This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.
In a fit of bipolar disorder-induced mania in 2012, I took all 800 dollars I had in my bank account and flew to Paris. While I was there alone one day, I went to the train station and planned to get on whatever train was leaving next, which turned out to be one to Brussels, a place I knew nothing about. I barely looked up tourist spots on my phone on the way. I can’t remember where (probably at the Atomium), but I met a guy named Ben from Australia. He was also alone. We decided to spend the day platonically together. We got waffles, fries, and chocolate. Then we headed to a bar where we met an entire Midwestern family (like a mix of a dozen kids and adults) visiting someone from their group while she was studying abroad.
Noting that Ben and I were young and alone, the adults invited us to dinner with them. We kept insisting it was too much, but one of the women said (very Midwesternly), “Oh come on. I’m sure your parents would do the same for any of our kids.” (I do think that’s true.)
We went to a seafood place and sat at a long table. The family paid for our meals. We went to another bar afterwards, and they paid for our beers. We all took a lot of photos together with early Instagram filters on them. I think me and some of the kids followed each other on Twitter, but when I left Brussels, we didn’t keep in touch.
Ben was staying the night in a hostel and invited me to stay with him. I knew enough to know that though he had only been friendly, I didn’t actually know Ben from a hole in the wall. I said thank you and boarded the late night train back to Paris. I don’t believe we exchanged information. I never saw anyone from that day in Brussels ever again.
One of my exes who struggled with ADHD told me he wished for the simplicity of the way characters on the show Downton Abbey say goodbye.
The PBS masterpiece opens in 1912. There’s obviously no social media or texting. There’s maybe radio transmissions, though they’re not common for the general public. The Downton estate doesn’t get a telephone until season five and, when they do, it’s a big deal. (Carson, the butler, struggles with how to use it.) Cross-country and international letters took a while to arrive — weeks or months, according to the National Postal Museum. The first mail delivery flight (AirMail) took place in 1911, so that mode of communication was in its infancy. Travel times were anywhere from five days with a horse and buggy or two months or more on a ship.
Most likely, people in the 1910s would have an experience with someone and then never see them again. The ex with ADHD loved this idea. There was no pressure to immediately reply to messages or follow up via Instagram. It was enough to say goodbye and hope to see each other soon but also understand that you probably won’t see each other at all.
What about someone you meet on vacation who actually lives in your city? What a coincidence. You say you’ll hang when you get back, but then you never do. Maybe you see on Insta that they got engaged and you type a heart emoji. Why does it feel so weird to get coffee with them in your neighborhood? Did you have more to talk about outside the immediacy of the resort you were both in?
On a message board for Fodor’s Travel Guide from 2005, I dove into the hot goss of travelers discussing how hard it is to stop talking about their vacation with friends who weren’t there. “Anyone else been shunned by friends after you return from a great vacation?,” the title of the post says. One person said he doesn’t even bring a camera with him anymore because his friends from home have such little interest in how his travels went and what he saw on them. Another said she has to try not to seem braggadocious by starting every sentence, “Oh, that’s just like when we were in…”
Instagram launched in 2010, so live updates of our trips weren’t possible in the mid-2000s. Now, if someone has a destination vacation, you’re gonna see and hear about it inside your own phone, whether you want to or not. It’s true what these people are saying though. It’s better to leave the vacation where it was.
When I was in high school, I spent a week at a journalism program at the University of Florida. I had three roommates. We got along really well at the camp to the point that one night we sat in one of the girl’s rooms and talked about some secret problems that had plagued us. We cried together in a way I did not do with my long-time friends from home. Then, as far as I remember, we never spoke again once camp was over. We really had nothing in common.
At my former job, I spent eight hours a day with people who, a year ago, I did not know at all. In real life, we’d probably have never met. Here, though, we were forced to bond over the ridiculousness of our bosses or the unfair minutia of working for a corporation that was clearly going under. We had fun with our boredom and helped each other out when floundering. We got into a rhythm. I saw these coworkers more than I saw anyone else in my life. We opened up to each other. Two of them started dating and moved in together. I also got to know the regular customers. They came in and talked about their divorces, their pets’ illnesses, and their job stresses. The dog of a man who came in every day passed away, and he invited me and another employee to the dog’s funeral. One of my favorite customers unexpectedly died, and I was shocked, blurting out to her husband how lovely she was when he sadly relayed the news.
The aspect of quitting that job that bothered me the most was that I would suddenly never see these people and their pets ever again. The job was an hour away, which made the decision to find a job closer to my home a priority. The hours were also long for very little pay. I knew in my head that I had to leave, but I was devastated by this big change. I’m in a group chat with a couple of my co-workers, but we don’t have a lot of instances where we’d organically cross paths. I definitely don’t have any reason to hang out with my old customers again. The store is now so out of my way that a spontaneous visit wouldn’t be very spontaneous. I’d have to make the time despite having a new job to think about.
I need to make peace with never seeing some people again. They exist in one place in your life, and you don’t have to force them to exist somewhere else. I can cherish that time without chasing it. Maybe we’ll run into each other again, but probably not.
I was also extremely close to one of my other ex’s nieces to the point that she would ask for me upon seeing my then-partner even if I wasn’t in town with him. My ex and I talked about how wild it would be when she was a teenager and had never known life without me. I would just be Uncle Gabe, a member of her family. She would trust me the same way she would trust someone she was blood-related to, even though to the larger family, I would always be a recent addition.
I still think about her, and I feel incredibly guilty about the conversation my exit must have caused. Where did I go? Why did I leave? Would she never see me again? Is this her very first experience of someone disappearing from her life? I feel awful that it probably is. She also loved my dog and asked for him by name. She crouched down to pet him with her uncoordinated baby arms, and he would just allow it, accepting her love even if it was a bit rough. She’d never see my dog again either. I think, by now, we’re both just fuzzy memories to her.
I know someone who got divorced and in explaining to the niblings about how their ex-wife was gone it was very similar to the explanation they had gotten about a family member dying, which is a little morbid but also fitting
Loved this!!! Somehow all the best Autostraddle articles are about loss.