Waiting for my hair to change color.

Iced tea: Check
Fan: Check
Music: Check
Boxer shorts and wife beater: Check
Michael Weston style sunglasses: Check
Pirated copy of MSWord:Mac: Check

I am sitting listlessly at my kitchen table, a small white table that would be better used as more of a desk, in a room that is not the kitchen. As it happens though, for lack of any other option, this small white table that I stole from my old apartment building is my kitchen table. I have escaped, from the horrors of the day, to this table here in the kitchen. There are few other options in my apartment to sit and write, one being my bed, which typically leads to me endlessly checking Facebook and playing with shuffle on my iTunes; needless to say very little gets accomplished in my bed. Ever. It is also dreadfully hot in my room, even with my fan turned on high is just seems to wrap thick hot air over me like a blanket. My other option would be the living room. It’s a pretty nice room, I won’t lie. There is a big blue bookshelf full accomplishments, and things for me to show off when company is over. That is if I really feel like showing off my large comic collection, explaining that Powers, or The Walking Dead might be some of the best things I’ve ever read. There is also a couch, and a nice coffee table with a glass center, and shelf underneath containing numerous copies of various metal music magazines, and The New Yorker. Mostly just to show that yes, I read The New Yorker. Only after I take it from work when I don’t finish reading it during my shift. This room is usually a good place to write, today, however, it is not. There is a park across the street from my living room, it provides a nice view of trees, and park goers making the best of the heat. Today it also provides some Christian bands that got together to send their God awful music straight through my open window. It is impossible to even watch TV as the words, “GET UP, GET UP, GET UP AND BELIEVE!” drown out even my thought process accompanied by thunderous drumbeats and shitty guitar leads. I’d shut my window on God if it wasn’t so damn hot out. Maybe he has something to do with that. Instead I run to my kitchen, set up my fan, and write, passing my time patiently waiting to go gray, and not so patiently to be happy.

I watch a lot of the Travel Channel, No reservations mostly. I don’t often get a chance to go to unexplored areas of the city of New York, and even less do I get a chance to leave the city all together; for me the Travel Channel is almost like actually traveling. Today’s episode of NoRes sent its host, Anthony Bourdain, to Canada, spending a good amount of time in Montreal. A commercial came and I couldn’t bare the wait for it to end, instead I hit record on my DVR and decided to come back later. I had, only moments before, been talking to a real sweet girl from Montreal, and felt a strong need to get out of New York and see her. This girls name is Alexis, a name that always seems kind of like a fairy tale to me, along with her slender build, pale skin and long dark hair, she gets me in an almost dangerous way. The last time I saw her I threw caution to the wind determined to make the best of her short stay in New York. The result was something that still brings me chills when I think about it, and all the ways I just wish life were just as simple as it once was. This one simple relationship, built out of bad romantic comedy, embodies so much about myself it’s difficult to realize. It is far easier to want things that are out of reach than it is to try and make the best of what you can reach. Basically, I’m lazy (and incredibly selfish), and relationships are hard. I can’t be bothered to wonder and worry every time some girl doesn’t call me back, it is simply beyond my capabilities. Maybe her phone is off. Maybe she doesn’t like my plain black tee shirt. Maybe she was on the subway. Maybe she is out with another guy. Maybe I’m a bad kisser. Not true, I’m a fantastic kisser. Maybe, just maybe, she just doesn’t like you. It makes me neurotic, and it’s a bother. It is far easier when I know the answer, It’s because she lives in another country. This is probably the easiest example of what I have become, but it is something that affects not only my human relationships, but everything. I know what I want, I want to be E.B. White, grow old with my wife (should I ever let myself get that far) in some desolate area of Maine, going gray, doing little other than writing about how important my daily life is (to me at least).

