If you are standing still and everybody else is moving forward, then you feel like you are moving backwards. It’s the same if everybody else is just moving faster than you. If you’re lucky (or an optimist), maybe you feel like you’re just not moving. This is true on highways, it is true in university classes, and apparently it is true for romantic and sexual life.

I drove down the 101 to Palo Alto to have lunch with an old buddy of mine. I found out that he was in a serious relationship, and no longer willing to play nice with me. I spoke with another old buddy who also turned out to be in a relationship, and now "in a good place in life," implying perhaps that when the two of us were hooking up, that he was not. I don’t really know. I’m just projecting my own passive-aggression on others now. Spoiling for a fight. Fighting and fucking and food, that’s what I like.

I called a third friend with benefits (or, to be more accurate, a benefits-provider with friendliness), hoping to get some satisfaction. No such luck.

I felt stuck. Here I was, coming back to palo alto, 3-5 years after my flings with these guys, and they were in relationships, while I was not (and had not been in one in the intervening time). Again, I was the romantic underachiever at a college reunion.

All around me, people’s romantic lives seem to be in the fast lane. Marriages, engagements, movings-in, and couples travel-plans have become nearly ubiquitous. Even truly painful breakups are an experience I have yet to add to my resume. Personal narratives  of those around me have gracefully become budding novels while I’m still turning well-worn phrases in an increasingly claustrophobic short story.

In swimming training, when doing laps, you had to decide which lane to take. Fast, medium, or slow (sometimes beginners, intermediate, and advanced). Swimming in a lane too fast for you ended up in bruised sides and egos. Swimming in a lane too slow for you was not as bad, but there would still be griping if you passed somebody for the fifth time. Of course, you’re just moving back and forth. In the end, you all get out of the same side of the pool and head for the same showers.

On a freeway, when you pass somebody, you get to where you’re going faster. On a commuter highway like the 101, though, most of you will end up returning to where you came from. It’s a lap writ large.

I’m out of breath, trying to keep up with people with whom my body will one day share the ground, the air. Our words, thoughts and the things we said to each other in the dark (either of the room, or just because our eyes were closed) all dissolve into the same past, and are forgotten in the same way. Whether I’m going at 45 or 85, my CD plays at the same speed, and the humming vibration of the car relaxes me in the same way.

Today, a law school friend told me about her brother in law, who had died of a complication from a cold at the age of 25. I’m 25.

Later, as I was in the toilet, I thought to myself - how could I be something other than what I am? Then I thought - how could I not be something other than what I am? It’s trite to say that you can’t help but go as fast as you’re going. The problem is, everybody knows where they will end up, but nobody can keep time. Yet, I just keep racing back and forth, even though measuring speed is a comically pointless project. It’s at once devastating and liberating.

Still, when I look out the window, I feel slow.