We’re Living Through the Great Detachment
January 3, 2026
When I was 17, I fell madly in love. We’d been casual friends for a few years, but on May 5, 1979, while we were hanging around a campfire with some other high school seniors, she slipped her hand into mine, and that was my first taste of pure bliss. I treasured being a camp counselor, but that summer I stayed home from camp and worked as a janitor in a movie theater so I could go to the Howard Johnson’s lunch counter every day and chat with her while she worked.
We were separated for a year at different colleges, but then she transferred to join me at the University of Chicago, where, within a few months, she dumped me. My ensuing agony was laced with a young man’s vanity. I was suffering but also kind of proud of myself for being capable of suffering that much. I remember going to the mall in Water Tower Place and buying some French cigarettes so I could suffer like Albert Camus.
