Stepping off the 6-train and into the Union Square platform, the squeals of over-used and under-maintained brakes come from above, below, left and right. The audio-offspring resulting from the friction of metal on metal with the momentum of 200 tons of subway car carrying hundreds of weary workers...the noise...the noise...massive...it all jostles for priority entry into my 1/4 inch ear drum.
The lower notes of metal on metal, just something to deal with. Just loud. That kinda stuff you've gotta expect when your home is crowded. The multi-decibel squeals inside my head, though...I don't know. I don't know! Where are the stairs? At least 6 levels of high pitched squeal, and now there are new trains on both tracks, and WHY do fat women always manage to get between me and the goddam stairs?

The noise, low and high, surrounding me and in my head! Combined with the sudden blasted moist wall of heat, the noise is a deafening deomnstration of power, and it's as though I'm in front of the Jurrasic Park t-Rex, jaws agape, hot breath propelling my body back.


Goddam you, New York.

Rainy Rendezvous

It's drizzled through the evening and through the next morning, so that this Saturday afternoon, kicking through the screen door, my pup and I step into a thoroughly soggy world. Buildings seem to sag, and hold the structure of a soupy saltine.

Choking herself she pulls ahead, pup's leash wraps tighter and rearranges the structure of my hand. My pinky bone is now immediate neighbors with my thumb, and I no longer have a palm.

It's misting out, the way it feels at the very edge of a sprinkler, that part of the spray you can't see. I'm glad to know nature can imitate playtime.

This isn't rain, though that's what is being said on all the couches in the houses we pass. "It's raining, let's just watch a movie and order in. Or make Bagel Bites." They have judged this wet world as not for them. That's fine by me. Me and my pup, we've got a whole freshly washed park to ourselves.

We traipse across the field. Her paws click momentarily on the blacktop loop. Cross the park, cross the street, cross the parking lot. My elementary school.

Click, click, click. Grass brings silence. "Click," I unhook the leash. We're hyper! RUN! Our legs pull us against gravity up the hill. We never get to run, we rarely get to play, and the things we do instead get us in trouble. I know why I never sound convincing admonishing, "Bad dog!"

We're atop the playground hill. I walk around the purple clambour-gym-monstrosity-thing. I turn left out of a habit I haven't practiced in years. I bend down, and peek under.
"Rebecca Houston, '98"
My handwriting is clear, with every letter a different size and on a different plane. I knew how to write, but not if you considered their rules. The pencil etch has lasted in the outdoors for eleven years. Below my name is "Nathaniel Houston, 2001. TJ Titus 2001. Steven 2008."

I turn back to the purple playset. Built for climbing. Handholds everywhere, with no sharp edges. It's all wet though, and I don't approach.

It's kinda chilly. I'm kinda bored.

Fuck it!
An upside-down metal U is big enough to swing from, so I get a running start, slipping a bit on the soaked woodchips, run and launch myself into the air, grab 1 foot above my head (grab tight! Grab tight, it's wet!), and tuck my knees to my chest. I swing through once or twice, watching my dog roll around on her back in the grass. I unfold and stomp down on the hollow purple plastic support beneath the U, to see what kind of noise it makes, try'n to knock some of the remaining puddle off, and because I felt like it. I stand up and look around my miniscule elementary school kingdom. My instincts note that the slight looseness of the bar, the 4' drop I have to fall, and how the wood chips that will slightly cushion a fall will poke and stick to my skin. It's not good for adults to miss these feelings, how the atmosphere feels when it pulls your ankles away from your grip when you hang freely, how it feels to have a metal bar pressure into your gut as you somersault and twist over it, and how it feels like a different world climbing four feet taller in an open space, without a window or other skyscrapers in front of you.

Water from the trees splatters me on the wings of a breeze, so I play sailor and am hit by ocean spray in the crows nest instead. I do my job and look for icebergs. Over by the slide there are yellow rubber footholds, and a thick quadruple braided black rope the scale the side of the enemy ship, er, gym.

