It was raining like a bitch the day I left VA. I had just spent around eleven hours hanging out with a person that I would miss more than anything I’d ever missed before (oh, but we would write, we promise), but if I didn’t go, I would be wasting over $15,000 in rent, and despite the fact that they can make a cutesy musical about trying to make ends meet, I wasn’t willing to look into that song and dance just yet.
I was driving my white, piece of crap car down a lone stretch of highway around 3 in the AM, when out of nowhere, a torrential downpour began to deluge my car, almost forcing it off of the road. I slowed down, turned my emergency blinkers on, and crawled the rest of the way home, a fifteen minute trip taking me a little over an hour.
The rental van sat squat on the driveway, loaded up earlier that day by a few friends of mine and my father. His white station wagon was sitting in the cul-de-sac, looking decidedly out of place outside of his actual home. I parked in front of his car and climbed out, by the time I was up the driveway, I was soaked.
It would be a running trait whenever I would visit that I would leave back for the city on poor terms with my mother, who was covering the exorbitant rent. I didn’t drive fast enough, she was glad I was leaving, et cetera et cetera until I no longer wanted to stay, no, there was one option and that was the road, the only strings to my old house being the giant financial chain that was constantly attached to my ankle.
My father was decidedly more understanding, he knew that it was hard to give up something, he knew how half-baked this entire scheme was, how unready I was to just be dropped off up north some three hundred miles away from friends and familiarity. It was a frightening thought that hadn’t really crossed my mind until earlier that day, a strange finality setting in that I would probably not see many of these people again, many would forget about me, and any romantic interests that I had taken so long to build would collapse and break without the constant reappearance of my face.
All in all, it was the bummer to end all bummers. It wasn’t something I was ready for. Plus, for some reason, my father understood a torrential downpour wasn’t conducive to driving a little better than my mother, who stood at the door. I can’t remember if “Goodbye” ever parted either of our lips, but the rest of my family was at the door, waving as the van backed down the driveway. We pulled into the night, my house looming behind me for ten feet before it was obscured by trees.
There was a silence that settled over the van as my father maneuvered the juggernaut, refusing any kind of music until the ****-storm from heaven was over and we were at a steady pace on the interstate, heading north. I had a few CD’s, mostly new alternative music that was sure to drive him up the wall, but it was his lucky day. I hadn’t particularly slept well that last few days, and the last two before I left, I hadn’t slept at all. One night was consumed by trying to tidy up as much of the mess that I was leaving behind in my old room (which, when I left, was only 10% done after a night of cleaning) and saying goodbyes to the people, my friends, and in a selfish move, spending very little with my actual family.
I had it written in my head that leaving was a good idea, that staying behind for the care of a select few that were still in high-school wasn’t my future, that I needed to distance myself from my family before I killed one of them, or ran away and was killed by a wild-cat.
The decision to move to New York had actually been one that I hadn’t really thought about entirely (self doubt is a large chunk of my life) I was directing a musical (although I was never really there; I was starring in a play I had written at the time, but that was neither here nor there) with two other seniors. “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.”
During the winter, one of the directors threw a party at his house, inviting the main cast over and a few other people. When I walked through the door, a young man, Mark Mills (who was cast as Charlie Brown) fired the question as soon as I was in the kitchen.
“Do you want to move to New York with me?”
I shrugged and ate a piece of broccoli, and that was that for about three months. Of course, I told my family about the offer, and they seemed genuinely enthused at the idea. The time came when things had to get down to the nitty gritty, they were going up to look at apartments, did I want to go, actually their car was full, we’ll send pictures. The first apartment was on the Avenue of the Strongest, about five blocks from the school Mark would be attending to study film and how to put movies together.
It was a great apartment, door-man, down the block from Chinatown but still in a good area. There was actually an Italian supermodel living in the building who was supposed to be one of the friendliest people you could ever meet. The rent was a fair chunk, but something I would be able to help with when I got a job up there.
