This Love Story Will Self-Destruct

by Leslie Cohen

  Oh you’re so busy! I wanted to yell after him, from my squatting position on the street. You’re soooooo busy! And then, some lady walked by while I was on the ground trying to salvage some of the salad, and she knelt down and got in my face and said, “Are you kidding? Are you kidding?” She told me that I was disgusting, like I was homeless and eating from the garbage can in front of her, like whatever happened on the street was her personal fucking business.

  And so I got fucking upset. Because sometimes a stranger getting in your face and telling you that you’re disgusting is fucking upsetting. I ran after her.

  “HEY!” I yelled, at the back of her head. She turned. “You know you really upset me just now. You have no right to confront someone so aggressively. You don’t even know me! I was doing my best to clean up my salad, because it was thirteen dollars and money’s been tight for me lately and you should really mind your own business!”

  Because she shouldn’t get away with something like that. She should know the results of her psychopathic actions. But then she didn’t say anything, just looked kind of guilty actually, and instead of feeling vindicated, my heart started racing from the confrontation. I needed a minute to collect myself, and that’s how I ended up standing in an ATM vestibule between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, trying to breathe slowly and get my heart to stop fluttering like a butterfly that’s high on crack cocaine. I was there because it was the most peaceful place that I could find, and that in and of itself seemed like a problem.

  It was quiet in the ATM vestibule, this paradise that I carved out for myself. I sat on a ledge where they kept the deposit slips and pens and decided that maybe I’d never leave. I wondered, Do you think they’d let me live here? No, of course not. Those grumblers outside would make sure that I paid the price. No square inch of this city was free. And yet, somehow, despite the expense, there were too many fucking people here. The island was not big enough. We were all just kidding ourselves. Look at this place. I looked out the window at all the miserable fucking people in their black coats with their giant black umbrellas, looking down at the ground, maneuvering swiftly through the streets like they were getting away with something as the rain soaked their backs.

  Fucking hell. That was midtown. Or at least that was how I felt about it, and I went there each day for work, once Outdoor World folded and I couldn’t survive in the city on my Nobu salary alone. This job had a decent salary and health benefits. Sorting documents in a small room in a giant building in midtown with only the Xerox machine to keep me company? Yes, I could do that. Will xerox for food. But each day I was becoming more and more hostile. Midtown made you feel like an ant trapped amid a towering maze of buildings, waiting for a giant shoe to crush you to death. The sky was barely visible, only in small patches, and you had to strain yourself to catch it. When you did catch it, it was not at all the relief you’d imagined it would be. Where’s the rest of it? Where is the rest of everything? There was an unsettling amount of movement on the ground—people covering every piece of the sidewalks, lines from the door at Starbucks, a drill puncturing the pavement and creating a ruckus, two taxis swerving and blowing their horns, one driver sticking his head out the window and saying to the other, “What’s the matter with you? You want to kill someone just to get a fucking fare?”

  Sirens started going off, and police vehicles were zipping by. Police vans filled with officers holding guns, policemen on horses. Tell me, please, what situation in New York City requires a cavalry? I needed to know. We were probably about to get blown up. I had to assume that whenever I saw more than ten police cars zooming by. I just wished that I could get some fucking lunch before getting blown up by terrorists. Dear terrorists: I’d like to get blown up on a full stomach, if possible. More sirens. More police vehicles. Whistles. Car horns. Endless car horns. What was going on? Should I ask someone? Should I google it? Wouldn’t that be something new? It’s not like I google “NYC disaster” or “NYC fireworks” at least once per day. Nooooo, that never happens. What an extremely irrational and unproductive thing to do. You’d think I’d have gotten used to this by now. Bryant Park was nothing if not a bastion of emergency preparedness. This time, I was not going to care. I was tired of it. I’d reached that glorious point of ambivalence. I no longer wanted to know. And what was the difference anyway? It wasn’t like I had a salad to get back to.

