1. Introduction

I wake up in the morning and look up at the ceiling. There’s a light fixture there that I want to replace, but I haven’t got around to doing that. My dad worries about me. Every time we get on the phone, he will ask me if I am happy. His idea of happiness is ordinary. It’s what everyone strives for. A partner, children. Things that fill up your life with noise. I can hear my own heart beat in my chest. It isn’t panicked or worried. It is calm and steady. It has been the one steady thing in my life. Keeping its beat. It reminds me I am alive, and I am so grateful. I feel a little sad though that my dad feels he needs to ask me if I am happy. I know I don’t have things that other people would consider necessary for happiness. I am alone. And like my happiness, being alone isn’t considered being happy. My dad came to see where I live. It is a small place. It’s perfect for just me. There’s a bed. Bookshelves. I have a desk. A reading chair. I have a lot of plants and they are all green and thriving. My dad looked around my place and smiled at me sadly and said, “It looks like a little mouse’s nest.” I suppose I can understand why he sees it that way. When I hear a sound late at night, I don’t have to get out of bed and go find out about it. I just sit up and look around. There are no other rooms to go to. Just this one. My dad says he doesn’t understand why no one loves me. “You’re a good person,” he said. He tells me there might not be anyone to take care of me when I get older. He is seventy, and he worries I will get to that age and still be alone. He may be right. I decide I should try to make a new friend. The last time I had to make a new friend was when I was a kid, maybe five years old. It was so easy to make friends then. You throw someone a ball and they catch. You like the same color or like the same songs and you declare to everyone within earshot that you are best friends forever. You can say things like Want to play with me? And then you just walk to the swings and kick your legs or go down an orange plastic tube slide together. I am an adult now and I realize I can’t ask Want to play with me?  It’s a language that I cannot make innocent. A language I don’t speak anymore. If I do ask this, it is taken to be sexual or weird. Most people my age are married or have families and I don’t think they want to be my friend. I can’t relate to them. They talk about their family vacations, what their kids did at school, their mortgage interest rates, or if their children are small, they talk about diapers and achievements like taking a first step or a first birthday or a loose tooth. I have taken many steps and have had many, many birthdays. My teeth are not growing in and I haven’t lost one. Sometimes between the two married people, I will often like one person more. I don’t want my friend to have her husband lurking around, listening to our talk, or if I like her husband more as a friend, she thinks I have got designs on what they have so they keep their distance. I do have friends. A few friends. But they have their own lives and aren’t always available. I can’t see them every day. I think to myself that if I have many friends, I can arrange to see them one after the other so I can see someone every day. I am with a friend, who holds out a hand, and when I look inside there are three pieces of wrapped candy. He is almost my age, too. I like that there are three pieces and not one or two. One is not enough and two is too little. I haven’t been this excited about trying a new candy since I was a kid. I think to myself, How lovely this is, and, I want to have more friends like this. And I decide now I will go out and find them. Friends forever.