Good morning Jesus

I had déjà vu in the Airport in Chicago at least three times. I learned how to spell déjà vu because I got a drink with a Grindr boy at Wolfgang Pucks who was a PhD student in French Lit.

Except I didn’t get alcohol. I played it cool and asked the server for ice to pair with the $3 bottle of sealed water waiting on our table. Later she ran onto the nearly closed jetway because she hadn’t noticed me drop a five dollar bill on the bar. This means her tip was probably pocketed by the bar tender. I felt kind of bad but not really because I didn’t even get alcohol.

But that’s not the point. The point is I tried to get alcohol. I ordered a beer at the first stop in the terminal. After a sip, I felt wobbly and the depth of the building started to move so I paid and left.

I asked my new friend if he minded me being emotionally inappropriate. He didn’t and honestly I would have anyway. After a while, I regained my senses despite the overwhelming lights and the noise and the people—mostly the people—at the airport.

This was the first place I learned to prevent aura from turning into full-on seizure. Remain calm and keep breathing. Plus, my new friend was engaging and smart and no one interrupted me or questioned me or assumed anything about me. And I didn’t care what they were thinking. I kept them out. That familiar, wobbly sensation of depersonalization and the usual ensuing existential-crisis faded.

Maybe I’ll ask my new friend to have a look at this nonsense when I have a draft—he referred to a random passage in Wojnorawicz’s memoir as gorgeous. The adjective struck me and is of course fitting—his writing is gorgeous. But only a lit guy would describe language as such, with an adjective more germane to renaissance paintings than a grungy memoir by some queer who died of AIDs. I mean, Juliet is the sun, but not really.

Reflection from 2019 seizure journals. For an overview of the project, click here.