  Well, while sitting in this ATM vestibule as the sky spit rain out onto the pavement like it had been holding it in for months, I started to realize what I’d been holding in for months. I started to get some good thinking done, in my infuriated state, and I finally realized it: New York was the reason for all my problems. This. Fucking. City. And I didn’t have to live here. Nobody forced anyone to live in New York. It was not mandatory. You know what I could do? I could really help myself and move. I could take that job at the newspaper in Colorado that I applied to on a whim after the breakup with Jesse. It was writing about the music scene in a small town, previewing the concerts that took place at a somewhat well-known venue there. I never thought I’d hear back. But then they called and asked if I’d be willing to move to Colorado, a question I’d never before considered, and a response flew out of my mouth.

  “Yes,” I said, startling myself. “Yes, I would.”

  It now dawned on me that perhaps that escape route was also an ingenious plan. In Colorado, I’d be able to write about music. Wasn’t that the goal, even if it did take me away from home? I wouldn’t have to work at this place, copying and binding documents and going to somebody’s birthday in the conference room at three o’clock, eating overly sweet cake and making awkward conversation and feeling sick afterward, but sadly, that was the thing I’d been looking forward to all day.

  So far, in New York, I’d written about hunting and fishing, dog-breeding manuals, articles about the best office supplies in a magazine that caters exclusively to office supply managers, all freelance jobs I’d taken on, practically for free, in addition to my regular day job. FYI: there are two magazines about office supplies. The other is the American Journal of Office Supplies, which was considering paying me five cents a word to review office supplies (!), but I had to submit a one-thousand-word writing sample and a page of literary criticism, and I hadn’t heard back yet.

  The city didn’t care. I wouldn’t win any awards for sticking it out in this world where I was panicking inside and my heart was always racing because of all these strangers down my throat from the second I got onto the subway each morning, the homeless guy in the Superman shirt who harassed me on my way to work, telling me I’d be so pretty if only I would just smile.

  Sometimes, the fact that my mother disappeared into this city—was very literally swallowed up by it—instilled in me a certain amount of horror. The irrational side of me took over, in a packed subway car, or on the street with sirens blaring. The irrational side of me said: The city took her. It could take me too. I still didn’t understand why she had to be there, in that part of the city, at that moment. Intellectually, I understood—that was her job; it was a weekday. But I still didn’t understand, on some primitive level, why she had to be there, of all places that she could have been.

  I had to drag myself toward the light, but I had no idea where to find it. Any solace I’d found with Jesse was now gone. I’d tried to move on. Had gone on all these dates, these glorified job interviews at this mediocre Italian restaurant on Twenty-Third Street. It was possible that I was going out on dates for the sole purpose of avoiding the rising dread that happened when I came home to my empty apartment, the sound of the tumblers in the locks, my landlord raising the rent and then recommending I get a loan from my father. Side note: Do you think they would let me live at the mediocre Italian restaurant on Twenty-Third Street?

  A few days earlier, I was walking in Union Square and there was a thirty-foot-tall poster of Jesse’s band in the window of the Virgin Megastore because there is no justice in this town. His band’s debut album turned out to be a huge hit, haile
d as one of the best of the year, with its innovative homage to African music. Three guys, the Empire State Building in the background. I won’t sugarcoat this: the city was not big enough for this poster and me to coexist.

  And yeah, I had Arthur. It was true—I had Arthur, with his ruddy cheeks and big stomach and jokes that made me slightly queasy. He had made my mother happy. He had accompanied her to all the museum exhibitions and Broadway shows that she wanted to see. Living with him had fulfilled her lifelong dream of a glamorous existence in Manhattan. He offered me his guest room, whenever I needed it. That should have been enough to keep him in my good graces forever. And yet . . . I vented to Emma, who often stayed over at his place for a few days. I thought that one day she might talk to me about his habits. He had such habits. But she never did. Not only did she not express her annoyance, she actually didn’t seem annoyed. She responded to Arthur’s endless jokes with a smile that was not quite genuine but rather faithful. Emma had the ability to fake it? Who knew? I followed her directions and closed my eyes and took deep breaths and pictured myself on the beach, the waves crashing, the warm sand between my toes. The problem was that I still pictured myself tackling Arthur to the ground, but in a more coastal setting.

