And I can recall our caravel; a little wicker beetle shell...
I moved to New York with a gaping wound just below my knee from a fall on the gritty sidewalks of the dirty south. It was a hot day in August, I was leaving work, heavy with all the trappings of moving away - gifted coffee makers, a painting, a big container of cat litter, and other things I couldn't leave at my desk. Knowing I'd be heading home with a bounty, I'd skipped the bike that day. The bus was leaving me at the median and I had the nerve to flag it down. I had no idea that in a city where drivers usually slow down just to wag their fingers and shake their fists at those who are so bold, I was actually flagging down a nice man who thought nothing of stopping a full bus on the side of Broad Street and waiting for me to get across. Elated, I started running; cat litter and coffee maker banging against my knees. I had made it to the sidewalk when one of my thrift store mules broke - the strap came clean off the sole - and rather than hitting the ground with a thud, I slid across the dirty sidewalk on my knees. The pain was there, all right, but what held my attention was the bus; also still there. Still waiting. I waved it away with a free hand but it wouldn't move. I don't know how much time it took between the initial wave and the entrance of a mortified, dirty, broken-shoed, bleeding girl on the West bound 6, but it seemed to take at least a minute or two. I was instantly offered a clean washrag by one patient rider, a bandaid (a futile offering for my baseball-sized gouge) by another, and a tube of neosporin by a third. The coffee urn shattered in its paper bag.
Like the wounds we give ourselves as slap-happy children, my leg hurt when I got on the bus, but it really hurt when I got home. I had no idea how to wash all the pebbles and gross bits out, so I slathered the entire tube of neosporin on there and passed out on my bed.
The next night Ian and I took a bus to New York to find an apartment. I had been keeping my leg wrapped up in one form of gauze or bandage or another for the day, and the wound had turned from bright red to all sorts of garish oranges and yellows. I reeled at the idea of walking around three boroughs over the hottest weekend of the year with the thing. I remember the sweat, constant, in the brownstone in Stuyvesant Heights, the flat in East Williamsburg, the tiny box in the Upper East Side, friends apartments in Kensington and on Graham Ave. Yes, we're moving here at the end of the month; no we don't have a dog; uh, sure, we've lived together before; no I don't have a full-time job; no, we've never lived in New York. Oh, this thing? I took a spill. We never made it to the third borough that trip. Alternately, I allowed my leg to air out - never on an apartment appointment, at first never on the train, but that changed.
Back in Richmond after finally finding a place, I worked for a little over a week while Ian made the transition to his New York office from his Richmond one and our apartment was cleaned. My boss and I would sit outside on the balcony and smoke cigarettes in the morning and ponder the future of my leg. Would it have to come off? Is it getting smaller? The wound, not the leg. Does it still hurt? What's that brown part and does it look better than the yellow part? Is it better wrapped up or left to the elements? Yes, its better left to the elements, we decided. This was a lateral decision, made with another one to follow the advice of an ancient pharmacist on campus whose reassurance convinced me that I would actually live through this yet. On his advice I stopped pouring peroxide over it every night, and only applied the antibiotic ointment, and left it unbandaged for all the world to see including the one guy who pulled over on Broad to ask me for a date, only to decide that we should postpone so I could get to a doctor.
I bandaged up for the actual move, with all the banging and lifting and such. It was stuffy in the truck, more so when Seth peed on himself in his brand new carrier, resplended with leopard spots, fifty miles south of Washington DC (although washing him off with wet wipes in the nearest pet rest area will always be a sweet sad memory.)We left at nine that morning. All in all, with the trip and the actual moving in, we were in bed by two.
And then I let the New York air take care of it. I wore short skirts and long pants and we got acquainted with the place and wished we had a loveseat and a coffeemaker and bought cheap household necessities like air conditioners from our neighbors and rode the trains to go to work and school. I no longer had to worry about bleeding on someone elses sheets and as the terrible thing grew smaller and smaller I nearly forgot about it and started sleeping on my left side again. We moved into our Brooklyn home on August 27th and by September 5th, I attended the welcome dinner hosted for all the new graduate students wearing a pinstripe skirt that just barely brushed against the brand new and strangely brown skin that had formed where for three weeks there had been none. There was hair on the brand new skin, hair which I was terrified to shave due to the tenderness of having brand new skin, but all in all, I figured things could have been worse.
