Generation Y

We're all of us sitting in the hot tub, skin wrinkled, pruned. Conversation hasn't stopped for three hours which amazes me, how being submerged in hot water together can inspire this much talking in people who talk to each other everyday. Are we saying anything new? A new girl shows up, a friend of a friend, wearing a cast on her right arm from her fingers to her shoulder. She gets in, hanging her arm over the edge.

Beth, having had a bit to much wine, says something that scares me if only because I have thought it before, that our house, is like a sitcom and we are the main characters. We laugh. A familiar group laugh. A laugh track.

This is the last season. We are all moving away next year. The show isn't exciting anymore. We've tackled all the cliche struggles of youth. The drugs, the breakups, the political activism, demonstrating in the streets, discovering our sexuality. We are getting to old. The ratings are down. I imagine getting the script for the series finale. The apartment will be empty. No furniture. White patches on the walls where the pictures used to be. And at the very end, I'll be the last one out, I'll pause before hitting the light switch. I'll turn around, look at the emptiness. It will be real serious. No laugh track. No music. And then I'll turn back around and step through the door, locking it behind me.

I look up, through the steam at the new girl. Why is she new? She's just a person. But maybe she's like the ensigns on Star Trek, who die at the end on the away mission to the planet. I've met countless characters like her over the years but they don't last long. Whether a minor character down at the Reagal Beagle (from Three's company) or a love interest that lasts two seasons, they've all been written off the show. Just us main characters left. In a hot tub. Job promotions, marriages, inheritance money, sick uncles, just waiting to call us away, out that door, our series canceled.