And a week before I was to move, there was a call from the real estate office. They didn’t want one student and an unemployed no-name living in the building on the off chance that we would throw any kind of wild parties. Of course, I am the party type, never one to pass up a drink or a quick boogie on the dance floor, except that’s not me at all, I’m quiet, bookish, and have a wit that’s rivaled by many people.
It put off my move date by another two weeks while Mark’s family scrambled back up north to try and find an apartment before his semester started, and they did. It was about six blocks from the old apartment, at the corner of Broadway and Rector. If you’ve seen any of the hand-held footage of the Towers collapsing, you can see our building; we were two blocks from Ground Zero, next door to the Trinity Church.
It also meant an extra $500 each for the apartment, but Mark’s parents were in a pinch and they didn’t want him living in Brooklyn or Williamsburg of all places, buildings without door-men, filled with other people our age who were going to school and working two jobs to make ends meet.
Our apartment was across from Wall Street.
-
My decision to not go to college was a purely lethargic decision which has actually sprouted into a life philosophy for me (I wrote a play about it a while ago). I was failing my Spanish class my senior year and I needed the foreign language credit to pass with an Advanced Diploma, something most local colleges would scoop up in a second regardless of SAT scores. But if you didn’t have an AD, you could still get in with the right SAT’s.
Unfortunately, the air-heads at my school refused to let me drop out of my Spanish class. See, it would look better if I took study hall first period instead of failing Spanish 2 (again), but they were insistent that it was the right move for me to stay in the class.
Eventually, I ended up calling VCU, the in-state college I had been eyeing, and they said I could, in fact, get in without the Foreign Language credit, but the guidance office, under the pressure from Principal Connery, refused to let me drop the class. Three weeks of fighting them tooth and nail (my father assisting greatly, as an art teacher) I finally told them I wasn’t going to college, could I please get out of the class?
And they let me drop it. All it took was my word that I wouldn’t try to get into college, and I would be free of an hour of torture every day. In light of said events, I didn’t even get around to taking my SAT’s: they were set up through guidance and I didn’t want to deal with those cock-suckers anymore than I had to from that point on.
-
I was asleep in the van until we pulled into Jersey, which is one of the smelliest states I’ve ever been in. We stopped for gas and some truck-stop food, I think I actually ended up getting a salad or something. An hour later, we were in the city, driving around trying to find just where the apartment was.
I had been in the city once before, when I was eight, with my father, brother, and younger sister. We had been visiting to do all the touristy things you’re supposed to do when you’re younger, including staying in a hotel off of Times Square and visiting Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty (although not Central Park, it was still to dangerous, at least, according to Dad) and the Trade Towers.
My father has a distinct memory of me at the top of the towers, looking down at the people on the sidewalk, and saying something so very profound (yet stupid), something that would only come out of the mouth of an eight year old who still has the magic of the world in his soul, the cheerful optimism that everything will turn out alright no matter what, the light in the brain still blinking rapidly.
“I’ve found my place in the world,” is what he says I said. I’m sure he’s paraphrasing, but that’s a yarn he likes to pull out at parties to embarrass me, almost as much as the one where after surgery, I miraculously recovered my hearing and questioned the sound of a sliding door to his astonishment.
“I tell yah, I almost cried.”
Ten years later, the towers were gone, and I was moving heavy furniture into the back of a building. It wasn’t a back like an alleyway, because we were living on Broadway on the south end of the island. Church Street ran behind us, which led all the way north to the Holland Tunnel. He stayed with the van while Mark and I unloaded everything, moving it up to the apartment.
I was sorely overdressed for a summer day. I was wearing casual slacks and a white polo shirt, which looking back looked really, really bizarre on someone as big as I was. By the time the last of the stuff was in the apartment, I was ready to pass out. The bed was put together in the loft (because for $3,000 a month, you don’t get your own bedroom). Dad went out to see some of the buildings he saw the last time he was up here, Mark went to his room and messed around on the computer, and I, being physically exhausted, passed out.
