Svetlana + Belmont

John Hancock Is In A Sentimental Mood

I didn’t hate you for getting into Princeton’s Joint Cybersecurity MA/International Law JD program after all the other schools had rejected you and I’d thought, for a second, that we’d both just have Masters degrees.  The “Masters and Margaritas” I used to call us all spring, a nickname (and a Bulgakov allusion) you used to love, laughing and toasting every time I said it at our Andersonville apartment, you taking a break from studying and me coming home from work in the madrugada, everything in our relationship seeming to work almost perfectly that spring, until the day you got your e-letter in the intranet, which made me realize we would never share the same destiny.  I didn't hate you either for getting hired as chief security director on cyber-hacktivism and part-time endowed lecturer at Northwestern while you were still in grad school, before you’d even finished your Master thesis (it's incredibly rare, you admitted, making your accomplishment even more insane).  I also didn’t hate you for making ten times as much money as I did synth-tending at the Signature Room (because feminism 2.0 and everything), though I did find it unfair that America had lost its appreciation for artisans, but that wasn't your problem.  Sometimes, though, it bothered me that you never came to see me at work before the SOS took control of drinking spaces and attempted another intoxication prohibition, as if my job (as unglamorous as it might be) wasn't important enough for you to be part of it, even for an hour.  Sometimes, I think that if I hadn't followed you to LA for your research years ago, we would never have stayed together for as long as we did.  Truth is, I wanted to show you the pixelation of Chi-town.  I wanted to re-introduce you to the city skyline like an ex taking off his clothes for you after a twenty year absence, like I'm doing right now for the last notch of the human timeline, choosing to be with you in LA and not my broken family in Chicago, listening to music of the apocalypse with you on our EEB's, here in this moment together now and forever and now and forever.  Like the song says, everything I want is slow.