will and grace

two days ago, while sitting in church reading my magazine and doing my best to ignore the grating voice of my minister, i came to a realization. misery had halted my ability to think with any clarity. all i could focus on was the fact that i'm no longer moving to chicago; that i'm faced with even more time in a city i despise; and that, though i have aspirations of moving to new york, the prospect of actually doing it by myself makes me want to pack up a u-haul and make a beeline to my parents' house in ponca city, oklahoma. (this sounds drastic, but i think about it all the time. every time i'm nearly run over by a hip-hop-blaring SUV, wait in line at the rite aid, or drive through east baltimore i consider throwing my hands up in defeat and heading back to oklahoma, where the people might be as trashy as a light blue puff-paint kitty on a cutoff sweatshirt in a trailer park but at least i understand them.)

i haven't, however, rented a u-haul. it was made abundantly clear to me this weekend that half of what used to be terry and robert has already moved on; it's going to be a while until i can say the same for myself, but i decided that the only way to start this process was to formulate a plan. the new magical mystery plan is to:

1. work at johns hopkins (where i've just been offered a promotion) for another year, and save as much money as is humanly possible while still managing to buy expensive clothes and eat expensive meals;
2. early next year start looking for a job somewhere like columbia, nyu, or mt. sinai;
3. strongarm, coerce, or trick amanda sidebottom into moving from her parents' house in fairfield, connecticut to new york city to be my roommate.

as soon as i'd formulated this plan, i knew what amanda's mother would say. barbara has been referring to us as "will and grace" since our freshman year in college. i wouldn't want to be anything like will--except for the part about him being loaded--and if amanda was grace-like we wouldn't be friends. when i proposed the move-in idea to amanda, she instantly had the same reaction i did. she told me, "god, what if i do start taking on some qualities like grace? like being jewish!?"

i was running some homemade soup through the food processor (see 'ina garten is a fag hag') when amanda called me yesterday: "i've just told my mom about us maybe moving to new york, and you're never going to believe what she said. 'WILL AND GRACE!'" i hear barbara cackling in the background, and am assured that least some things will never change.