The comradery of Salman Rushdie

I remember quite distinctly a time when Ravina and I read alternate chapters of the Salman Rushdie's neverending saga "Shame." We were freshmen in college and seemingly brand new friends. It was for an English Literature course with the ominous sounding, pointy browed and totally unapproachable Professor Guarav Majumdar. His unapproachability was not at all a result of his being intimidating, but more so by the fact that he was intimated by almost any human contact that we avoided approaching him.

I tell this story fondly to almost anyone who will listen. I can almost imagine myself gleaning some lesson-to-be learned from it for my kids (really, the lesson is, if you can find a friend to share reading books with, go for it). Of course, I wouldn't say that to my children, maybe someone else's kids if I want them to be failed intellectuals. But I digress.

I am scared these days. Scared and overwhelmed by the notion that my life with be filled with anecdotes from age 18-21. I am scared that like those assholes whose lives peaked in high school, my life peaked in college. I have been mourning the loss of a good anecdote lately. I think it is safe to say that the daily grind of entry-level work does not lend itself to the feelings of comradery that keep these stories so close to my heart. Sure, there is always that special friend who does really cool things like travels around the world and they might have a good anecdote, but I resent that person anyway.

There is a certain loneliness associated with our 20s that has really come as quite a surprise. In light of boyfriends and even best friends close by, I am living a life of caveats. Yes, you can get into a great graduate school, but you have to leave the life you worked so hard to start liking.
Yes, working is great since you replace homework with happy hour, but you still have to go there everyday and look moderately normal (unless, you worked in homeless shelters like I did and in that case the rule is DRESS DOWN!). Yes, you can have a boyfriend, but you will spend all of your 20s following each other all over the world and then resent each other for it.

There seems to be an inherent isolation brought upon by a looming separation on the horizon--keeping even the best of friends isolated from each other. Case in point, I had no idea Ravina hated her 20s this much until she started this blog. All of a sudden, we are adults, expected to make decisions we previously relegated to our parents. We are buying used mattresses and IKEA furniture to dillude ourselves that we aren't really as sedentary as we really are. The problem is that if I long to stay in the cocoon of my college comradery, then this whole decade seems to be against my natural will. The caveat is that it goes on nevertheless.