I remember a time when things were fairly simple, wake up when I’m supposed to, go to school, go play, get in trouble, make mistakes, fall down, get up, try again, go to sleep. There was probably a good amount of eating in there too, though when I was a child I weighed much less than I do now. Oh how my life has changed, it is the way the body works. I remember when I was a kid, I spent most of my time with my friend Tyler, who was, still is, and despite how ever far we grow apart, probably always will be my best friend. Out on Rabbit Farm Road, that long dirt road that Tyler lived on before moving in with his grandmother, was his home. A large building the color of stained wood, with a large deck that wrapped the house from one side and around the back. The house sat down a winding dirt driveway, surrounded by a large lawn and a thick forest. I remember there was a rock in his back yard that was bigger than the houses of some of the kids I went to school with, we appropriately named it, “The Big Rock,” and spent hours of our lives sitting up on The Big Rock with GI Joes. Happiness was so easy in those days. Tyler also had this ball, sort of resembling a baseball, but softer, and attached to a long multi-colored ribbon which was used to swing and throw the ball great heights and distances. We would push the limits of how high, or how far we could heave this ball, until one day we started to throw the ball over the house. With one person on each side we sent the ball rocketing over the chimney, the ribbon sizzling loudly in the wind, in the hopes that just once the person on the other side would be able to catch it. We rarely accomplished this, maybe out of fear of getting hit in the face with a ball from at least 30 feet up. This small goal though, was enough to keep us outside, keeping us young and hopeful, and completely unaware of just how easy we had it.

Being all grown up now, my life has taken me far from dirt roads, and buildings that one could throw a ball over. For the time being I am on an adventure in the Big Apple, not unlike another James who was taken on an adventure is a big peach. Only this is no place for children, this is a place where one needs more than a best friend, or nothing at all. Happiness here is an endless struggle, easily achieved on a day-to-day basis, but hard to keep constant. Everything in New York is so easily accessible, transport, booze, movies, plays, parks, fun is literally around every corner; what’s hard to find are the people, the keepers at least. This city is not geared toward relationships, more flings; it is meant for selfishness, finding happiness and keeping it personal, rather than sharing it with others. It is a sad fact, with huge exceptions, but in a city where everyone is here for themselves, it is hard to really let anyone in. I’ve had infinite numbers of relationships built, though they have all been more like networking, some lasting weeks, days, or even just hours. I have my odd group of solid friends, friends from work, and best friends from family to a musician from a band I listened to while still in Maine trying to figure myself out. Everyone else though, the millions of people here, are just acquaintances that I meet in bars, through work, or passing on the street late at night. People I will love for minutes, maybe hours, and then probably never see again. All these random people, random things, are what keep me going here. The easiest way to get by here is through loneliness, to just do your own thing, whatever makes you happy. Close your eyes and dive head first into chaos, hoping only to come out the other side. There is simply too much going on to stand still with someone, too little time to feel anxious or neurotic. To little time to feel loved, or to give it. Should I ever need a moment to slow down, I do it alone, not by choice, but because everyone else has things to do. What I need now, the thing that this city seem to almost work against, is someone to spend that down time with. Some girl that I could open the door, and let into my selfish, personal bubble.

It is hard for me to put my time here into words, as I don’t feel I’ve really had enough time get a good handle on what it is to live here. I feel like my thoughts here have grown scattered, and I hesitate to try to center them, because I feel like this explanation that hardly makes sense is the perfect example: Life here is complicated. So I continue to sit here at my kitchen table, a few hours latter, still trying to figure it out all over again, but just as lost as when this began. The Christian bands have been replaced with some motivational speaker/ex-drug addict. He tells his story about he was lost, until he found Jesus, and how great his life is now. His faith has clearly made him a better person, ready to help those in need. Instead of finding something that I have faith in (it is clearly not God), I sit wondering why that redhead never called back about my dinner invitation? Didn’t she say she would? Didn’t our first date go well? Is she really even worth wondering why? Haven’t I always had trouble with redheads? What will I say to her if I see her at work? Probably nothing. I wait, with my brain on a neurotic treadmill of thought, for one of those acquaintances to prove me wrong about this city, and give me a few moments of her time to stand on the other side of a house, awaiting whatever I throw her way.