I have a well-documented and probably over-blogged anxiety about going home. That everyone is secretly judging my progress and -- of course -- as is the way with such anxieties -- finding it tragically lacking.

That having been said, then, it ought to come as no surprise that, in the cab from the New Haven train station to my friend's apartment, where I was certain to walk straight into a dinner party of exes, former classmates, and the like, I was feeling equally self conscious (in particular, about the fact that I was wearing this pair of grey skinny jeans that always get awkwardly loose and unskinny when I haven't washed them in a while). Fortunately, there was only one major disaster during my stay, which obviously had nothing at all to do with my return to New Haven (though it made for a major buzz kill before everyone started playing shot-slap* on Saturday night).

What was startling, though, was to walk through a city in which everyone who lives in the shitty houses where I used to hang out has moved on to other shitty houses and other people have moved in (sometimes I know them, which is still weird but less sad). The strangest, though, was either walking by people I know and having them not respond at all (which happened once) and walking by BookTrader and not having hooked up with anyone inside (which is not to say that I hooked up with so many oodles of people, but rather that everyone I've hooked up with tends to take their faux study/social breaks at BookTrader because most of them live in a two block radius, and now no more).

Also, now David lives in a yucky frat house and everything is sticky all the time.

*A baffling game that made me feel like I was in a PSA or in a spoof of a PSA on Saturday Night Live, in which you, or rather my collegiate comrades, do a shot of the shittiest vodka around (Dubra) and then slap eachother in the face.