  I went to his apartment sometimes, looking for some semblance of home when I believed that my windowless apartment was the source of my sadness. But being at his place didn’t feel right either. Not anymore. Last week I was on his computer and accidentally came upon the logged-out screen from a dating website for people over sixty and felt instantly the sinking feeling of being no longer welcome in his home. He was dating again? Of course. What did I expect? I froze when I saw the website. I sat facing the wall that night as he watched television, imagining what Arthur’s dating life might look like, sinking lower and lower into despair. I thought: Do I feel better here or at my own apartment? I sat there in a daze, trying to plan how I’d get through tomorrow, and the next day, the dread of more and more tomorrows in this town. All this running around, frantic, never stopping to land, never finding the right place to land, all of it with crushing urgency, and for what?

  In Colorado, I saw nothing but pure relief. The volume on my thoughts would come down a few notches. The change of scenery would take me out of my own head. From the neck up, I would be free. I would notice the difference. For the first time, I would discover other parts of myself, like someone suddenly aware that she has legs. In Colorado, I’d be able to write without also working at an asset management firm, or a restaurant, without dog walking or pretending to like cats because some guy at Two Cats Productions likes cats and maybe he’ll hire me to write about a band or maybe I’ll watch his cat sometime.

  Sitting there, escaping the rain, in a moment of solitude before heading back to work, I felt better than I had in a while, even just to start thinking about leaving. I didn’t want to suffer anymore. I knew this place, but I was starting to see it differently, from that window on Forty-Second Street. Now, I wanted nothing more than to get out. Because New York was dirty and gray and noisy and claustrophobic and I think that New York of all places would appreciate it when I say:

  Fuck this.

  part three

  * * *

  WINTER 2010

  EVE

  * * *

  A JAPANESE CIRCUS ON SAINT MARKS

  I walked through the door and was faced with a poster of a woman being either tortured or pleasured by red octopuses. The ceiling was low. The room was narrow but stretched far back. As I continued on through the restaurant, this dark tunnel of oddities, I scanned the crowd for a familiar face. There was a Japanese flag with graffiti covering it, naked mannequins wearing gas masks, a sculpture of Godzilla destroying the Tokyo Tower. Did it have to be so creepy? I guess I’d been out of town for too long.

  I hate to admit this but, in those first few months back in the city, I was kind of a menace to society. I was wearing ripped jeans and a bad attitude. I was stomping around the East Village thinking, You just try to mess with me again, New York! I dare you! I wanted everyone to know that even though I was “back,” I wasn’t going to run the whole New York race. There was more out there than just this city, and I knew about it now. I’d hiked mountains. I’d gone camping. I’d made myself into a music reporter. I’d gone to hundreds of concerts and interviewed famous musicians on the phone while they ate lunch in their tour buses. I’d dated guys who jumped out of helicopters without a second thought. Basically: I had lived. I had seen things. I had an edge.

  But when I wasn’t paying attention, New York was seeping back into me. How else can I explain it? The damn city fit like a glove. Why else would I feel so at home, so finally back at home, even on Saint Marks Place, which was the intersection of punk and Japan and drug paraphernalia? I looked up at the building that matched the address in my hands. The minute I’d heard 25 Saint Marks Place, it sounded familiar. I’d researched it for one of my music columns on electronic music. 19-25 Saint Marks Place used to be the home of the Electric Circus, a nightclub that embodied the bohemianism and club culture of the sixties. Experimental bands like the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground played there, with jugglers, mimes, flamethrowers and trapeze artists performing during breaks in the music. It was the epitome of that drug-fueled psychedelic time, with black lights and strobe lights and the pervasive smell of smoke everywhere. Over the years, 19-25 Saint Marks Place went from nightclub to German music society to community hall to Polish organization to a “dry disco” for Alcoholics Anonymous. Then, the building was split up into apartment buildings. And now, on the ground floor of 25 Saint Marks Place, there was a very strange Japanese restaurant where I was meeting my friends for the first time in a long while.