I've lived in New York for six months and in this time I've had five colds. Just two weeks after moving here my boyfriend developed cluster headaches that keep him dumbfounded and in bed for days at a time. He also gets a cold a month. We love it here. I have a scar below my knee in the shape of a diamond, still brown, but I can shave there now. Its quite possible that taking the pharmacist's advice about the peroxide did the trick, and not the shiny, northern air.
Like the wounds we give ourselves as slap-happy children, my leg hurt when I got on the bus, but it really hurt when I got home. I had no idea how to wash all the pebbles and gross bits out, so I slathered the entire tube of neosporin on there and passed out on my bed.
The next night Ian and I took a bus to New York to find an apartment. I had been keeping my leg wrapped up in one form of gauze or bandage or another for the day, and the wound had turned from bright red to all sorts of garish oranges and yellows. I reeled at the idea of walking around three boroughs over the hottest weekend of the year with the thing. I remember the sweat, constant, in the brownstone in Stuyvesant Heights, the flat in East Williamsburg, the tiny box in the Upper East Side, friends apartments in Kensington and on Graham Ave. Yes, we're moving here at the end of the month; no we don't have a dog; uh, sure, we've lived together before; no I don't have a full-time job; no, we've never lived in New York. Oh, this thing? I took a spill. We never made it to the third borough that trip. Alternately, I allowed my leg to air out - never on an apartment appointment, at first never on the train, but that changed.
Back in Richmond after finally finding a place, I worked for a little over a week while Ian made the transition to his New York office from his Richmond one and our apartment was cleaned. My boss and I would sit outside on the balcony and smoke cigarettes in the morning and ponder the future of my leg. Would it have to come off? Is it getting smaller? The wound, not the leg. Does it still hurt? What's that brown part and does it look better than the yellow part? Is it better wrapped up or left to the elements? Yes, its better left to the elements, we decided. This was a lateral decision, made with another one to follow the advice of an ancient pharmacist on campus whose reassurance convinced me that I would actually live through this yet. On his advice I stopped pouring peroxide over it every night, and only applied the antibiotic ointment, and left it unbandaged for all the world to see including the one guy who pulled over on Broad to ask me for a date, only to decide that we should postpone so I could get to a doctor.
I bandaged up for the actual move, with all the banging and lifting and such. It was stuffy in the truck, more so when Seth peed on himself in his brand new carrier, resplended with leopard spots, fifty miles south of Washington DC (although washing him off with wet wipes in the nearest pet rest area will always be a sweet sad memory.)We left at nine that morning. All in all, with the trip and the actual moving in, we were in bed by two.
And then I let the New York air take care of it. I wore short skirts and long pants and we got acquainted with the place and wished we had a loveseat and a coffeemaker and bought cheap household necessities like air conditioners from our neighbors and rode the trains to go to work and school. I no longer had to worry about bleeding on someone elses sheets and as the terrible thing grew smaller and smaller I nearly forgot about it and started sleeping on my left side again. We moved into our Brooklyn home on August 27th and by September 5th, I attended the welcome dinner hosted for all the new graduate students wearing a pinstripe skirt that just barely brushed against the brand new and strangely brown skin that had formed where for three weeks there had been none. There was hair on the brand new skin, hair which I was terrified to shave due to the tenderness of having brand new skin, but all in all, I figured things could have been worse.
I've lived in New York for six months and in this time I've had five colds. Just two weeks after moving here my boyfriend developed cluster headaches that keep him dumbfounded and in bed for days at a time. He also gets a cold a month. We love it here. I have a scar below my knee in the shape of a diamond, still brown, but I can shave there now. Its quite possible that taking the pharmacist's advice about the peroxide did the trick, and not the shiny, northern air.