No Internet So I Wrote...

This was written back when I was living in a basement in Queens:

Staring at the blinking lights on the modem wouldn’t make the internet come back on any more than staring at a pot of water would encourage it boil or staring at a quiet phone to urge it to ring.

Sigh.  Now what?  The evening suddenly seemed long and open and ….boring.   The chasm of time needed to be filled.   After all, it is Saturday, I am young and single, and I am in the greatest city in the world: New York.

Well, that’s really a lie. A geographically convenient fallacy that helps keep small talk small and questions at bay.  I am in Queens, past Jamaica, and work a few blocks away from Nassau in Long Island.  But, if asked, I tell friends and family that I am living and working in New York, leave out the city, and hope that a few quick and short quips about Times Square and Lady Liberty will satiate any superficial need to know how I and my new job are doing.

How am I doing?  Honestly, I always said I would visit New York and never live here.  My main fears were trash and rats in the streets, ruffians and rude people, and high prices.  None of those were the cause of my public breakdowns in front of co-workers, strangers, and would be lovers.  As a child I was considered “tender-hearted”, as my mom would put it.  The euphemism did not help me feel any better about being so sympathetic that I cried during House Party 2, or worse not being able to hold my tears as a boss spoke to me one on one about a co-worker who saw me on the phone while she was gone.  I’ll never forget her looking awkwardly at anything but me until she finally said, “Shamika, I can’t talk to you when you are like this.”  We remained good friends and she was even a customer for me during my brief time as a Mary Kay Beauty Consultant.  Brief, three years, everything is relative.

Before I go backwards in time, I want to finish talking about now.  New York.  I am 26 years old and living in New York.  I have graduated from college and have my life ahead of me.  Some days I have to remind myself of that.  The entire time I was a student at Stanford, I managed to not get involved in a relationship.  Not that I didn’t try.  God, how I tried, nearly to my embarrassment, but driven intelligent young men who shared my alma mater didn’t seem to want to share a life or even an academic quarter with me.  Perhaps when I visit for a reunion, I hear that is when people reveal crushes and unrequited like.  I guess I can wait five years.