I’m moving tomorrow down to the West Village. My new digs will be on Christopher Street (gay gay gay). The apartment is three blocks away from the site of the famous Stonewall riots of 1969, two blocks away from Magnolia Bakery of ‘Sex in the City’ fame, and only one block away from the piers where I can catch the sunset every night. I am thrilled to be honest. So why did I get so emotional last night while I was packing?
I downloaded the new Scissor Sister’s album because it didn’t mean anything. I opened a bottled of cheap chardonnay and started boxing up all my trinkets. Down came the art from the dorm room inspired collages that decorated the walls. In went every single piece of clothing to my oversized blue suitcase. Out to the garbage went the broken chair I had been using as a make-shift dining room table. I was in the middle of enjoying the bouncy new music, that didn’t have any emotional ties to the past, when some new lyric from some new song struck a chord with me. All the sudden, the new Scissor Sisters music represented the end of this chapter. In a snap I was crying. In a second, my happy mask crumbled.
Up on the roof, I drunk dialed my friend Amanda back home. We joked and gabbed and she talked me down off the ledge. The view of the Times Square buildings twinkled around me. The lights were extra sparkly tonight, but I was sure the budget wine had something to do with it. I looked up at the glowing greenhouse enclosure that rested on top of a near builing. It was flashing red, blue, green, pink, yellow and black. I thought it was interesting that I never did figure out what the hell was that thing. I envisioned that it housed a large pool and inside that pool were huge alien eggs waiting to be hatched. The colored lights sending out radiation. I took a sip of chardy and realized that description was the main plot point of the 80’s sci-fi classic, Cocoon. Its possible.
I spent the rest of the evening saying good-bye to the neighborhood. The hole in the wall sushi place downstairs, the awkwardly laid out laundromat, the re-designed Galaxy Cafe, the World Wide Plaza that I would say goodnight to every night as I looked out my window from my futon mattress on the floor. The characters of 9th Avenue – the menu lady at Joshua Tree, a master female sushi chef, the cool drama students next door, the Muslim guys at the deli, the not-really-homeless cat lady on the street, Keith who got kicked off of Project Runway who had recently taken to doing his laundry at the same time and place as me, and of course our downstairs neighbors, The Pooches (who, in all honesty, deserve their own blog). All a moment in my personal journey and timeline. All appriciated. All a part of me.
And all a part of you.
