We Went to Princeton
and all we got was this slice of life
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Last week Blaine and I decided to drive out to Princeton for a few hours. It’s a place that we have often retreated to throughout our relationship. We usually head out for a little adventure when we need time to get out of life’s monotonous rhythm.
The first time we went to Princeton was for a day trip, and I bought a Samuel Beckett book from the town bookstore that I still haven’t read. The next visit was overnight. The Airbnb on the edge of the town was owned by a young couple and felt very “farmhouse” but without being so. They did have a garden with some peppers and tomatoes as well as a couple of chickens. The wife was sick with something I never quite understood and slept in a tent outside, near the chickens. The husband spent much of his day outback, topless and barefoot, in a hammock. After a day of exploring the town, we watched the Elaine Stritch documentary Shoot Me on a laptop and fell asleep. I’m sure the room had spiders in it. I loved that weekend.
Early in our wedding-planning process, we thought about getting married in Princeton and looked on the edges of town for venues. Our idea was to do the wedding “New York-adjacent,” and it seemed as good an option as any. We hunted for the spot at secluded houses, hotels, and the brewery. None of it stuck, and we ended up getting hitched in Brooklyn, but it was still fun to dream big.
On a few of our trips, we’ve rented a hotel room and, for the most part, secluded ourselves inside. We wanted some quality time the first time we stayed there, so we left our phones in the room ->#disconnecting #reconnecting<- and went to the hotel bar for a glass of wine. We called it a night six or seven hours, whoknowshowmany beverages, and three orders of french fries later. The next morning, we got a car directly to the infamous PJ’s Pancakes before catching the dingy toward home. That night at the hotel bar lives on in infamy as the kind of date night to which we will always aspire.
This time, we didn’t have plans. We just wanted to get out of the apartment for a few hours. Because, though it seems like much of the world has decided that they’re going to pretend Covid isn’t a problem anymore, it is. So, we’re still doing our best to minimize social situations and stay home. We have been home a lot and needed a change of scenery. On a whim, we grabbed the pup, hopped into the car, and went.
After parking and finding ourselves required to download an app to pay for a parking meter - helloooooo, welcome to the future! - we walked through the little downtown area right on the edge of campus, dancing an ungraceful ballet called “stay six feet away from the other weekday explorers” by George Balanchine. Eventually, we arrived at Agricola, a seemingly cute farm to table restaurant in the thick of it all. We considered our options. Though it is legal in New Jersey, we still do not feel super comfortable eating inside. They had outdoor seating and some heat lamps, but it was pretty cold for the open air. I’m never eager to be cold, but we were on an adventure, and it felt like a “say yes” moment, so we chose Covid over comfort and sat outside.
I bundled up Effie in her puffer coat and wrapped my scarf around her so she wouldn’t be cold. She looked like a fashionable little sushi roll and I deeply regret not having photographic evidence; it would prove definitively that she is the cutest dog alive. While fully bundled but safely distanced at our table, we ordered hot water and drinks - a glass of Sangiovese for me and an apple cider margarita for Blaine. We perused the lunch menu, and Blaine was inspired enough by the LoRé Pumpkin Ravioli to let go of his gluten-free preference and order the meal; I opted for a crispy chicken sandwich and fries.
From my seat, I could see the Princeton University campus. At this point, we’ve walked around it plenty of times, but it is always the same kind of stunning. To the romantic outsider like myself, it seems more like something from a movie or painting than a functioning twenty-first-century institution. The old ivy seems to scream out at passersby with history. It’s impossible not to imagine the Einsteins, Obamas, Sotomayors, Wests, or Bezoses of our history books and newsstands wandering the grounds. The reputation is such that the place almost seems untouchable. Such “greatness” has walked the campus…It can be extraordinarily intimidating until you remember that the incoming students are often eighteen-year-olds with TikToks and acne.
None of these people - the grown children or the idols - were around, though. The campus was relatively barren. The only people that floated through the university town on the last Wednesday of 2020 were those like us - tourists reveling in the idea of a place they’ve put on a pedestal for one reason or another.
While waiting for our food, the gray stone buildings started to make requests of us, as I assume they do to all visitors and students alike. “Dream,” they bark. “Imagine something different.” Maybe that’s why so many success stories have come from this place; the buildings can be really demanding.
“If you had to go back to school here, what would you study?” I asked Blaine.
