Newyorkiversary. 5.27.2008

On May 27, 2007, I went to a pool party. It was already so hot in Tucson, and I laid stretched out across the concrete with my feet dangling in the water, feeling the sun bake my chest. “I’m going to leave here with a burn,” I thought, and I didn’t mind at all. All around me, friends were chatting, flirting, talking, draping arms around one another. Someone was moving into the house, and his piles of boxes shifting from porch to kitchen, and then disappearing into his room reminded me of the ones I’d dropped off at the post office the day before. My suitcases, with what was left, were packed and sitting by the door. I only had the clothes I was wearing; everything else was folded and sealed and waiting.

I jumped in.

Wearing jeans in the pool is a lot of work. It seemed like I was underwater for a very long time, sunglasses drifting off my face and floating towards the surface. My hair, recently so much shorter than it always had been, swirled around my face. Someone’s kid was laughing up above, and I could hear it, through a tunnel, but all I saw was water and light. I surfaced with a splash, cracked a joke, asked the kid to grab my sunglasses for me, and stretched out in the sun again. I was dry in 20 minutes.

Later that day, when we all went out for dinner, I realized that I’d left my keys at the party, which is probably the hundredth place I’d left them over the course of a decade. And then I realized that I didn’t really need them anymore, that those keys didn’t open anything that was mine. I didn’t need to go back for them; I was done.

And then Lu drove me to the airport and I moved to New York.

Well, it wasn’t quite that easy. My suitcase was too heavy, and so we had to lug it back off the baggage check area, and open it up and move things around, and try to put a pair of shoes in my backpack, and throw away the shampoo. This poignant and dramatic moment I’d imagined, where my friends would watch me drop off my bags and walk gracefully towards the gate; that moment wasn’t mine. My moment was me squatting on the floor of the Tucson International Airport with a nest of my clothes spread out all around me, forty minutes before my flight, head a little light from beer and sun, my shirt smelling like chlorine, my sunburn starting to show, asking Lu if she thought I could get away with a 52 pound bag.

That’s my moment. And it makes me grin and grin and grin.

I’ve lived in Newyorkcity for one year. It’s been twelve months and it’s been a thousand. Here I am. Who would’ve guessed. It’s starting to get hot here, now, and I’m sitting in my room with my feet propped up on my guitar, thinking absently that it’s almost time for me to put in my window unit, and dreaming up – you’ve guessed it- the TOP TEN LESSONS I’VE LEARNED IN NEW YORK! (drumroll!!!!)

10. People really do wear skinny jeans. More people than you ever would imagine. And no one looks good in them.

9. When your friends say to you, “It’s time to go to Cubbyhole!” you should say to yourself “I’ve had too much to drink. It’s time to go home.”

8. The cab driver does not know where he’s going.

7. I am a Mac person.

6. Sometimes a career is just a career.

5. There is very little worth doing between 14th Street and 59th Street.

4. The secret to revolving doors is not using your hands.

3. It doesn’t matter if it’s dog poop or human poop. You should get off the train and get in a different car.

2. The G train is a long wait for a bad ride.

1. I am capable of anything.

Tags: new york, nostalgia, Top Ten Lists, Tucson