Yes, It's About You
Sipping a mocha and smoking a cigarette, I sat in the patio of the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on La Brea. It might as well have been the end of the world, as I looked out on the city, the wide streets in front of me bordered only with palm trees and condominiums. Each interlacing street was a different road to a different demise, a different casting couch, a different drug addled beauty. The one here led to me, thinking about my own drug of choice, pondering my personal transcendental fairy tale. What would I write, if I were a Brother Grimm. Would there be a beautiful girl or a brave boy or an evil witch, or would they all just be opaque shades of the same person, variances of me? Could I be the hero and the heroine, the villian and the villianess, and would the gingerbread houses be Jerry Springer on a Tuesday afternoon?
I ponder the borders of my own conscience as a woman wearing Paris Hilton's perfume lifts her Prada sunglasses to ask, "I'm sorry; I know you're not supposed to do this in LA, but were you on Sex and the City?"
I look up, pretending to squint at the sun, even though it's not yet high enough to obscure my vision, "Yes, I was," and I vaguely smile.
"The one who came prematurely?" I nodded. "No," she decided, "that couldn't have been you!"
"You're right, it wasn't," and I open up When Atlas Shrugged, which I carry around with me but have never actually gotten around to reading, and I pretend to process the words on the page until she goes away, her Razr playing the new Gwen Stefani single as she walks off the edge of my world. One sentence does manage to catch my eye, "Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads." I laugh to myself at fate, at God, at the collective consciousness of mankind, whom I hate, but for whom I care and think fondly when I am back in New York and my apartment is eerily quiet in the darkness, except for the rattling of the building from the subway beneath (a sound I no longer notice), as I look into the world, highlighted by neon lights and mp3 players.
I light another cigarette.
I belong there, trapped by stone walls and windy corridors. I deserve to be overwhelmingly hot in the summer and uncomfortably cold in the winter, even inside my Alexander McQueen trench. I belong to terrorist threats, street vendors, and nicotene. I belong to red brick, graffito-ed concrete, and cheap sunglasses. I belong to the light; I belong to the thunder. My name is the same as hers, the same as him. I am not Africa, I am not AIDS awareness or breast cancer research. I am New York City, where strangers are your family, because you're with them every day.
The winds change direction, and I can suddenly smell the sea. I will run to it now, however many miles. I will strip to my designer boxer briefs and jump inside its wet tendrils, until I'm permeated with the smell of sea salt. Because I can sense it; something important is about to happen.
It takes courage to enjoy it.
I ponder the borders of my own conscience as a woman wearing Paris Hilton's perfume lifts her Prada sunglasses to ask, "I'm sorry; I know you're not supposed to do this in LA, but were you on Sex and the City?"
I look up, pretending to squint at the sun, even though it's not yet high enough to obscure my vision, "Yes, I was," and I vaguely smile.
"The one who came prematurely?" I nodded. "No," she decided, "that couldn't have been you!"
"You're right, it wasn't," and I open up When Atlas Shrugged, which I carry around with me but have never actually gotten around to reading, and I pretend to process the words on the page until she goes away, her Razr playing the new Gwen Stefani single as she walks off the edge of my world. One sentence does manage to catch my eye, "Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind, and a step that travels unlimited roads." I laugh to myself at fate, at God, at the collective consciousness of mankind, whom I hate, but for whom I care and think fondly when I am back in New York and my apartment is eerily quiet in the darkness, except for the rattling of the building from the subway beneath (a sound I no longer notice), as I look into the world, highlighted by neon lights and mp3 players.
I light another cigarette.
I belong there, trapped by stone walls and windy corridors. I deserve to be overwhelmingly hot in the summer and uncomfortably cold in the winter, even inside my Alexander McQueen trench. I belong to terrorist threats, street vendors, and nicotene. I belong to red brick, graffito-ed concrete, and cheap sunglasses. I belong to the light; I belong to the thunder. My name is the same as hers, the same as him. I am not Africa, I am not AIDS awareness or breast cancer research. I am New York City, where strangers are your family, because you're with them every day.
The winds change direction, and I can suddenly smell the sea. I will run to it now, however many miles. I will strip to my designer boxer briefs and jump inside its wet tendrils, until I'm permeated with the smell of sea salt. Because I can sense it; something important is about to happen.
It takes courage to enjoy it.