Washing the City out of my Hair
Washing the City out of my Hair
July 14th 2009
I’m finding it hard to imagine life without New York. I came back from the US Embassy after being denied a visitors visa and removed all traces of America from my room.I cannot bring myself to throw out the yet untouched (small) family sized New York Cheesecake. Partly because I never throw away food; I’d rather eat until I’m sick (never happens, I’m always hungry again within the hour) than show disrespect to all the starving children in the world but also because it’s the best dessert on the planet and I have it almost every day. This one lay unopened for four days.I’m definitely not throwing out my New York Coffee, it’s the only flavour I have.There are so many New York references all around me despite not having any photos or prints. I took back the American history library book without opening the cover only to replace with the never read Breakfast at Tiffany’s. How New York can you get? I intended to borrow another Truman Capote book that had been highly recommended whilst attending Gotham Writing School. I don’t know the name as my class note book is in New York in my storage cubicle.The occasional times I turn on the TV doesn’t help. The only shows I like on our limited channel package are American; House, Chuck and Ugly Betty although I still don’t know when the latter two are on yet. It’s good to have Jonathan Ross each week but I’ve lost my nightly fix of Dave (Letterman), my cheesecake time in NY.Many of my on-line business contacts are American and mostly in New York. Of course I have a couple of friends there who tell me what they are getting up to not to mention hearing my boyfriend’s voice once or twice week telling me about his day. Mostly that makes me really happy but occasionally I find myself slipping into a post call gloomy disposition. Clearly life is carrying on without me when mine seems to have stood still.The travel sections always appear to mention America as if to punish me. Even the Stephen Fry ‘America’ series where he travelled across 50 states has been repeated. I painfully have caught a couple of episodes having missed the original series whilst in the States, where my untouched copy of the corresponding book currently is. How does someone who watches so little TV manage to catch a show called America?Today, I wanted to find some appropriate postcards but didn’t have the motivation to walk the 15 minutes into the bustling city centre. It has to be at least Wednesday before I venture that far, only if necessary otherwise I always go at the weekend when I did see some cards in Smiths but they were a little twee, so I’m holding out. I send one to the BF every 2-3 weeks and sometimes to my friends in NY. I don’t think there’s anything like getting a surprise in the post to make you believe someone is thinking of you. I can’t remember the last time it happened to me although I did get a nice card from my room mates the day after Judgement Day; ‘The Way I see it, if you want to see the rainbow, sometimes you gotta put up with the rain, Dolly Parton.I popped into the gallery opposite my coffee shop as sometimes these places have greeting cards and so forth. They had some lovely pieces as always including an interesting display of Bob Dylan’s paintings but why oh why so many pictures of New York scenes?! I’m in Birmingham! You’ll know that ordinarily that would have delighted me but not now that I’m locked out of NYC.I wouldn’t mind not being in New York, even for a few years, as I was using it as a spring-board to discover more of America. I’ve seen much of the East coast but liked the idea of spending a couple of long weekends in New England again. I also wanted to visit Chicago and Dallas for the first time having ticked Washington DC off the list last Christmas. These were the goals for the second half of 2009.I now long to go back to San Francisco where I spent a very happy birthday a couple of years ago, my first time going west.It’s cruelty in the highest degree to keep me away. I’ve worked hard to live the life I now have and I’m being punished for just loving a country too much.Time to go home. Let’s see if I can walk 10 minutes without an American and/or New York reference. Turns out I can’t; it’s time to call the BF to help with his plans to visit me. At last.