An Unnamed Blog

Day 1: 10:00 PM

Do you know what makes a meter a meter? Or one Fahrenheit one Fahrenheit? Nothing that someone didn't choose. It's all based on an arbitrary reference frame. Sure, there are all sorts of scientific motivations behind the actual choosing, but at the end of the day, units are something humans made up so they could measure the world.

In the spirit of science, I declare everything to be arbitrary and unimportant. Starting with names. I don't think I can keep calling him the arsonist. It makes it sounds like he's the singular instigator behind all this. He is the reason for my current anxiety and panic and heartburn, but I think that under a strict tally I was more of a douche than he was. Henceforth, I christen this lesser waste-of-space than myself, Archie.

Archie is the reason unnamed is not about my psychology research. The reason that this blog is not about the life altering research topic I need to find at this conference. All the result of a run-in in the hotel lobby.

Archie was a memory kept deep in the dungeons of my castle. Buried under rubble, locked behind iron doors with locks that had had their keys melted down and turned into decorative lamps.

He was so excited to see me. It was disarming. He grabbed my shoulders—wrinkling the blazer that I had been stressing over for days!— and basically shouted that he couldn't believe it was me. I think I managed to murmur hello as my brain melted. At that moment I needed to leave more than I have ever needed anything. And before I could scream fire and smash my way through the glassy lobby doors he fed me some line about how he had to meet up with a professor before meeting me in the café. If I wasn't busy that is. (And I was! I was going to start my blog about my unnamed research!)

I told him I was too busy and walked into the glorious New York City streets, my head held high, my steps purposeful as a chorus of angels sang my ascent into freedom.

If only. I couldn't even say yes. I only nodded. We had an entire conversation in those first five minutes, and I didn't say a single word.

When he came back, he launched right into conversation. Opening up his phone and showing me with a boyishly proud smile his phone background. It was a picture of the bench. That rickety old bench was his background photo. I gaped like a fish. And he forged on throwing question after question at me.

He smiled and nodded whenever I answered his questions. Short unintelligent responses that did not in any way accurately convey how great I am doing. How totally successful and thriving I am.

He on the other hand was charming. The picture of friendly interest. He spoke in bright thoughtful sentences and he had definitely discovered the gym at some point in the past four years.

And he was single. He made that very clear. But I am not, and it is with no small amount of glee that I let him know. I was a grown person. Completely evolved and different from the girl her had broken up with.

I had a girlfriend. But that stupid idiot didn't even have the decency to look shocked.

--Signed

Will I ever have the upper hand.