27 december 2009

i am sitting in the backseat of my parents' new car, covered in stuff, with my computer presently functioning as a very large ipod, headphones in, driving past/through/around new york city.

my fondest memory of the city is almost certainly from the summer i turned 21. not the night of our fancy dinner--that was nice, but it was a different kind of nice. it was like we got all dressed up and played the parts of other people.

the memory comes as a flash: times square, or very close to it. i am drunk. all the lights are one big blur because i am moving. a big black man tries to hand us tickets to a free comedy show: "yo, you better take a ticket. you look like you 'bouta kill a muthafucker." my first and only cab ride in the city. all i remember is yellow and a tv screen and the driver who didn't care enough to think less of me. it is july and it is the sweet sticky city hot of midsummer. i spent all day on the train crossing pennsylvania, and alex is wearing the toe shoes. i still think of him every time i see c* in them.

my cousins are all growing up and going to college and getting married. i could stay 21 forever, taking weekend trips to new york and obsessing over this girl and having summer jobs that mean nothing but which i may pretend do. at least i know i will marry young this way.

the planes fly everywhere, even though there is talk of terrorism on the radio. you cannot stop us from moving.

manhattan to my right. lovely for a visit, but if i were to live there i would shrivel from lack of sun.

for a moment, i forgot it was december. [even the first time i type that sentence, the freudian typo says "summer."] i flip back to this document and the date greets me at the top of the screen. it is almost a new year--but we all know the new year starts in september.

the lirr crosses overhead. i almost threw up in the train station. "are you sure you're ok to drive home?" "oh yeah." and what you really meant was, i've driven this road drunk so many times it doesn't matter.

i will bring mine here someday, and we will wander manhattan, drunk on whatever seems appropriate, and the lights will be a blur because we will be moving, and the memories will occur as flashes, and we will look back and say, what a summer.