Junior High

There was a girl named Neslahan. I think my sister might even remember that name, though never seen the girl. My sister and I used to play role-playing games, and in my foggy memory I probably used "Neslahan" as a character to play out my fantasies. None of this is known to my sister at the time (guess you know it now, Sis'!).

I finally found out the name of this young woman I danced with last night and also last Sunday. She had a very unique face, her smiles very American, but her features very foreign. She was Turkish, half Turkish? Or at least, her name was Turkish. Her name was "Nesle" ("Like the chocolate minus the 't'"), but when I finally found her on Facebook, it was that name, Neslahan.

That was from junior high. So long ago. Why did I like her. I think because she was pretty, and she had really dark eyebrows. What is up with me and dark eyebrows? Anyway, I remember little about what our relationship was like, how often she even bothered to talk to me, even how I felt. I just remember that moment when a Turkish boy insulted her and she started crying. At that moment I wanted to be closer to her.

I wonder if there's this chivalrism in me still. Wanting to be close to a woman in distress, a dame in distress, as they used to say. Maybe.

Today is the middle of the weekend. I stayed at another hotel last night. (Don't tell our parents!) It was just seven-dollar cab ride from the milonga. It was a traditional one, not like the ultra-modern iPod-setup one a month ago. And this time, I was alone. I don't know if I should keep allowing myself to be alone; I end up forgiving even less those who have abandoned me. Before going to the milonga I went to a tango friend's piano recital. She was dancing, as it seemed, with the piano. It was amazing. I have never really had a musician for a friend (my roommate, unfortunately, isn't my friend). This woman is, like many musicians who can actually afford to live alone in New York City, extremely talented, based on her bio and also on the solo and the duet pieces she did last night. It would be nice to have her as a real friend, upgrading from tango friend status.

I bumped into two tango friends at the same event, and we went out for dinner together. Nothing to complain about. Bonding, getting to know people that might become real friends. But then, when I returned to the hotel at 3 in the morning, the feeling of "unforgiving" returned. I need to get out of this rut. I need to really start fresh, forget all the troubles.

And here's the story. Quick one because I have a guest coming. Someone to celebrate with me because today I signed my first lease to my first apartment in New York City. No one is around to celebrate with me except, ironically, someone who is too depressed to celebrate. But in the end, it doesn't matter how depressed, how unprepared, how inept you are in life; what counts is a connection. This woman always makes me laugh, even when both of us are depressed.

He played that song again as he watched the old factories of Bridgeport go by on a two-dimensional canvass called life. He wanted the previous day to send her a text message with just the title of this song. She would understand. A few months ago he translated the lyrics from Spanish to English to her, for her to understand. They were talking then. Talking a lot even though an ocean divided them, an ocean full of high waves, unpredictable sentiments, and the saltiness of each soul's past. He wanted to text her the title, for her to know that deep down, somewhere, he was looking for her. "Buscándote", "looking for you."

"It's so you. You are looking for that girl." That was what she told him a few months ago, on the phone, still talking, still divided by their own oceans, internal, real, figurative, insurmountable.

But now he was a viewer of the landscape turning from the wealthy west to the the poverty-stricken east, divided by this depressing looking industrial city.

"You are such a romantic. You still believe in finding the one." That was a different voice. The saline smells different from that ocean. That woman has disappeared from his life. Not because he wanted to, because time had revealed to them both the false bridges that had bound them before. That was a woman from college, so many years ago. And who is this now? He felt a surge of anger after the train past the river that opened to the polluted estuary swallowed up by the Long Island Sound.

No, there was no looking for anyone. Except yourself. Find yourself.

That was why he didn't send her that text today. He could still be a romantic, still wanting "The One" to find him (not the other way around), still believe in happiness. He was going home now. He watched the transformation of the landscape from the safety of this rickety train that felt as if it would derail any moment and fall, along with all these useless souls, into the gray waters below.

"I am afraid of bridges," he confessed to a girl. Was it the same girl? Same as now? Then? Which number?

Whoever she was, she said, "That's weird!"

Was she being mean spirited or did he take everything too personally?

He wondered if it mattered if he did fall into that chemical-filled water below.

He closed his eyes and rested his burdened head against the window pane; the movie was over, he had to stop it. His potential for joy and laughter and light-heartedness was also taking a slight break. Today was the first time since he started his tango that he was actually going home instead of going to the monthly tango event. He opened his eyes, but only internally. He remarked this peculiarity. Why was he going home? What a strange thing to do, to be leaving New York when every month this day he was going to New York. Every month he was in the country for most of the past five years he was driving with friends, sharing memories, building new connections, on their way to the biggest monthly milonga of the continent. Today, he was "reverse-commuting", back to his little village.

The City today was too much for him. He had gone and paid for his connection for a future he can't really control.

"The thing I love about going to tango in New York has nothing to do with the milonga there. I love it because of the car ride and the listening to tango and the talks we have."

That was what his tango buddy, the art buddy, had told him a few times.

With his internal eyes still open, he watched the joyful moments unfold in his heart. Happiness is from those connections, deep, ones you actually have to analyze to understand but at the same time easy to feel if you open your heart to them.

The train was still shaking, on the verge of rolling over on the side and crashing into one of these less expensive houses and factories by the railroad. The landscape was still changing quickly. His eyes still closed to all this. In the vastness of his inner world, he saw again that same choice of being happy or being angry. He closed his internal eyes once more.