Pauly is back

(from Suburban Misfits)

 

 

Pauly’s moving back to Passaic, not into Garrick’s old apartment like he always did before, but in with me.

Pauly and Jane have been such an item for so long most of us assumed they would eventually work things out between them.

Yet we live in oddly changing times.

I already miss the 1970s – our 20s – when we presumed we knew everything and how our lives would turn out.

Now I find I know nothing and wish I could figure out what goes on in other people’s heads, especially Jane’s.

Pauly always treated her life a goddess, even when they parted – and for me to think she will be marrying another man – a jealous man who put Pauly out of Jane’s family’s house – is appalling.

We (Pauly’s buddies) want to blame Jane for it all, find some measure of guilt in her for so despoiling our world.

We don’t dare blame Pauly, although we all know what a prick he can be to live with.

He claims he’s better off, but says this with a lump in his throat.

I know I’m going to miss that part of life when he lived like a wizard on the third floor of the Jane’s house.

Something fundamental has altered. We live in a new world, but of right wing bigots who voted for Ronald Reagan and cheer on Reagan’s wars.

We watch old romances fade.

She shake at the idea that maybe the world we so confidently predicted won’t happen after all.

Pauly moves his things in the same room he occupied the last time me, he and Garrick tried to live together.

I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop, and our lives to change again.

But into what?

What can we count on when those we always presumed we would love forever tell us they don’t love us any more?