Notes from the small pond: Designated Maniac

When everyone’s drunk or getting there on a Saturday night and you’re not, there’s an island you inhabit where the intense loneliness of being surrounded by other humans stings less than during the sober, awkward daylight hours. This is because the innate ability of humans to sense another human’s loneliness is compromised, meaning they don’t treat you like a lonely person like they do when they see you in the grocery store, avoiding eye contact (thank God) or at the grad party or at church or on the playground the first day of school. As if.

Instead, they treat you like a temporary Bestie, leaning on you, literally and emotionally, only half-embarrassed by their self-consciousness, depending on how expert and experienced they are in the craft, the most practiced fully realizing they’ll not remember a bit of it, liberated, then, to lay it on thick as Elmer’s Glue, which is edible. Ask any kindergarten teacher.

As the Designated Driver, living out the night on this night’s particular island, you’re initially amused and a bit embarrassed, recognizing yourself like looking at a photo and having to admit it’s you in there even though you look fatter, older, sadder and stupider than you do inside the safety of your own head. Like Match.com.

Inevitably, though, the amusement wears off and exhaustion sets in, heavy like tryptophan. You fight off yawns while trying to smile, gamely, when people nod at you on their way to the bathroom. You play with your phone and engage in the pretense of being occupied, checking the time, bummed that it’s early.

“You like this song, Dude?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t love Boston?”

“I knowww, right! Boston kills!”

“Yup. They sure do. A hundred times a day, everywhere.”

“I knowww, right!”

“… and Bob Seger. And Heart. And — ”

“Huh?”

“Forget it.”

“Need anything, Bro?” He walks away mumbling toward someone speaking his language and you get the feeling he’ll be back. When the speakers start playing Free Fallin’ and he turns to give you the Thumbs Up, it’s more than a feeling.

“I’m good,” you say to yourself and realize you’re really saying it to yourself and you self-consciously look around but no one cares or notices or cares to notice.

Hours later, you’re driving and the car is full of boozy silence after a surprisingly short duration of jocularity and group unison singing of that Meatloaf song everyone sings in college about the guy and the girl in the backseat — the one with the line about glowing like the metal on the edge of a knife.

When you draw breath again, your lungs expand and you adjust your hands on the steering wheel and something in you calms. You hear everyone breathing, half-sleeping and your loneliness is gone. Ebbing from them, collectively, is an invisible, profound gratitude, un-articulate-able, but as real as any secret any friend ever lied about keeping.