3 months, and here I am
Three months ago, yesterday.. I barely even realized it. Three months ago, I awoke in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York to a voice-mail telling me that I'd got a job that I'd just been turned down for the evening before. They changed their minds. They liked me. I was ecstatic. Three months ago, about this time on a Wednesday evening, I was driving on the Merritt Parkway headed back to Amherst, Mass to quit my job and pack up my stuff so that I could move to sofa in Alphabet City.
And where am I now? I'm in love with this place. Any time I leave, I want to go back to Oregon. I miss the rain and the trees and the wide open spaces and the all-day cafes that serve brunch until three. But the moment I come back to the city, when the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor train pulls into Penn Station and I walk a quarter mile down the endless concourse, past overpriced pizza and the combination KFC/Taco Bell/Burger King, through the turnstile and onto the #2 train, every inkling of missing Oregon melts away. I lose myself in the people around me, in my book, staring at the doors of the train.
Lately, I've been going to Philadelphia on the weekends. It takes about 2 ½ - 3 hours to get there by train. Take NJ Transit to Trenton, NJ (a city with a train station, a light rail station and a cemetery - and that's about it) where you switch to the SEPTA local train to Philadelphia. I've been sleeping with this girl, A., a friend of my friend, who lives there. There's nothing to really say about that.
Philadelphia is a nice city. It's clean, and it's quiet. All the houses around Center City are mews-style houses, one of which this girl lives in. She inhabits the second floor rear apartment, with a balcony out the back looking into the alleyway between all the other houses. Her apartment is small, dingy, and the door button on the buzzer in her apartment doesn't work, so you've got to go downstairs to let anyone in. She's set up her bed in the kitchen, and the room that would be the bedroom (the one that opens into the balcony) has turned into the living room, which is furnished with a sofa and a park bench that N. and I stole from outside a pizzeria (Little John's) down the block.
Last time I visited, she lived on the fourth floor of a 19-story building with roof access. I sat on the edge of the roof one night while there was a party at her apartment there. A girl I was talking to pulled a butterfly knife on me while my legs were dangling over the edge.
I went down there this past weekend, in fact. I stayed in her bed, while N. slept on the sofa in the other room. I cooked, N. and I cleaned, and at night we had parties. I'm not sure any of us spent very much time sober, or at least without a beer in hand (including shortly after waking). It's hard to cook a country-style brunch with 1 frying pan and 1 saucepan.
Sunday, it rained in Philadelphia. I stood in the living room with the door to the balcony open, standing in my boxers, while the rain poured down outside. I was smoking a cigarette, listening to Gillian Welch, and at that time I missed Oregon more than anything. I missed sitting on the porch of the Campbell Club, with an open case of beer and a nearly empty pack of cigarettes, talking with anyone who happened to sit down on the sofa. Those were fun evenings.
By that evening, however, I was riding an uptown express train, from which I would transfer to the local at 96th St. and continue on to my stop at 145th. By the time I was on the platform, all thoughts of Oregon were out of my head. All I could think of was New York, and how I didn't really want to go to work the next day, but that going to work meant making money to pay my rent and stay in this city. Going to work meant getting on an express train to West 4th St, stopping by Gray's Papaya in the morning for an egg sandwich and a coffee and eating lunch in Washington Sq. Park. And my qualms about going to work (a job which, until very recently, I've felt was slowly sucking my soul out of me day by day) slowly faded the more I thought about all these things.
Comparing New York to other cities is so difficult. All other American cities pale in comparison: their mass transit systems shut down, the bars close at 2 A.M. (or even 1) instead of 4, people stop going out at a certain point in the evening. But not here. I got into Penn Station at 10:30 PM on a Sunday and it was full of people as though it were midday Wednesday. Certainly not rush hour, by any means, but no different from what it would be at 1 PM. Whereas when I had got to Philadelphia Suburban Station at 7 PM earlier that evening, the station was empty. Pigeons flew through the terminal like tumbleweed, coming in from the tunnel entrance not far away and settling on the platform. The ticket windows were closed, and the benches were empty. N. and I were almost the only ones on the train, which was so vacant to begin with that only the first three cars were open to passengers: the rear two were off-limits to cut down on where the conductors had to roam.
Aboveground, even in Harlem, the streets were still populated with people. In Philadelphia, on a Friday night in Center City, no one is out. Comparing it to the Financial District is even a far cry. Absolutely nothing is happening in Center City, Phila. on a Friday evening. Likewise for Chinatown at mightnight. Nothing like the nightly jam of cars at Allen St. and Delancey on the Lower East Side, at the northern edge of Chinatown.
It's so easy to get lost here, and yet that's what I love about it. It is everything I imagined: big, dirty, anonymous. Half-drunk at 3 AM waiting for a subway, I sit drinking Olde English from a paper bag hidden under my coat. At 8:30 AM every weekday morning, I shove myself onto an overcrowded subway car to be squashed between a sweaty man and a delicately petite woman. I delicately unfold my newspaper or turn the pages on my book so as not to extend myself beyond the quarter inch of personal space I have (at best). I work eight or nine hours a day, I go out to a dive bar on the weekends sometimes. I haven't done my laundry in a very long time, but when I do, I take it to the 24-hour laundromat a block away from me. I can get milk, cigarettes, beer any time of day or night from the bodega half a block away. I'm going to see a play for free tomorrow night. I see movies before any of the rest of you.
