Life - Twitter Nicole

Life - Twitter Nicole



Okay...okay...so picture this.  It is 11:45 at night in a humid, sticky Toronto night.  I'm riding the metro, a packed car, surrounded by a hundred people in all their best party clothes, short skirts this, vests and ties that, looking for a night on the town, hitting up clubs and bars.  There's me, book out, sketching out a scene and scribbling some dialogue, legs propped up on the seat in front of me.

I'm in a city of what, 4 million people?  Totally alone.  Nobody says hello, nobody says anything to anyone who isn't their friends.  They don't even make eye contact when they jostle you, or step on your sandal feet, or when you hold the door open for em.  Well maybe some of them do, but certainly not on a hopping saturday night in the core in Toronto, center of the goddamn universe.

I'm totally alone.

Headphones in, listening to a lonely guitar wailing on when my phone vibrates.  You know, in my pocket.  I pull it out and glance at it, and read your message.  And at first I laugh.  You're such a geek Nicole!  You know how this twitter stuff works.  Two years!  I almost laugh out loud.  Then I get to the end, your "I miss you."

Now I'm not saying I teared up.  Maybe I blinked just a little too hard after that, but the whole weight of the world, of all the touring for the last two months, of all the big city this, wide open sky that, near misses with cabs and transit and everything else later, well maybe I just blinked a little too hard right then.  And anyway this girl glances at me, and is like

"Hey?  Are you alright?"

I look up, pull my headphones out, "Me?"

"Yeah, are you...?" She gestures to her eyes, and I take a quick swipe at what is sweat, really, because it's super hot all week here, and it rained this afternoon and I'm sticky, and gross, and yeah.

"Yeah I'm good, I'm good."

Then she points, this girl, like mid twenties, at my cell phone still out.  "She must be someone special."

"Yeah, she's my friend, two thousand klicks away."  I hesitate then, and there's a lump in my throat.  And then, in the midst of all this stage managing, and all this 'art' and all these people...the first really true thing out of my mouth today.  "I miss her too."

"Oh yeah?"  The girl smiles, then puts her headphones back in.  "You should tell her so."

So yeah.  Yeah.