Ivan's Last Arrival (for a while)
It's a strange thing to be saying goodbye to someone you know for certain you will see again, but you just have no idea when. That doesn't happen often. I'm trying to think what might be the closest thing to that I have experienced before now . . . when I moved out of the place I shared with Gabriel and Suzy for three years, at the end of college, perhaps. That one was a hell of a lot more emotional, actually. I was far younger, which makes a difference; Gabriel qualified as the closest friend I had ever had at the time (I never contextualized it that way then, but in retrospect it is true -- I may have known Danielle longer, but I had never lived with her, and she had also disappeared from my life between 1993 and 1996, at the end of which I had already known and lived with Gabriel for a year); and that time, I was the one moving to another city, on the other side of the state. Also, I did know I would come back to visit him in Pullman, which I did a couple of times.
And speaking of Danielle in that particular context, she was actually a big part of my saying goodbye to Gabriel when I moved away: I did not have a driver's license at the time, and she, being a truly good friend herself (just because I would say I was closer to Gabriel at the time does not mean I was that much closer to him than I was to Danielle), had rented a U-Haul truck in Spokane and driven it to Pullman before driving me, my cat, and all my stuff to Seattle for me. I'll never forget when she just up and gave me a hug very soon after Gabriel and I had said our goodbyes, as she could tell I was sad, and she laughed when I said, "What are you doing!" Because I had barely been managing not to cry, and her giving me a hug made me start crying. It was a very surreal, and unique emotional experience, and actually I am realizing right now that what I was going through that day would have to have been very similar to what Ivan went through the night before he left for Europe in February of last year and we had said our own goodbyes.
And that right there is the thing, the difference between that sort of goodbye and the one I'll be doing with Ivan this weekend: with Ivan, I am comparatively conditioned to it. This isn't our first emotional rodeo. When Ivan lived with me the firs time, the last eight months of 2014, there was no emotional goodbye -- in fact, he even left without actually saying goodbye as I had gone to work and we had not seen each other the night before either -- but, between him moving out and Shobhit ending his holiday visit to fly back to L.A. on the same day, I then spent most of the first four months of 2015 feeling lonelier than I had since college. And at that point, when it came to Ivan, it was still far too early to have any idea to what degree our friendship would even last. And then, when his second stint living with us between December 2016 and February 2018 ended, I actually did cry. This will be the third goodbye of this sort and I really don't expect I'll cry at all.
Ivan flies to Auckland on Saturday, and the time he spends in New Zealand is completely open ended after that. His work visa allows for a maximum of two years, and none of us, not even he, thinks he'll stay there even close to that long. None of us has any idea how much time he'll actually stay, though; so much depends on what kind of housing and work he might find and how quickly. I suppose if that stuff is a total bust like it turned out to be in Vancouver, B.C., he could come straight back after only three months. Who knows! I have no evidence on which to base this, but I have a feeling he will indeed last longer in New Zealand than he did in Vancouver, especially if he finds any kind of work.
He's not likely to find any nursing job that pays him as well as it does in the States, though. And that's been the persistent irony with his unending contempt for the United States as a country and his propping other countries up on a pedestal: the one industry in which he has both applicable skills and experience, nursing, is the one that pays him handsomely in the U.S. and a comparative pittance in any other country. And he never tolerates being tight on cash for more than a few months at a time. So, we'll see.
Anyway. I haven't said goodbye to him just yet. I've barely said hello to him, for now. I've got a couple of days to spend with him, most of which will be this evening; I have Happy Hour plans with Laney tomorrow night but I'm sure I'll also spend some time with Ivan after that as well. Just like his visit the first weekend of this month, he took Amtrak and then rode Light Rail up to Capitol Hill. Shobhit and I very nearly decided to go pick him up at the train station to give him a ride home, but Shobhit did not get off work until 9:45 last night and Ivan had never confirmed his train arrival. Also, I was already home by about 9:30 and writing a movie review, so Shobhit would have had to go try and find him on his own. It was all just too logistically complicated to try pulling off.
I went downstairs at about 10:45 just to wait for him, and within a few minutes he was walking up the hill toward the Braeburn Condominiums complex, pulling two suitcases on either side of him, one quite large. I took one to pull the rest of the way for him. He had already left a full suitcase in the guest room closet after his last visit, along with a garment bag I assume has a suit in it; those bags and the three or four boxes that have been in our storage unit the past year and a half account for pretty much all his belongings. Imagine being 34 years old and having so little stuff? It probably sounds like a dream to a lot of people, actually.
Anyway, we went upstairs and I stayed up to visit for just a little while, going to bed around 11:30. Ivan asked many questions about what's been going on in our lives so he could get updated, although pretty much anything worth telling I would have already messaged him about. On the subject of his time in New Zealand, once again Shobhit told him he can stay with us again when he comes back, and Ivan said, "I might just take you up on that." I've already stated how I have mixed feelings about that idea, but given that both Shobhit and Ivan are clearly open to it -- and honestly, I think in all the time Ivan has been gone, our place still basically feels like home to him -- my gut feeling right now is that, eventually, at some indeterminate future time, there's about a 50/50 chance Ivan will wind up living with us for yet a third time. Of course, we'll see.
The plans for tonight with Ivan, while Shobhit has swing shifts at work both tonight and tomorrow, include dinner at the Marrakesh Moroccan restaurant in Belltown, for old times' sake -- it's a favorite of Ivan's -- and as a sort of sendoff. I figure we'll also do one more hour at Neko Cat Café, although I don't know if that will be tonight or tomorrow night.
And last night, before Ivan's late arrival? I had gone up to the U District and to the Varsity Theatre to take myself to see Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story, which was . . . honestly, not that great. It was kind of awful in the beginning, until the standup comedy that fills the back 2/3 of the movie kind of salvaged it. It averaged out to about a B-. For me, that's a pretty notable disappointment, especially for someone I enjoy as much as Kathy Griffin. At least the standup part was thoroughly entertaining.
Before the movie, I rode my bike home from work and was home for an hour. Shobhit had made an Indian vegetable dish with rice and I had mine with a few Cheddar Bunnies crackers mixed in. But first, I helped Shobhit shoot a short video for an audition tape. It took just a few practice rounds and then the final one we shot I think turned out quite well. Between that and eating though it was kind of a busy hour, and then I rode the bus to the U District instead of biking so I could read my library book.
Once I got back, I was nearly finished with the movie review when Shobhit arrived home from a two-hour shift getting trained to be a part-time manager. And then it was about 10:45 when Ivan arrived.
[posted 12:32 pm]