Confessions: To the Love of My Life, New York City

Early evening in Bangkok Chinatown, May 30, 2021

For more than two decades, I swore I would never love another as deeply as you. But here I am... questioning.

I do not miss you, old love. And I do not know when — or if even — I will ever return to you.

Maybe I cannot trust my feelings but it’s been a year — longer than a year — and I do not long for you. I hardly think of you at all, if I’m honest. (Except for when my mortgage and maintenance payments are debited from my checking account.)

I have a new love. Or maybe it's just lust.

Only time — and a successful nationwide covid-19 vaccination roll-out — will tell.

I’m embarrassed to admit this but she usually doesn’t treat me as well as you, not nearly. She is consistently inconsistent and infuriating and perplexing.

Sometimes she is downright treacherous. (And she is very, very hot — and humid — and insanely wet for months on end.)

Often I struggle to communicate with her; we are usually speaking two different languages.

I look at her and think, “Why am I so, so into you?” She is no beauty and her canals are putrid.

But her delights are irresistible: She is cool and sexy and weird and surprising, all at once.

The stories I could tell.

I resisted her for a long time. But even now, when she is more erratic and more viral than ever, I can barely stomach the thought of leaving her.

(My ode to Bangkok was inspired by a writing prompt from Wayne Brady.)