Home Alone, State College Edition

I miss my wife.

I’m surprised at myself: She’s only been away three days. 

During early COVID, I knew people who didn’t touch another human being for six months. I don’t want to minimize how hard that must have been, but these folks lived alone. They were used to solitude. I’m not.

I was better at being alone when I was young. A shy lad, I hid my social awkwardness behind a veneer of self-sufficiency. It helped that I fancied myself a poet: If Wordsworth could wander lonely as a cloud, by God, so could I. 

I did a lot of solo hiking during my college years and after, when I moved to California. Out there, I also spent a lot of time alone in cafes, reading, writing and trying to summon the courage to speak to the attractive person at the next table without sounding like a pickup artist. (Everything I could think of – Good book? How are the scones? Mind if I look at your Chronicle? — sounded false and like a veiled proposition.) 

So yes, I was lonely in those days, too. Not just lonely, but, as I wrote in a poem, bone lonely. Was that my turn of phrase or did I steal it? The only thing I can find online is a book by that title by Portuguese photographer Paulo Nozolino, not published until 2009, long after I wrote my little lament.

Being bone lonely and being good at it are not incompatible. 

When I was 23, I decided my passage into manhood required traveling around Europe by myself for half a year. I was bone lonely on the continent, too, at times, but I also appreciated doing exactly as I pleased: no negotiating, no checking in with a companion about hunger or fatigue, this restaurant or that one, the Louvre or the Beaubourg, Rome or Madrid. 

That said, some of the best moments were when I joined forces for a day or two with someone I met at a hostel or on a train. Such encounters — especially the romantic ones — are less likely to happen when you’re with someone. 

Traveling in a pair, you’re focused on each other, much of the time. You’re closed off, almost impenetrable. Alone, you look outward. You become approachable and dare to approach. 

Barely a month into the trip, I had a French girlfriend. Though still a scruffy kid with a backpack, I began to feel like a man of the world. 

Now I’m a man of State College, trying to enjoy three measly days of solitude before I go to New York for Thanksgiving with friends and family. Being able to do exactly as I please while at home means I can scramble all the routines: take a late-morning nap, say, or a midday TV break. My house is a diner: Breakfast Anytime. 

So what did I do? On Sunday, after a conventional morning with the crossword and the news, a bagel and coffee, I decided to end my years-long football boycott. First, I’d wearied of the hyper-inflated importance of it all. Then I was sickened by the injuries. Ever read the weekly game predictions in the New York Times? From this past weekend: 

• …injured his shoulder…and landed on injured reserve.
• …down with injuries. Both are questionable for Sunday night’s game. 
• …an ankle injury that might end his season.
• …out with an ankle injury.
• …injured his knee on the opening drive and is out for the season.

If you’re immersed in football world, such bland recitations don’t even register. If you’re not, though, you think, wow, this sport is messed up!

Still, l’m a New York guy, and I’d noticed that the Jets and Giants aren’t horrible this year, mirabile dictu, so I thought I’d tune in. Alas, I forgot that my current TV/Internet arrangements do not include access to NFL games. (Just as well – both teams lost.)

Having already given myself permission to watch TV in broad daylight – it feels dissolute, like drinking before 5 o’clock — I thought, why not watch something else? So, already hooked on “Babylon Berlin,” I took in a few episodes until I began to feel ashamed of myself, which got me out for a walk. 

That evening, after a palate-cleansing interval of reading and writing and playing guitar, I returned to the sordid world of Germany between the wars. 

Next day was much the same. I did my usual stuff, then watched even more of “Babylon Berlin.” At suppertime I had a pizza delivered, something I don’t think I’d ever done when home alone.

Perhaps this sounds lovely. I am on break, after all. But I feel like a slug. 

Chief among the pleasures of matrimony is companionship: One always has someone to play with. Less appreciated, perhaps, is that the presence of another person conjures one’s best self. Or at least better self. 

My lesson from three days of solitude: I need to relearn how to be alone. But I’d rather not.