We get that question all the time: Why New York? Why now? No matter how long you've been here or who's doing the asking, people fell like there should be a reason to live here, that is, unless you grew up here. In that case you've got yourself an airtight answer. For others of us, it's not quite that simple.
For me, it is simple, sort of. I live in New York because I backed into a pole in the parking deck of the office I worked in when I lived in Atlanta. Well, "backed into" isn't completely accurate. I cut the wheel too early and sort of side swiped a pole in the parking deck of my job in Atlanta. That's how everything started.
I was leaving work on a typical Wednesday, eager to get home and grab a brew and watch an episode of the Simpsons on my roommate's 57 inch flat screen. Maybe a game of Ping Pong and then some dinner. My mind was already opening the door to my apartment and landing me on the couch as I began to slowly reverse out of the nearly empty parking garage at 5:34 p.m.
The garage, incidentally, was a death trap. This was due to two prevailing factors: The first being that it, like the building whose employee's cars it housed, was designed in the 50's. People built different;y back then. No attention was paid to aesthetics in structures such as underground parking decks. The walls were unpainted, the columns simple square supports with streaks of orange-red rust and the parking organization was based more on mathematic principle than functionality or practical use. It hadn't even the prestige of being called minimal. It was simply adequate.
The other reason I considered it dangerous was due to it's main design flaw: cars were bigger in the 50's and less people drove. The garage looked much different back then, with two-thirds of the parking spaces that it now contains. Once Atlanta became the driving metropolis that it has since become, and with cars getting ever so smaller in the 60's, 70's and 80's, the building owners hit upon a brilliant solution to their growing parking problem: re-paint the lines in the garage closer together.
It was a simple enough idea. Cars were smaller, hence the spaces should be reduced. This allowed them to increase the number of spots by one third and accommodate all of the workers now driving to the office. Well done. Unfortunately, all elbow room was removed for cars parking close to poles, in areas which were designed to be left empty to allow for clearance. I did not know this when I began turning my wheel and backing out of the parking garage back in Atlanta. Had I been driving a Volkswagen instead of a truck I might not have heard the dreadful "crunch" that spun me into this odyssey I now find myself on.
My accident couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time. I was only a week or so away from a trip to the beach with my family. A vacation that had been in the works for months. After debating whether the damage should be fixed before or after my trip, I learned from my insurance company, who was really just darling about the whole thing, that they would pay for me to have a rental car whilst my vehicle underwent repairs. I drove my dented truck immediately to the nearest body shop and before the end of the day I was cruising around in a newly rented ( and all-together enormous I might add) Ford F150. As you might imagine however, I had to park it on the street in front of my office for the rest of the week leading up to my trip.
With the confidence of a man that has the confidence of two men, and in a newly set of rented wheels with a week off work to look forward to, my simple drive down to the beach became, in my mind at least, an exhilarating road trip with stop offs at any port that'd have me. I planned to head down to Gainesville on the first evening, staying with good friend (and recent intern at my work, thanks to me) Matt Grady. After a night of partying at my old college alma mater with good people I'd slide further south to Tampa, to see an old college friend Lisa, and stay with her in what I could only imagine as the most plush of twenty-something condos. On the third day I'd wake and head West for Alligator Point, the ultimate destination of this frantic scat about the southern states.
The day came and the plan jumped off without a hitch. I sailed down I-75, a trip that was all too familiar from my college days, and gazed wistfully as the full green trees of summer snuck past my open window with dignity. Stopping only once in Valdosta for food and gas, I hit Gainesville around 11:30 that evening. Weary from travel but filled with the excitement we all feel at the beginning of such a journey, I was in a talkative mood. Grady welcomed me into his home and we sat and talked for hours with his friends drifting in and out as the night wore on. I fell asleep on the couch, fully dressed, and slept like a baby. I woke to the sound of a street sweeper and knew that I was definitely back in Gainesville.
Judging from the condition of the rest of the apartment I should not have been at all surprised by the state of the bathroom. Still, I'm not sure I've ever seen anything quite like what was being cultivated in the cracks and crevasses of his tiles, so deciding to err on the side of caution I climbed into my bathing suit and took my shower in the apartment's pool, which I must say, even filled with empty beer bottles and murky green water, was cleaner than anything in Grady's place.
I bid adieu to my gracious host and was once more back on the road. Charged with a full night of rest and fueled by the caffeine from my double Latte that sat meekly in one of my rental cars seven cup holders I pointed my compass south to Tampa. Lisa had more planned than I could have bargained for, and after an afternoon of drinks pool-side with old friends, we packed into a few large vehicles and headed over to watch a pre-season Tampa Bay football game. We ate barbecue and drank beer in cans so cold that I had to alternate hands every few minutes to keep my fingers from going numb. It was one of those rare days where you try and slow the sunset down for just another hour so you can hold onto everything for as long as you can. Once the sun dropped, it seemed the night slipped by unnoticed.
