Coming Home

The river cuts a grey unending swath to one side and bare tree branches finger the sky. The whole scene is the dull monochromatic tone of winter in a northern state. I keep thinking of the song “Life in Northern Town”, although I guess that was about Britain. As the bus reels on past drab old Victorian houses by the side of the road, weathered paint peeling from their sagging sides, I feel the old prick of anxiety that being in the country often brings. That feeling of trees closing in, nothing but dark silent forests, an empty impartial sky and no one around. Nothing to do. The feeling of isolation, loneliness. Me dancing around in my room at 13 listening to Bruce Springsteen singing,
“Message keeps getting clearer, radio's on and I'm moving round the place
I check myself out in the mirror I wanna change my clothes my hair my face
Man I ain't getting nowhere just sitting in a dump like this
There's something happening somewhere baby I just know that there is…”
desperate to escape the shoddiness of white rural poverty.

My thoughts tumble away from the road and the pressing trees, the small lackluster towns, rotting barns and unused silos, to the life I am returning to in New York City. A half-life in some ways. No one expecting me home at a particular time. No one to return to, hearing the reassuring murmur of “I missed you.”

I am thinking of J, as I have been all weekend. Weighing the shame of it all, I am so stupid and surely masochistic or incredibly dumb at the very least, to have feelings for someone so young. But I am imagining his soft warm kisses, never hurried or impatient, always taking their time. And I am thinking of my coworker telling me, “He likes you, I can tell by the way he looks at you.” Then I think of him saying to me jokingly “You’re crazy.” We laugh about me being locked away. “Don’t worry, I’ll come for conjugal visits.” he says. “They do have those in mental institutions right?” Later, I remember him coming up behind me and pulling me back from the raised yellow edge of the subway platform saying, “Don’t stand too close to the edge. My Dad always told me that.” I fold into his arms obediently and then we sit side by side on the dirty stairs until the train comes.

I just want someone to take care of me, to brush away those childhood feelings of deficiency and weirdness that still haunt me in quiet moments. I am far from a child now, I know.
Inevitably, I will go on taking care of myself, as I always have.

The Dream Academy Life in A Northern Town rare 1st version

Far Far Away

Walking the unfamiliar streets of Brooklyn today, I feel like I could cry with happiness. Everything seems delicate and lovely. Old Italian men shuffling into church for evening mass, laughing children run in the streets with balloons, tiny dogs quivering on their leashes, the furtive glances of handsome men. The autumn air is impossibly soft, even the incessant thrum of cars is somehow comforting. To be free from everything I have known, to be so far away from home – across the continent – fills me with a radiating secret joy. Sometimes I just can’t help but smile at strangers on the street.