I Get It, Jim Croce.
New York sounds more like slamming my toes into the tops of my shoes and less like window shopping on 5th avenue. I was never in love, never enticed by its metal and lack of area. The west holds big sky and a sun that burns all day instead of the moments dedicated to your window, fading behind a smoke stack and disappearing into a skyrise. There was no beginning for me there, aside from the manifest that brought my Italian grandfather past Lady Liberty onward to the Midwest. And a century later, his granddaughter would scour the ads for a place in Manhattan, praying the legs of her 5’10’’ (ok, 5’9’’) frame would carry her from boulevard to runway to subway platform. I still reserve hope that his dreams held more. And then I found a walk in closet. 1500 a month — a steal, I was told. Surely this was not the New York City grandpa had known, but perhaps the same one he decided to leave in search of air. I never saw that walk in closet, never blew up the inflatable mattress that fit the measurements of that small space and my even smaller budget. And I never walked in New York Fashion Week. As quickly as I had signed to Ford Models, my contract moved to another city. And I wept for the love affair that never was, laying in the lush grass of my parent’s acre yard, silence around me, trying to convince myself that Central Park could never hold a candle to the vastness of the space I was in.
Maybe it was naivety or the springtime daydream one only has in the prime of their appearance, but I thought I could make it work. I had done long distance relationships before, holding the face of a boy I once loved in my palms, wiping his tears, before my feet moved my sad, lithe body to the airport departures that would bring me to college. And it was over then, but I put off the heartbreak for as long as I could, sustaining a relationship over plane rides and missed messages and the silence in phone calls that is the undoing of all too many a first love. But I thought this could be different.
Landing in JFK on a piercingly cold November morning, I decided I could play the concrete jungle gym, not knowing I would be leaving a week later with blistered hands and scraped knees. The air stung every hair in my nose and I wrapped my face tightly with a red scarf, pulling fibers off my lips when the moist from my breath slicked the knitting.
The streets were filled with maps of the world. Beautiful. Complicated. Uninviting. Pointing to nowhere and telling me to not look. And I couldn’t because I was busy looking at my feet, careful not to step on toes or manholes or sewer grates or dog shit. Two trains and one transfer later, Manhattan seemed like a memory from a different life, and Coney Island greeted me with the familiar salty air. The beach was clear and stiff, and my toes begged for the lapping shore line, but longed more for the Pacific and betrayal overcame my body. I knew the dalliance would not last. New York and I could never be together.
Maybe we’ll see each other in the future, giving nod to what could have been. The one that got away. Me. Not you, New York.