It was when I plugged my phone in the next day that the other shoe, which until now had been all but forgotten about, decided to drop. I had 12 messages all from the night before. The times, when I looked back at them later, were all within a three hour span, from about the time I arrived at the game until around half-time when I was telling Lisa's father, in my drunkenly affectionate manner, that I loved him. I heard only the first message and dialed my mother immediately. Her irritation in not being able to contact me gave way quick;y to the truth of the situation: my grandmother had passed in the night, and we would leave from Alligator Point on the following day to attend her funeral. I left before Lisa even returned with our hang-over breakfast. An apologetic note on a torn receipt was all I could offer in thanks for her hospitality. Later she told me she'd understood. At that moment however, I'm not sure if I bothered to consider that.
My plans hadn't changed at all. That was the strangest part of it. I was still driving West towards Alligator Point. I was still on schedule to get there by three o'clock as I had originally planned. The only difference was the new knowledge that my grandmother was now dead. It ultimately didn't affect the schedule or my immediate actions, which I think I actually secretly longed for. An interruption to the flow would have been welcomed. Anything to make the gavity of the situation more real for me.
The long drive West to meet my parents had been playing in my head as a noble and rugged journey, the end of which would see me united with my family with tales of adventure on my breath and weariness in my eyes. Now I drove in silence, thinking of the new course events in our family's life would take, if only for the next 48 hours. Thanks to the poor design of the parking garage of my office back in Atlanta I was driving much faster in my rental car than I could have in my old truck. I made good time and arrived at Alligator Point with still a few hours of daylight. My parents were quiet that first day and I spent most of the early evening walking the beach and listening to music that reminded me of winter.
The next few days are a blur. My parents and I started the long trip back to Georgia where my brother and his wife were waiting for us with hugs and a change of clothes. The family gathered, as it always did, and we spoke and laughed and cried in familiar ways. It was so strange to see everyone under the circumstances, and with the knowledge that this was my vacation. This had become part of my trip.
I re-assured my mother that it was not inappropriate to continue on with our vacation after the funeral was over. After all, I told her, she'd paid for the entire week up front and there was nothing more we could do for Grandma. Reluctantly she agreed, an we headed back into Florida to the beach house that sat filled with luggage and food but no people, as if it's occupants had fled in the night taking only what the could carry.
There were a lot of moments during the days that followed where I found myself all alone somehow, thinking about the course my life had taken thus far. I wondered when I was 20, where I had imagined my life to be by then, and I was sure that I while I was content enough, my place in the world didn't resemble what I thought my younger self might have imagined it should. I spent two full days writing a fictional short story that had been bubbling up in my mind since we returned from the funeral. I slept very little and wore out my keyboard with furious finger pecking.
The remaining days at the beach I spent re-reading a tattered copy of A Tale of Two Cities that someone had left behind, presumably years before. Somehow, this seemed to me completely appropriate for the situation. My family hung around each other, ready to give support at any moment. To our complete surprise though, having each other around was the most effective cure against sorrowful depression we could have devised. The mood was respectfully gay and light-hearted. There were many uplifting exchanges about grandma and her life, but ultimately we took solace in the company of each other. We mourned in our own ways, and when we left we were somehow more complete than when we arrived.
The drive back to Atlanta was a dream. I was lost in a parade of thoughts and ideas and words to describe the trip. I saw things in my mind that would eventually take shape. I saw to it that my short story was completed and strung together in a small booklet entitledOpen All Night. My pictures from the journey became a short video set to Frank Black's Burn today, which is still one of the saddest and most beautifully sentimental songs I've ever heard. On that lonesome trip home I also hit upon the idea that I would turn into a tribute video for my grandmother.
I drove to her tiny house in Grey, Georgia several moths later and while my family removed all of her possessions I shot images of remembrance that came together to makeThe Most Beautiful Widow in Town, set to a song of the same title by SparkleHorse. I don't know if my family understood what I was trying to do, but it remains to this day one of the few things I've made that I am still proud of.
When I got home I returned my rental car and picked up my old truck. It was in much better shape than when I left it. After a week on the road that took me though 5 cities, the beach, a professional football game, a college town and a funeral, I was happy to be home again. It was on the drive back to my house in my newly repaired truck that I received a call. My friend and now roommate Brian was phoning to see how my trip went. I ran him through a version that was much shorter than what I have laid out here and he offered his condolences. To my surprise, that wasn't the full intent of his call. It seemed that he'd recently been kicked out of his apartment in New York, and before going about finding a new place wanted to see if I had any desire to move to New York and be his roommate.
It's funny to think about now, how much the changes in building construction and vehicle design have affected where I'm at today. Who knew that some misplaced parking spaces and concrete poles were such influencing forces in anyone's life. I no longer own a car. In New York, as most of you know, it's impractical. But that doesn't stop me from occasionally wondering what error in reasoning someone else has made that might just send me down another road entirely.