Sometimes, it’s Friday night in Istanbul, you’re arguably at the tail end of anything remotely resembling your youth, and you are at home.
You were supposed to have a date. Maybe. There was a guy. He seemed worryingly nice, texting regularly over the week and asking questions and being interested in your life. He has even lived abroad.
“He seems boring,” you told a friend of yours who is also on the dating apps, albeit seeking women, a fact which makes you slightly jealous.
“Give him a chance, Karneef!” she admonished. “I never know what to say on these thing, either.”
She’s one of the most amazing people you know, so you agree to go out with him tonight, while feeling resentful in advance that you’re probably going to have to uncomfortably tell him you’re not interested.
Then, he disappears.
It’s been a cranky kind of day, of working and dog walking in the snow, of having a Turkish lesson that you had not studied enough for, of reading lots of news and feeling terrible, of not even so much as getting to a coffee shop or putting on real pants. Now it’s 8:30pm and you feel sorry for yourself, and embarrassed for feeling sorry for yourself. You meditate and find yourself flooded with grief, missing exes for times past, even the ones you shouldn’t. You think about going to get wine. No, you should not get wine, but rather be still and present with your feelings.
Fuck it.
You put on your coat and stomp out into the night. You pass all the hand-holding couples and vegans, all happy in their restaurants and cafes, and find the closest supermarket with the best wine selection, which is not saying a lot. You choose a bottle of red, gesturing at it for the cashier as it’s kept behind the cash. She hands it to you and shoots you a smile—the kind of smile that says, “I see you, girl. I know how you’re feeling right now.”
Suddenly, just from this moment of connection, you are fighting tears.
You walk home, where you find there is no corkscrew.
You search the kitchen. While you do not identify as an alcoholic, this lack of corkscrew is remarkably destabilizing. You message the AirBnb owner, who quickly gets her parents, who live downstairs, on the case. You hear thumping, banging and arguing below, and decide that enough time has passed that there is definitely no corkscrew, and no one is ever going to want you again and probably it’s time to give up on life completely.
There is a knock on the door. The mom, beaming, hands you a corkscrew.
“Keep here!” she says, waves and heads back downstairs.
You, an ordained Buddhist, a person who has travelled thousands of miles around the world and spent thousands of hours practicing and seeking enlightenment, open the cheap Turkish wine by the skin of your teeth using the hand-painted, wobbly, 1980s corkscrew.
You leave it out to breathe.
But already, you feel better.