I stayed at my parents’ house last night. My parents were away for the weekend.

I went for long walks along the residential streets of my hometown. I walked past the beautiful old houses that filmmakers love so much. I thought a lot. I wandered into the past, the future, the present. Yes, I wandered into the present.

Everyone’s alone — even the person with the most friends is born alone, dies alone, showers alone, commutes to work alone, dreams alone. We’re all alone.

My goal in moving is to live in a neighborhood where I have friends. Or at least a neighborhood where I can find friends. So I’m beginning to think about Brooklyn again, as opposed to Manhattan. I don’t know.

Brooklyn: longer commute to work, the F train, a pain to get to Manhattan, not as much life as Manhattan. But it has its own gay bars, and cool gay people, and Prospect Park, and Seventh Avenue, and Smith Street, and better apartments.

Manhattan: a shorter commute than from Brooklyn (depending on the neighborhood, anyway); closer to things. But, smaller apartments, perhaps noisier, perhaps too big and anonymous.

I can’t decide. So I’m going to look for apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn until I find one I like.

I want to be around people, but also have my own private quiet space when I want that. I want to live in an apartment building where all my friends live in different apartments. Or I want to live in a big old house with them. We’d cook together. We wouldn’t watch much TV, but we could if we wanted to. We’d play cards and read and listen to music and talk.

Sometimes I just want to be a kid again — I want to have a life where I knew what the future was going to bring, where someone else cooked my dinner, where I didn’t have to worry about making enough money or paying debts, where I could play with my toys or just read, where I could sit in the back seat on car trips.

Sometimes I just want to get away from people. And sometimes I really miss having people around.

I wander into the past, the future, the present.