Things To Do When Idle

Essays

Aug 27

Sometimes I look up people I once knew but lost touch with. When I can’t find them anywhere online or on social media, I start to question whether they were real. If I plug my name into an incognito browser, I come up like a covered wall in De Blob. Fresh paint everywhere. I guess they aren’t looking for me.

I used to play a lot of NBA 2K when I was far too old to be doing that. I would make a younger version of myself, but as a left-handed center instead of a 5’11” point guard with a crooked flat top. I once tried to use their technology to put your face in the game. It was more painstaking than verifying yourself on Hinge. I waited for the result to buffer. It came out looking like a 52-year-old Bollywood actor who was tired. Technology is awesome.

After I found out my girlfriend was running a double life on me, I lay in bed for an entire day. I don’t even think I looked at my phone. I just lay there like the T-shirt you lost on your trip to the Bahamas, but found nine years later at the bottom of an old gym bag. Flatter and smellier by the second. You should’ve left it there.

My back went out one time, and I had to stay on my couch for two days in the only position that didn’t make me want to hurl. I had to call my best friend to come over and leave me a jar to pee in. She had to come back at night to empty it. I watched so much TV and had her leave me multiple things to eat on the couch. She and I don’t speak anymore.

Have you ever tried to read a book to take your mind off of something? It doesn’t work. You just read the same pages over and over again and imbibe none of the words or sentences. Your eyes are just highlighting at 10x as your mind spins into oblivion. We kid ourselves a lot.

My college roommate and I would play SNK Baseball Stars in the loft in our dorm room until late at night or early in the morning. Time was relative when your bat could hit balls that would take off like rockets or turn into knives. We had someone build us a loft, and I think our heads were a foot from the ceiling. I don’t know how we didn’t hit our heads more. Maybe we had really high ceilings, but I don’t think so. I think everything was just cool in college.

One time when I stopped taking Lexapro cold turkey while going through a divorce, I lost space and time. My body was sweating, and my mind was lucid dreaming while I sat in the living room trying to watch TV. It was as close to an alternative universe as I have ever been. I knew then that those drugs were not helping me. Sometimes you are just sad because you can’t see your kids every day and your life has lost so much meaning.

My stepbrother and I had an old brown couch in our living room in Bloomfield, Connecticut, the year we lived together in college. We never really sat there. We always went into each other’s rooms to watch things. But we left for winter break, turned off the heat, and came back to a house with frozen pipes that, thankfully, had not burst. It was a rental. We both slept on the couch that night in front of heaters. We didn’t roast marshmallows.

Kadima is a very undervalued beach sport. It’s better than pickleball. No, the world did not just end because I said that. I know it might seem like it did. The softness of the ball in Kadima made it so much fun. It’s like playing squash on the beach, but not with a stupid racket that is way too long for proper sports. Neck size matters.

When I am idle now, I write. Memories pour through me like a cold glass of lemonade on a hot summer day in Sag Harbor. Dogs running in the yard. My dad sniffing in the background. Birds chirping. Slow living. Idleness is just time wrapped in better packaging.