While the rest of my friends barbecued and beached and boozehounded their way through the long weekend, I found myself working back-to-back doubles at my place of employment. Like you do. (Rather, "Like I do", who are we kidding, that horseshit wasn't on your agenda.) And it was at some point on Friday night betwixt crumbing that one guy's table and pouring that other guy's Don Julio Margarita Up With A Twist No Lime No Triple Sec Add Agave (...wow...) that I realized Jesus christ. Jesus fucking christ, I'm leaving New York exactly two months from today.
And it gave me Pause.
And some momentary panic.
And I took a deep breath, licked the remaining margarita off of my fingers (What?)(I wasn't in plain-sight), crossed those same fingers in the hopes that I'd make $1700 before the night was out, shrugged and moved onward.
Later, while on the train ride home, I resumed my place with Pause.
Two months, thought I. That's an overwhelmingly short amount of time. The two month-mark preceding any occasion makes everything feel inevitable and, therefore, ever-so-slightly terrifying, and absolutely just around the corner.
I think about all of my friends who have been seven months pregnant: they're unspeakably beautiful and glowing, to me, to the rest of the world, but to them, they feel absolutely enormous and over it in a very "Are you serious? There's more? How am I supposed to wait out another two months of this?"-fashion.
I think about my brain two months before graduation, and it was all like "How do you expect me to sit through another lecture on this thing that I don't care about and will never use for the rest of my life when I have finals to think about and tequila to think about and then I'm leaving this nest and I have no idea what I'm doing I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING YET."
I think about where my friends have been at two months before their wedding day. And the conversations have always gone something like this:
Hi, Honey! How are you?
"... ... ...Good."
...Yeahhh?
"Um. Yes."
What's going on?
"Um. You know. Work. Wedding things."
Yeahhhh?! How's it...
"...It's A LOT. You know. It's a lot. I just want it to be here and happening and done, but meanwhile, I have seating charts to think about, and a florist to pay, and I'm dieting, and I don't really want to be dieting anymore?, and my in-laws have been so great but my mom is acting nuts and everyone is yelling at me about everything all the time but this is our wedding...Ugh, I just want it to be here already, but there's all this...stuff, first."
Which is precisely my sentiment about moving across the country.
And so I'm sitting on this train at 12:30 on Friday night and my brain starts running with all of the professional things that I "neeeed" to accomplish within the next two months:
--PULL THAT REEL TOGETHER!
--BOTH OF THEM!
--...Do I have enough crap for a legit reel?
--My wardrobe looks like crap.
--Holy crap. Should I print off a different headshot?
--Speaking of crap, I should probably try another cleanse before I go out there. What if I'm not skinny enough? But then, what if I need to poop in the middle of one of these networking-things?
--Aw. Crap. I need to tell my manager that I'm moving. ... ... ... ...
And then, I stopped myself.
Because the thing is, my brain could have easily kept running with all of the professional caca that I need to/should/might want to think about accomplishing before this move. Easily. And, frankly, (obviously,) this has been so much of the bulk of my year.
But. Fuck it.
I live in New York. I live in New York for another two months. And there is so much that I simply have not done.
I remember when I first moved here and how astonished I was to discover that so many of my New York-native friends had not done so many "quintessential New York"-things. Like, how dare they!
How have you lived here your whole life and never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge?
How have you lived here your whole life and never been to Brooklyn?
How have you never gone in the Empire State Building?
How have you never gone skating at Rock Center?
How have you never....The list went on and on and on.
I have now lived here for over five years. I can now succinctly answer that question:
Because it's here. Because it has always been here, and it will always be here, so I can see it whenever I want.
And so, you take it for granted, all this great awesome stuff. And I have.
But now, I have two months of This left. Two months with all of this awesome in my backyard. So, yeah, I have to buckle down and make a fuckton of money and, yeah, I have this career that I'm moving across the country for to think about and further hone and, yeah, I should probably be a bit of a cheapskate over the next 8 weeks to save up for this big crazy journey to the other coast. But, by gum, there is just so much to see! And I want to see it as a local instead of as a tourist. I want it all while it still belongs to me.
I need:
--MOMA
--The Whitney
--The Guggenheim
--Ellis Island
--a Yankees game (and I dont even like 'em!...Sorry, New York. But I still wanna go!)
--Spumoni Gardens
--Grimaldi's
--PDT
--the Cloisters
--the Bronx Zoo
--the Brooklyn Botnical Gardens (two blocks from my house. ...Two blocks.)
--Jones Beach
--the Rockaways
--the opera
--the ballet
--BAM
--movie nights in Bryant Park
--movie nights on the pier
And that's all just as a first timer.
I want refreshers of:
--The Met
--The Museum of Natural History
--Coney Island (down the street)
--the Brooklyn Flea (up the street)
--Katz's
--Celebrate Brooklyn
--a little Broadway
--a little Off-Off-Broadway
--stupid luxurious strolls in Central Park
--stupid luxurious strolls on the HighLine
--stupid luxurious strolls down the Brooklyn Bridge, which is arguably my favorite thing to do in the entire universe.
--Carroll Gardens
--Park Slope
--South Slope
--Windsor Terrace
--Red Hook
--LIC
--Astoria
--Hoboken
--Ditmas Park
--DUMBO
--Battery Park
--Woodside
--every single neighborhood that I've ever even sort of loved
--I want to do a food and pub crawl around my old stomping grounds.
--I want to go to the West Village to get a pedicure and a cosmo. At the same time.
--I want to take a snobby walk around the snobby Upper East Side to spy in on the snobbiest brownstones and the unattainable snobdom sliming around inside of them. And scoff.
--I want to canoli my way through Little Italy. Both of them.
--I want to run through the fountain in the middle of Washington Square Park and scream at the top of my lungs.
--I want to stand at the top of the Empire State Building on the 4th of July and watch the city stand in awe while the sky erupts around me.
--I want to perch myself in front of the Flatiron Building, in the center of the Meatpacking District, on a bench in Chinatown, at a bistro in Cobble Hill, a beer garden in Queens, a coffeeshop in Williamsburg, on the edge of Brooklyn Bridge Park and just people-watch.
I want it all. "I want it fast and right through me," like Dave Eggers says, but I want a fragment of it, of each moment to lodge itself in my chest, to just sit there and stay warm forever and always. I don't want to just remember that I was here. I want to take it all with me.
Because I've earned it.
Because I've both hated New York to a degree that I can't articulate, and loved her beyond all possible measure. Because I've run myself ragged inside of her walls, and found a way to slow down to a stop. Because I've grown up inside of her, and now, out of her.
And it's a lot.
It's a lot to take in. And, as much as I'm growing more anxious by the minute for this next step, and as much as I find myself going Jesus christ, can we JUST get this over with?! all too often, I need to remember to remember This.
I've had over five years to make myself a part of New York.
I may be moving to Los Angeles, and absolutely know that that's right. But. I'll be damned if I don't walk down those streets without having made a point to make New York a part of who I am.
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