I am so looking forward to going back to Oregon. And yet, I am desperately dreading leaving this island. All I can do is relish my time here.
And where am I now? I'm in love with this place. Any time I leave, I want to go back to Oregon. I miss the rain and the trees and the wide open spaces and the all-day cafes that serve brunch until three. But the moment I come back to the city, when the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor train pulls into Penn Station and I walk a quarter mile down the endless concourse, past overpriced pizza and the combination KFC/Taco Bell/Burger King, through the turnstile and onto the #2 train, every inkling of missing Oregon melts away. I lose myself in the people around me, in my book, staring at the doors of the train.
Lately, I've been going to Philadelphia on the weekends. It takes about 2 ½ - 3 hours to get there by train. Take NJ Transit to Trenton, NJ (a city with a train station, a light rail station and a cemetery - and that's about it) where you switch to the SEPTA local train to Philadelphia. I've been sleeping with this girl, A., a friend of my friend, who lives there. There's nothing to really say about that.
Philadelphia is a nice city. It's clean, and it's quiet. All the houses around Center City are mews-style houses, one of which this girl lives in. She inhabits the second floor rear apartment, with a balcony out the back looking into the alleyway between all the other houses. Her apartment is small, dingy, and the door button on the buzzer in her apartment doesn't work, so you've got to go downstairs to let anyone in. She's set up her bed in the kitchen, and the room that would be the bedroom (the one that opens into the balcony) has turned into the living room, which is furnished with a sofa and a park bench that N. and I stole from outside a pizzeria (Little John's) down the block.
Last time I visited, she lived on the fourth floor of a 19-story building with roof access. I sat on the edge of the roof one night while there was a party at her apartment there. A girl I was talking to pulled a butterfly knife on me while my legs were dangling over the edge.
I went down there this past weekend, in fact. I stayed in her bed, while N. slept on the sofa in the other room. I cooked, N. and I cleaned, and at night we had parties. I'm not sure any of us spent very much time sober, or at least without a beer in hand (including shortly after waking). It's hard to cook a country-style brunch with 1 frying pan and 1 saucepan.
Sunday, it rained in Philadelphia. I stood in the living room with the door to the balcony open, standing in my boxers, while the rain poured down outside. I was smoking a cigarette, listening to Gillian Welch, and at that time I missed Oregon more than anything. I missed sitting on the porch of the Campbell Club, with an open case of beer and a nearly empty pack of cigarettes, talking with anyone who happened to sit down on the sofa. Those were fun evenings.
By that evening, however, I was riding an uptown express train, from which I would transfer to the local at 96th St. and continue on to my stop at 145th. By the time I was on the platform, all thoughts of Oregon were out of my head. All I could think of was New York, and how I didn't really want to go to work the next day, but that going to work meant making money to pay my rent and stay in this city. Going to work meant getting on an express train to West 4th St, stopping by Gray's Papaya in the morning for an egg sandwich and a coffee and eating lunch in Washington Sq. Park. And my qualms about going to work (a job which, until very recently, I've felt was slowly sucking my soul out of me day by day) slowly faded the more I thought about all these things.
Comparing New York to other cities is so difficult. All other American cities pale in comparison: their mass transit systems shut down, the bars close at 2 A.M. (or even 1) instead of 4, people stop going out at a certain point in the evening. But not here. I got into Penn Station at 10:30 PM on a Sunday and it was full of people as though it were midday Wednesday. Certainly not rush hour, by any means, but no different from what it would be at 1 PM. Whereas when I had got to Philadelphia Suburban Station at 7 PM earlier that evening, the station was empty. Pigeons flew through the terminal like tumbleweed, coming in from the tunnel entrance not far away and settling on the platform. The ticket windows were closed, and the benches were empty. N. and I were almost the only ones on the train, which was so vacant to begin with that only the first three cars were open to passengers: the rear two were off-limits to cut down on where the conductors had to roam.
Aboveground, even in Harlem, the streets were still populated with people. In Philadelphia, on a Friday night in Center City, no one is out. Comparing it to the Financial District is even a far cry. Absolutely nothing is happening in Center City, Phila. on a Friday evening. Likewise for Chinatown at mightnight. Nothing like the nightly jam of cars at Allen St. and Delancey on the Lower East Side, at the northern edge of Chinatown.
It's so easy to get lost here, and yet that's what I love about it. It is everything I imagined: big, dirty, anonymous. Half-drunk at 3 AM waiting for a subway, I sit drinking Olde English from a paper bag hidden under my coat. At 8:30 AM every weekday morning, I shove myself onto an overcrowded subway car to be squashed between a sweaty man and a delicately petite woman. I delicately unfold my newspaper or turn the pages on my book so as not to extend myself beyond the quarter inch of personal space I have (at best). I work eight or nine hours a day, I go out to a dive bar on the weekends sometimes. I haven't done my laundry in a very long time, but when I do, I take it to the 24-hour laundromat a block away from me. I can get milk, cigarettes, beer any time of day or night from the bodega half a block away. I'm going to see a play for free tomorrow night. I see movies before any of the rest of you.
I am so looking forward to going back to Oregon. And yet, I am desperately dreading leaving this island. All I can do is relish my time here.