Correction: Passed the **** out.
EDIT: Audio version available. I mess up a few times and add some ****, cause I'm tired as hell.
I was driving my white, piece of crap car down a lone stretch of highway around 3 in the AM, when out of nowhere, a torrential downpour began to deluge my car, almost forcing it off of the road. I slowed down, turned my emergency blinkers on, and crawled the rest of the way home, a fifteen minute trip taking me a little over an hour.
The rental van sat squat on the driveway, loaded up earlier that day by a few friends of mine and my father. His white station wagon was sitting in the cul-de-sac, looking decidedly out of place outside of his actual home. I parked in front of his car and climbed out, by the time I was up the driveway, I was soaked.
It would be a running trait whenever I would visit that I would leave back for the city on poor terms with my mother, who was covering the exorbitant rent. I didn’t drive fast enough, she was glad I was leaving, et cetera et cetera until I no longer wanted to stay, no, there was one option and that was the road, the only strings to my old house being the giant financial chain that was constantly attached to my ankle.
My father was decidedly more understanding, he knew that it was hard to give up something, he knew how half-baked this entire scheme was, how unready I was to just be dropped off up north some three hundred miles away from friends and familiarity. It was a frightening thought that hadn’t really crossed my mind until earlier that day, a strange finality setting in that I would probably not see many of these people again, many would forget about me, and any romantic interests that I had taken so long to build would collapse and break without the constant reappearance of my face.
All in all, it was the bummer to end all bummers. It wasn’t something I was ready for. Plus, for some reason, my father understood a torrential downpour wasn’t conducive to driving a little better than my mother, who stood at the door. I can’t remember if “Goodbye” ever parted either of our lips, but the rest of my family was at the door, waving as the van backed down the driveway. We pulled into the night, my house looming behind me for ten feet before it was obscured by trees.
There was a silence that settled over the van as my father maneuvered the juggernaut, refusing any kind of music until the ****-storm from heaven was over and we were at a steady pace on the interstate, heading north. I had a few CD’s, mostly new alternative music that was sure to drive him up the wall, but it was his lucky day. I hadn’t particularly slept well that last few days, and the last two before I left, I hadn’t slept at all. One night was consumed by trying to tidy up as much of the mess that I was leaving behind in my old room (which, when I left, was only 10% done after a night of cleaning) and saying goodbyes to the people, my friends, and in a selfish move, spending very little with my actual family.
I had it written in my head that leaving was a good idea, that staying behind for the care of a select few that were still in high-school wasn’t my future, that I needed to distance myself from my family before I killed one of them, or ran away and was killed by a wild-cat.
The decision to move to New York had actually been one that I hadn’t really thought about entirely (self doubt is a large chunk of my life) I was directing a musical (although I was never really there; I was starring in a play I had written at the time, but that was neither here nor there) with two other seniors. “You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.”
During the winter, one of the directors threw a party at his house, inviting the main cast over and a few other people. When I walked through the door, a young man, Mark Mills (who was cast as Charlie Brown) fired the question as soon as I was in the kitchen.
“Do you want to move to New York with me?”
I shrugged and ate a piece of broccoli, and that was that for about three months. Of course, I told my family about the offer, and they seemed genuinely enthused at the idea. The time came when things had to get down to the nitty gritty, they were going up to look at apartments, did I want to go, actually their car was full, we’ll send pictures. The first apartment was on the Avenue of the Strongest, about five blocks from the school Mark would be attending to study film and how to put movies together.
It was a great apartment, door-man, down the block from Chinatown but still in a good area. There was actually an Italian supermodel living in the building who was supposed to be one of the friendliest people you could ever meet. The rent was a fair chunk, but something I would be able to help with when I got a job up there.
And a week before I was to move, there was a call from the real estate office. They didn’t want one student and an unemployed no-name living in the building on the off chance that we would throw any kind of wild parties. Of course, I am the party type, never one to pass up a drink or a quick boogie on the dance floor, except that’s not me at all, I’m quiet, bookish, and have a wit that’s rivaled by many people.
