The convection oven was already running when rswfire began recording. Baked potatoes inside, the timer counting toward the fifteen-minute mark that would signal him to switch on the electric skillet waiting on the counter. He held the skillet up to the camera the way a person shows off a piece of equipment they have thought about — noting its size, noting that aluminum foil can divide it into sections so several things cook at once. He mentioned he had been having conversations about this all day. The kitchen of the RV was not a kitchen yet so much as a set of decisions being tested one meal at a time.
From the small fridge-freezer unit he pulled the burgers his mother had made for him when he left — very small ones, frozen, iced over at the edges. He said plainly that he had trouble getting things arranged in there, that the unit resisted organization. Tomorrow, probably, he would go shopping. He had meals planned, and said he was excited about them. Today he wanted something simple, because he was still working in the space, still sorting.
The sorting produced its own observation, delivered evenly: there was so much he was not using. He was storing it. In this life you cannot do that. He said he was not sure what else he could get rid of — he had already gotten rid of so much, a whole house full of stuff. Then, without ceremony: but you know, whatever. The inventory stayed open.
What he had actually wanted to talk about was friendships. Some friendship drama had come up that day and it set him thinking, and he had made a list, and he offered the list outward — to the people watching, in case any of it landed for them. He said he had not had friends in decades and that there were reasons for it, and he wanted to be precise that fear of people was not among them.
The first reason was that he is gay. He described constantly navigating strange dynamics with other men — straight or not, it did not matter, they all seemed to assume he wanted them, and that assumption made everything weird, made simple friendship unavailable. And if it was not the man himself, it was someone else in that man's life feeding him the idea. He said he was not like that back then and is not like that as an old man. Ridiculous, he said. He just wanted to be friends. The second reason was that friendships arrive with other people attached — a friend's friends, who get involved, who generate drama. He said he hated that, absolutely hated it, and that avoiding the whole structure was the better option, and that avoiding it was what he had been doing for a very long time. The third reason was being too easily misunderstood: he would begin a friendship, say something, have it taken the wrong way, and then the person would get upset or ghost, and no one would communicate. Without that return communication he would never learn what had happened, which meant he could not grow. Everyone just hurting each other. He said he reached a point where he was over all of it.
Then, mid-thought, he turned the camera toward something he had recently put up — the little bubbles in it. ChatGPT had told him how to get rid of those: a needle. He was filling the thing up. He said he was doing good, having a very good day, and hoped they were too. He would leave it there. It was the weekend. Behind him, the potatoes went on cooking toward the fifteen-minute mark.