It’s my last night in Houston and I’ve just finished watching “Dune” with two of my closest friends here.
Me and the friend I’ve been staying with roasted pork shoulder and steamed green beans and invited another friend over to feast with us. We talked of Revelation and end times. We agreed vaccine mandates are unethical. I cleaned my plate. They indulged my stories of childhood. We all watched Timothee Chalamet on the screen and made comments on his hairstyles.
The Houston Experiment
It’s a good book end to my two-year Houston experiment. Testing the waters in a city where you are likely to drown in them. This same home where I’m writing this was the first home I had when I first came to Houston. My head was still dizzy from my senior year at college and starting a new job in a field I never ever saw myself in. Oil and gas comes with the territory of H-town though, and my time in this slick city has taught me that crude is nothing to be ashamed of.
So after two years, where have I gotten? I’ve taken up recreational swearing. I’m no longer afraid to stare back at someone staring me down.
“Houston is a mean city” is a quote I once read in Texas Monthly. It’s true. Houston’s thieves steal purses from mother’s arms and out from under their legs in the grocery store. I once had to call the police to report an armed car jacking at the house across the street from me. Houston is also not nice to cars: me and every friend I know who lives here has sustained some sort of car damage since moving here.
In wondering if I’ll end back up in Houston when I return to the USA after my solo trip to France, I get a feeling of shrugged shoulders. Houston seems to say to me,
“Go if you want to, I’m not going to make you stay.”
“I’m going,” I reply. “But if I come back will you have a place for me?”
“I will,” Houston replies.
“But if I come back will you be the same?”
“Will you?”
I hope not.