It wasn’t a weird thing for me to ask out of the blue. These hypotheticals are common between us and I expected it to be one of many we’d cycle through as we bounced to keep ourselves warm at the table. Before responding, we specified the prompt further. When going back to school, it would have to be as if we stopped life as it was right then. We would have had all of our history and baggage intact. We’d be married, we’d have jobs to navigate - all of it. With that, Blaine took the time to look up what departments the school had to offer and got very excited about the idea of “certificate” programs (which I found endlessly charming). He drifted through thoughts of learning more about gender, sexuality, and social justice. Blaine currently works in television casting for a network and, in a short tangent away from the prompt, we discussed how one couldn’t go to school for casting. When it came back to me, I was entirely basic in my gravitation toward something like creative writing. I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing professionally more than writing. Why would I go to Princeton of all places and choose something random? Perhaps next time, we’ll require our hypothetical to shift us away from our current jobs and hobbies.
As it always does in a flowing conversation, soon we were trying different versions of the prompt. “If you had to go back to undergrad now, would you still study what you did?” (Princeton University not required).
We hesitated.
We both got degrees in theatre/acting…
We ate our lunches (which were delicious) and imagined those other lives. We finished our beverages, cozied Effie up tighter in her cocoon, and the conversation bounced on seamlessly. When we’d finished the meal and ordered a peppermint cheesecake to-go, Blaine ran around the corner to grab hot coffees. Java in hand, we started to roam that cold-yet-inspiring campus. It brought up memories of our college times, running around campus and taking ourselves too seriously, and we debated whether we were close enough to walk to the campus Wawa for a bathroom break. Eventually, we drifted back toward the car, ready to call it a day.
As we entered the highway on our journey back home, the conversation - having changed, paused, and restarted a hundred times already - stayed alive. Another prompt surfaced. Look back on life and think about a moment that we would go back and re-do if we could. We weren’t just talking about school anymore; there was a lifetime of choices from which to pick. If we could go back and do one thing differently - from any time in our lives - what would it be?
Blaine wrestled with the question for a moment. He does not seem to harbor any apparent regrets in life. As his partner and on behalf of his mental health, I am grateful for that. Are regrets ever desirable? Without committing to a precise answer, he rattled out some relatable options. He wouldn’t have taken specific college classes, handled student loans differently, and tried to study abroad. All valid, albeit still school-centric, but there wasn’t one big thing he could pinpoint right away. We commiserated about the pains of our student loans and laughed about paying university prices for classes like ballet (why David!?). It was agreed that if we knew then what we know now, of course, we would make small changes here and there. But Blaine hadn’t yet found the thing he’d go back and re-do.
I started to think about my answer. The idea of getting to change my financial situation by avoiding the soul-crushing, paycheck-swallowing student loan death trap that I found myself in after graduation (and that I am still in…) was intoxicating. I even thought about going back to seventh grade to stop myself from making fun of one of my middle school classmates. Still, something else was calling out instead.
I started to tell Blaine a new version of a story he’d heard before. It was about the point of no return in a previous relationship. I pinpointed the exact moment that I could have stepped away from it and speculated about all of the reasons why it could have been better if I’d simply let him go. Would I be less anxious? Would I have been more adventurous in my young twenties? Would I have been freer in my navigations of sex? Maybe I’d be a little less fearful or more successful. Hell, perhaps I’d have been even more of a mess altogether. There is no way to know.
We talked about more past relationships and realized that in almost all of the ones we’d been in before meeting each other, there was some moment that we could identify where things could have ended before they did. Invariably, there seemed to be a window or an opportunity where a break-up was on the table, but we always missed it. Knowing now what we do about those past-life pairings - the failures and pains, joys and magics - it was interesting to imagine what might have been if they’d ended sooner.
We turned the mirror on ourselves. Had there ever been a moment in our relationship like that? Had we ever seen the writing on the wall telling us to get out while we still could but ignored it? We both considered it honestly and then agreed - no. It would have been fine if there was, of course. We are confident in our marriage, and hiccups do not make a doomed relationship, but it was nice to reflect such apparent certainty from across the stick-shift.
Almost home, destined to resume our minimal-movement Covid-era lifestyle, Blaine thought of the choice he’d go back to and do differently. “I wouldn’t have gone back in the closet.” Blaine was referring to the days in high school when, after having already come out of the closet, he got caught up in a church-going crowd and eventually went back in. He came out again in college. I loved that answer. We could have turned the entire conversation back to zero right then to talk about coming out and the ripple effects of it throughout our lives so far, but we’d made it back to the apartment, and Effie had to pee.
And so that was it. Another excursion to one of our little happy places. Another trip to Princeton for the books. Like trips before this one - the one to the farmhouse, the one for the wedding venues, and the ones for hotel bar dates - this trip will be etched into my memory as the one where we ate a delicious lunch outside in near-freezing weather and waxed endlessly about the things we cannot and would not actually change.
Next time we go, I hope it is after we wake up on some soft Sunday morning with an itch for pancakes, an irritation at the idea of making them ourselves, and the inspiration to drive down to PJ’s just because we can.
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