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.
