Between a Rock and Hard Place

So it's Wednesday and yes, I'm back in Houston. For now. The sun is beating down on me as if it has some kind of vendetta, and again...the silence is killing me. My first day back in NY I walked around Manhattan near 34th street where my old job was. I wanted to smack myself for getting down there so late, too late to go up and say hi to anyone. But I went into the stores and into my old Starbucks. My favorite Batista wasn't there, but it still felt good to ask for my "grande triple soy latte". The noise, the cabby that screamed at me because Atlantic avenue was closed (and apparently this was my fault).

The drunk guys at Toastie's who kept asking to bum one of my American Spirits (yes I smoke occasionally in NY...fuck off), the women in their awesome outfits, the metro-sexual men with gorgeous accents and leather scuffed boots leaning casually against train poles reading books no one has ever heard of. The drop dead gorgeous Black British man sitting across from me on the Q who asked me about the tattoo on my foot then showed me his (boy did he). Then he pulled back his dirty bandanna revealing a head of lustrous brown hair that fell around his shoulders. I would have thrown my vagina at him, if not for his next comment, "I just got done doing my community service..." I didn't hear the rest...I decided not to involve myself with one of Riker Island's newest "graduates".

The trip was fabulous, the shopping divine, but more than anything, I was swimming in my own peace of mind. Waking up with the city at my fingertips, being around millions of people who generally take life in stride. People who don't have to "live for the weekend", people who take pride in taking pride. So it was definitely a vacation in every sense of the word.

Now that I'm back it feels like I've been sucking on a sugar cube for 6 days and now have to eat an onion. Not that it's awful here, but it just made me realize how much of myself is...not here. When I got in on Monday I looked around the house. Pictures had been moved, the couch was scooted closer to the TV. Things that represented D's lifestyle. Minor, I know, but when your walking into a house that is not yours, in a neighborhood that has no personality in a city that you have nothing in common with...little things like that tend to make you grip your arms, rub the back of your neck and submit yourself to tears. I was just thankful to be alone at the moment.