. I just as often fell asleep in the living room on the futon watching television. The den space was empty aside from the futon, tv, and stand, an antique coffee table, barristers bookcase, and a floor lamp.

There had been a good deal of self-scrutiny, mainly on the long hikes that I had been taking the last couple of years. It sometimes got lonely, but overall, life had been getting better. Hiking had become a way to clear my mind and re-learn about myself and life. But, as well as the outdoors served me, it did not help me overcome introversion, even shyness. But love, I found out,  it would take care of that in a big way.