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Last night, after I rode my bike home and had a quick dinner of macaroni and cheese Shobhit had perfectly timed to have finished and dresh right when I got home, I met up with Tracy at Pacific Place downtown to see
Joy Ride. I expected and wanted it to be better, but it was fine.
As usual she drove me home, and as usual she pulled up to the curb across the street from our building, and we chatted for quite a while—this time, more than an hour, it turned out. We talked about all sorts of shit, including a lot about the movie but also about plenty of other things, including the trickiness of having an older sister who has recently come out in middle-age and tentatively planning for new Pride experiences. They didn't make it to the Tacoma Pride Festival on Saturday as intended, but they did go to a drag show in Tacoma the night before and it sounds like they had a good time.
We also talked a good bit about the HBO series
Euphoria.
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— पांच हजार चार सौ चौंतीस —
Near the end of our conversation, I was surprised to discover I had not yet even told her that I'll be going to the Twin Cities in August for a work conference, and have yet to find someone to come visit Minneapolis with me, in Shobhit's absence. I considered Danielle and then thought about what it was like going on the two trips with her in 2019 and decided I was not necessarily up for that. I briefly considered Jennifer, but her tendency to do everything together with Matthew complicates things—he'd be more than welcome to come too, that would be fine, but three people would be too many to share the hotel room I have booked, nor could I offer to pay for both their plane tickets.
Plus, I recently looked up airfare for another flight itinerary on the needed dates, and with the exception of the bargain basement airline Sun Country Airlines, all direct flight itineraries were coming in around $600. To me, that made it too late even to consider having Shobhit change his mind about coming. That's too much.
I then said, "I thought about asking you," somewhat tentatively, and Tracy was surprisingly open to at least considering it. She has a lot to consider, including an event in August that may necessitate her being in town, and she needs to look that up. Also, we basically agreed that, if it helps her budgeting to cover what might be expensive airfare, then we can just regard the hotel as covered by me; the cost of that is already folded into my budget anyway.
At this point I'd still say there's a greater chance that she won't make it than that she will, but I appreciated the consideration. And, maybe it will indeed happen. You never know.
The bigger problem was that, when I came inside and told Shobhit about this, he had this bizarre knee-jerk reaction where he practically spat out the words, "See, you can't be by yourself!"
Okay. Uh. Sure I can. I took a perfectly contented solo day drip to Portland during my Birth Week last year, after all. I would absolutely look forward to this trip either way. And it's only natural that I'd want company if it can be an option; I'm fine if it isn't. The real feeling I got, though, was that Shobhit is just dying for me to be disappointed by having to travel alone. He just wants me to be as unhappy with my own circumstances as he is with his.
I guess he's got what he wanted. Because that in itself is deeply disappointing.
Mind you, even if I do spend three days by myself in Minneapolis (which remains the greatest likelihood), I'm not going to aim to have a good time with the attitude of "I'll show him!" I simply expect to have a perfectly good time regardless of his attitude about it, which I think is the healthier attitude to have.
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[posted 12:30 pm]