  When I first got to Colorado, the new backdrop, new people, new food, new everything felt like some version of therapy. All my old rhythms were gone. It was like I had fallen into a maze with different intricacies and I was moving within it, a bit lost, but like a person who had been lit up from the inside. There was a fair degree of stumbling. I often felt like an outsider. There were nights when I would have killed to hear the sound of my phone ring. But all that felt like part of the experience, and it went away eventually, once I’d made a few friends at the newspaper.

  But nearly three years later, I must admit, it was equally exquisite to return to New York. The city—yes, even the old, crummy, loud, chaotic city—had become new, especially the parts of it that I hadn’t experienced much before. Saint Marks was like being transported to another world, to a smattering of weirdness that looked like it belonged in Tokyo. It was a strip of neon lights, the awnings cluttered next to one another, the colorful signs selling psychic readings, comics, socks, records, piercings, wigs, foot massages. And yet, I was walking through it with such euphoria. Escaping the city is easy, but there is no known cure for how good it feels to come back.

  Outside the restaurant, there were a number of people standing around, waiting to get in. There was a slightly demonic statue in the entranceway, and an electronic cat’s arm was moving up and down. It was the type of place where you felt like you had to be in the know to go inside, and I certainly wasn’t. As I stood in front of the sliding door, I felt a strange rush of excitement. I was going to see my friends again! Yes: the friends who I’d snubbed, who I’d so desperately needed a break from, moved across the country from, the friends who I’d decided were no good, too difficult, too “New York.” I was now thrilled with the knowledge that they were inside.

  “My friends are here already,” I was prepared to say to anyone who asked, but nobody did. There didn’t appear to be a single person in charge. There were only hurried waiters and platters of steaming food and bedlam.

  Then I saw Kate and Maya, sitting at a long, rectangular table against the back wall. Behind them, there was a picture of two feet crushing a line of delicately drawn plants and flowers. Some of the people at the table I recognized, some were strangers. Kate was leaning against Maya. They were cracking up at so
mething on her phone. Kate gripped Maya’s arm and fell into her, laughing. The girl next to Kate, who I didn’t recognize, was looking at them, probably wondering what all the fuss was about, but I knew. They could throw themselves into laughter as much as they could despair or paranoia. It was just the way they were—open and honest and volatile.

  The sight of Kate and Maya made me hopeful. There’d been some time apart, but we’d grown up together, in a way. Or at least, we’d spent some important years together. Scarlett had drifted from the group, ever since heading to Los Angeles for medical school. We hardly heard from her, except for an occasional update about the weather, for instance, “Heard it’s snowing there. It’s seventy-five in LA!” or “Hey, guys! I think I’m officially a Californian. It’s fifty degrees outside and I’m freezing! I’m wearing boots!” Maya would forward the e-mail to Kate and me and write, “I’d like to tell her where she can put her boots. Has she always been this self-righteous?” Maya was upset because while she was spending her days at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens cleaning vomit off the floor in a packed waiting room, Scarlett appeared to be studying on the beach.

  As I walked toward them, some changes to Maya and Kate were immediately noticeable. Maya wasn’t wearing those big glasses anymore. She’d opted for a more conventional, less cartoonish pair. She was also wearing a black sweater she’d worn occasionally in college, but back then it was for job interviews and other proper occasions only. Now, the sweater appeared to be part of her everyday rotation. Kate’s clothes were more formal too. Instead of her usual T-shirt or tank top, worn in college as an homage to her California roots, she was wearing an off-white silk shirt, and a black blazer was slung over the chair behind her.