Oklahoma City is my f*ck buddy

I spent last week at home among the waving wheat and some of the people I love most in all the world.  I flew into Oklahoma City on a Saturday night, and within minutes of landing I was here:

This moment of almost instant awsomeness was brought to me by several factors:

1) My friends are very kind and very cool. One of them is in a band. One of them agreed to pick me up at the airport. One of them had a free VIP parking pass that allowed us instant access to the arts festival.

2) Oklahoma City is very cool. The band, the skyline, the veggie garden … come one, now, you want to live there, don’t you?

3) Oklahoma City is very easy to navigate. In a car. The airport is small, traffic is light and I didn’t check a bag, so I was at the festival in record time. Now, without a car it would have been a very different story, but one for another day when I feel like talking about transit systems and sprawl.

This instant access to all the awesome helped me fall right back into my old life. I stayed with Tricia, who lives less than a mile from my old house. We visited old haunts. The night air felt the same, heavy with the promise of rain and heat. I felt no sense of separation: Had I walked into my old house and found my furniture there waiting, I could have crawled into my bed and gone to sleep, content in the notion that I had never really left at all. It was eerie and pleasant. Mostly pleasant.

I told Tricia about this feeling that I still belonged, that I felt no separation from my old life. She thought it sounded a bit icky. I told her I was sure Jeff would say the same thing, that the idea of stringing parts of your past life along in an infinite, unbroken thread would make him very uncomfortable.

“But you’ve always felt this way about places and people, haven’t you?” she asked. This is true. As a younger person I never understood how relationships could end or how they should end. One day you love someone, and the next you agree not to see them anymore, but all that past is still there, walking with you through all your new days. I am slow to anger and easy to forget. There are parts of my life I have happily moved past, but there are many others I would still slip in bed with like an old friend. Oklahoma City is the latter. Oklahoma City, we decided, is my fuck buddy*, and I was ready to enjoy a homecoming fling.

*It is probably worth noting that I have never had such a thing, long-married monogamist that I am.  I probably don’t even understand the concept considering I haven’t watched The WB or Fox in quite some time. I am better versed in the etiquette of  goomahs and meth production thanks to my culture drugs of choice, HBO and AMC.