It put off my move date by another two weeks while Mark’s family scrambled back up north to try and find an apartment before his semester started, and they did. It was about six blocks from the old apartment, at the corner of Broadway and Rector. If you’ve seen any of the hand-held footage of the Towers collapsing, you can see our building; we were two blocks from Ground Zero, next door to the Trinity Church.
It also meant an extra $500 each for the apartment, but Mark’s parents were in a pinch and they didn’t want him living in Brooklyn or Williamsburg of all places, buildings without door-men, filled with other people our age who were going to school and working two jobs to make ends meet.
Our apartment was across from Wall Street.
-
My decision to not go to college was a purely lethargic decision which has actually sprouted into a life philosophy for me (I wrote a play about it a while ago). I was failing my Spanish class my senior year and I needed the foreign language credit to pass with an Advanced Diploma, something most local colleges would scoop up in a second regardless of SAT scores. But if you didn’t have an AD, you could still get in with the right SAT’s.
Unfortunately, the air-heads at my school refused to let me drop out of my Spanish class. See, it would look better if I took study hall first period instead of failing Spanish 2 (again), but they were insistent that it was the right move for me to stay in the class.
Eventually, I ended up calling VCU, the in-state college I had been eyeing, and they said I could, in fact, get in without the Foreign Language credit, but the guidance office, under the pressure from Principal Connery, refused to let me drop the class. Three weeks of fighting them tooth and nail (my father assisting greatly, as an art teacher) I finally told them I wasn’t going to college, could I please get out of the class?
And they let me drop it. All it took was my word that I wouldn’t try to get into college, and I would be free of an hour of torture every day. In light of said events, I didn’t even get around to taking my SAT’s: they were set up through guidance and I didn’t want to deal with those cock-suckers anymore than I had to from that point on.
-
I was asleep in the van until we pulled into Jersey, which is one of the smelliest states I’ve ever been in. We stopped for gas and some truck-stop food, I think I actually ended up getting a salad or something. An hour later, we were in the city, driving around trying to find just where the apartment was.
I had been in the city once before, when I was eight, with my father, brother, and younger sister. We had been visiting to do all the touristy things you’re supposed to do when you’re younger, including staying in a hotel off of Times Square and visiting Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty (although not Central Park, it was still to dangerous, at least, according to Dad) and the Trade Towers.
My father has a distinct memory of me at the top of the towers, looking down at the people on the sidewalk, and saying something so very profound (yet stupid), something that would only come out of the mouth of an eight year old who still has the magic of the world in his soul, the cheerful optimism that everything will turn out alright no matter what, the light in the brain still blinking rapidly.
“I’ve found my place in the world,” is what he says I said. I’m sure he’s paraphrasing, but that’s a yarn he likes to pull out at parties to embarrass me, almost as much as the one where after surgery, I miraculously recovered my hearing and questioned the sound of a sliding door to his astonishment.
“I tell yah, I almost cried.”
Ten years later, the towers were gone, and I was moving heavy furniture into the back of a building. It wasn’t a back like an alleyway, because we were living on Broadway on the south end of the island. Church Street ran behind us, which led all the way north to the Holland Tunnel. He stayed with the van while Mark and I unloaded everything, moving it up to the apartment.
I was sorely overdressed for a summer day. I was wearing casual slacks and a white polo shirt, which looking back looked really, really bizarre on someone as big as I was. By the time the last of the stuff was in the apartment, I was ready to pass out. The bed was put together in the loft (because for $3,000 a month, you don’t get your own bedroom). Dad went out to see some of the buildings he saw the last time he was up here, Mark went to his room and messed around on the computer, and I, being physically exhausted, passed out.
Correction: Passed the **** out.
EDIT: Audio version available. I mess up a few times and add some ****, cause I'm tired as hell.
