Tomorrow two acquaintances will be getting married. The guy's bachelor's party was where I went last week. Yesterday they went to City Hall and was officially married, so tomorrow they will have their spiritual ties and then party in the evening. But then, one of the largest monthly milongas comes after and it is organized by two of their closest friends. So I guess we will all head over after.
This is my life. Building ties with people I hardly know. How strange it is. When I was here in 2001, when I returned to live in New York for the first time since leaving for college, I was by myself a lot. I couldn't make friends. Partly it was because I was involved with my family, its drama between my mother and my soon-to-be married sister, and with my little sister who was sinking deeper into her dark teenager hole of depression. I remember looking for people to hang out with. I remember meeting this girl who lived all the way at the tip of Far Rockaway, at the end of the A-train. I remember taking the A train that far, beyond JFK Airport, to meet up with her. I remember she drove a Saturn, a company I hardly heard of except for the few commercials from college when it first came out. I remember how desolate the place was. People complain New York is crowded and a concrete jungle. They haven't been to Far Rockaway.
We were friends, and I saw her a couple of more times, including after she moved from Far Far Rockaway to Hamilton Parkway. I remember going to Lower East Side and discovering that there were so many bars and restaurants in New York.
I didn't know New York. I wasn't a New Yorker because I knew where the hip and fun places were in New York. I am not that kind of New Yorker. I behaving like an old New Yorker who never went out but my past with New York was one of teenager. I remembered New York as a dark and scary place, and that night when we all went out for pizza and beer I realized how little I knew New York. So for that year I went out a lot to the city, not in the sense of partying, but to discover it. It was during that year that I took a class in photography and actually stayed in Times Square at night, something all tourists do but I didn't when I was growing up that concrete jungle. I spent a lot of time with my little sister, to get her out of the hole called our parents' home. (It never really felt, for me, and probably for my little sister, our home.) I took a lot of photos, film photos, long before I bought my first digital camera. I tested with slide film, and reverse slide (developing slides as if they were negatives). I did that when I was living in Boston, and did a lot more in Europe. It was the first time I did so with my little sister, whom I had disconnected since I left college, probably since I was in high school.
For some reason I still don't understand, despite the disconnect, she was the one I was concerned about most of everyone in the family, enough to rescue her and uproot her to New Haven. But I will leave that story for another day.
That year I had trouble finding a job. The World Trade Center was destroyed just after I moved back. The mood of the city was somber. I got a part time job through connection with my ex-boss in England. My first job in the concrete building, just below the tallest building in New York that was the second tallest just a few days before I started working. I finally got a full time job a few months later, in December, at the NYU Medical School. It was a depressing job. I worked with a burly man who was in love with his solitude. He was a middle-age geek who prided in being the only bioinformatics person in the prestigious research institute. I saw him a few years later, actually, about a year ago. We said hi but nothing more. Our relationship was not complicated or bad. Just not very interesting. He isn't talkative, but I could tell he loved attention, but was too proud to show it. I remember one time a stranger knocked on our door and showed a summons when my boss opened the door. When he saw the summons, he screamed at the stranger and threw him out. I didn't know what that was about. I didn't ask.
It wasn't the first time I heard a New York boss screaming. The manager from the part time job before NYU screamed at the phone once, with lots of curse words too. I thought he was also crying, from the whimpering in his voice. It always startles me when someone screams. Maybe that's natural. Maybe because my parents always screamed at us. And during that year as things got more and more sour between my other sister and my mother, the screaming between my parents got louder and more frequent. I was 26, and I felt I was living as a teenager again. I had to leave.
So I left New York after just one year. I realized it was a different city. It was safer, cleaner, even the stinky Chinatown was cleaner, just by a bit. It was also expensive. I almost bought an apartment there, but I couldn't afford a nice one. It would have to be two-bedroom, for me and my sister. It would have to be outside my parents' neighborhood. Too expensive. Too popular.
From an investment point of view, I should have bought one. But I guess life didn't care much for investment back then.
From the point of view of my social life, I am not sure if I could live in New York. I had no friends. The girl from Far Rockaway, I can't remember, but our fragile friendship just faded. I remember her name, Veronica, because it was a pretty name. She was a nice girl. Not crazy. Not stunning. In other words, not like the girls that I've been getting in trouble with. I made no friends from my photography class. And beyond that I didn't know what else to do. I had no guidance. I was too preoccupied with the drama of my family to really figure out what I could be doing outside work. Looking back it's funny how now I am aware of all these possibilities: yoga, kungfu, opera, and many more, and, of course, tango. A few years ago I heard about gyrotonics. And now so many people are doing it as if it were some fad among the tango dancers.
I was very disconnected with myself that year. I had just returned from two years abroad, just broken up with the last real relationship, had to tie up the dramas that accompany most breakups. Then there was my little sister. Looking back, it's no wonder that I needed my best friend's help, once again, even though she didn't plan on talking to me again. (More drama, already talked about it in one blog entry or another.) So I left New York, who showed me she had changed but still remained a stranger, remained a stranger, remained distant from me. I left without the same nostalgia I had felt before, when I returned from college or from Boston or from Europe. I was starting a new life, scary, new life, with my heart and mind placed in the care of someone who wasn't sure if she wanted to talk to me again, in a little city that was pretty in autumn but I didn't know more.
I left. And now that I am back, it feels different again. I feel more connected. I am about to make my first guy friends. I will meet up with one now, in Brooklyn. He has agreed to dry clean his white blazer for me to wear tomorrow. He's the one I went to the birthday gathering for a few weeks ago. And I will make friends with the groom. After his bachelor's party, all the guys agreed we needed more guy time, and have already tentatively made plans to meet once a month. For so long I thought making friends with men was the most impossible thing to do. Now it seems easy when I am ready. It seemed so hard to make friends that year in New York, but now I am having trouble finding time for myself. Funny how life works, when you have some patience, when you live your life for your own connection first. Maybe it will work out with me and my bachelorhood, that really, some girl will discover me while I try to discover myself. For now, I am happy for the soon-to-be-wed couple tomorrow. I am happy to be in New York.
I feel home, finally.
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