'Man, that rope used to tear the bejeesus out of my nine-year old hands.' I'd end recess with hands covered in black grit, raw at grip points and still stiffly stuck in their curved grip. I remember meeting my apartment broker. Our first handshake made me feel like a lumberjack. My hand met his tiny offering, and it was like plunging my fist into a bowl of light whipped cream. His miniscule arm-ending was unblemished and ice smooth, with no resistance. It was the first time I questioned the expression "limp-fish handshake." I've hooked trout with way more fight in them than him.

I've always heard it said that soft hands like that are not to be respected because they're never done a day of "real" or "hard" work in their life. I met that man and had little respect--he'd never worked with his hands, and he clearly had never played sports (four straight rounds in the batting cages will make gripping a pencil seem like knifing an open gut wound). Yet now I know that it's not the opportunities he'd been given that kept his hands pristine and puny. He'd never cut his hands on rope playing pirates, or got splinters digging in the dirt just because he looked down and already had a stick in his hands. That man had no imagination, ever.

So, while my current adult life stifles creativity, at least I know I have it. Not only do I plan on letting it romp freely more often, I intend to use it as the means by which I may achieve my goals.

Rebecca Houston '09

Real Life

The photograph of a Parisian flea market draws me in. The signature black New York Times website background gives a slick frame to the colorful kitsch on the skinny legged and weather-worn craft tables. Dome-topped, grit-covered cobblestone peeks through at the border. Unlike the pawner's perfectly squared selling surfaces, the cobbles are impossibly uneven and full of gaps. The centuries tread-upon stones battle a decades-loved cornflower colored rocking horse leaning against the larger table, propping it up for eternity in the photograph, and for the duration of the next proximate sneeze in real life.

Real life.
I look up.

Everyone sits in a row, either working or imitating dutifulness. Down the line, an arm reaches for a tissue. Houston, we've confirmed signs of life, but is it intelligent? The fingers pinch, and miss. The tissue is pristine and untouched. Pinch, and miss. The head turns. It directs the hand to take a tissue. I silently laud the closest thing to teamwork this office has known. The head blows its nose to the effect of sounding an airhorn, and though it is moderately sized, I understand why some noses are appropriately described as "honkers."

I consider the construction workers across the avenue. Over the weeks I've observed the complete renovation of the east face of a New York skyscraper. I am not behind on work.

I wonder how you would like Paris. We'd have to book a hostel rather than a hotel, as the plane tickets would eat most of our budget. "That's fine," I joke, nudging your elbow with mine. "That's what we do to our monthly budget. May as well give something else a chance to nosh on it." I even try to make you laugh in imaginary conversations I have with you. I don't know what this means.

I notice that Parisian Flea Market is a slideshow. There are 14 more pictures! I flip through them, then check airfares outbound from New York to places unfamiliar. Then I only search one-way fares to the same locations. 'This is more financially doable,' I think. I consider the one way aspect, imagining the end of a typical vacation period and the 'How do I get back?' question that would pop up, as I sat somewhere on a mattress not my own. I probably couldn't. We couldn't. I note mentally how different the thought of "my" vs. "we" being stuck feels...I don't know how much different, but different. Back to problem solving over there. Your big arm would grab me and crush my lungs in a hug that would send most of my air back towards New York, while I worried about us, still in Foreignia. "We have our soccer cleats, and we can both eat on a bare bones budget, fruit carts and whatnot. We haven't been living like kings this whole time, and this is pretty great." It's true. I smile at you in that polkadotted skate cap, wanting to snuggle up to your scruff. I turn back to the screen. Employment numbers are up, production is up.

I return to the most positive numbers I've seen all day, the one-way ticket screen, and close it.
Soon. 'But not soon enough to look for our suitcases,' I counter.

The airhorn honks again.

If you were here you'd already be making fun of her, while I cleaned up the water I spit out, laughing. 'Soon is relative when it is the beginning part of your forever,' I argue. 'And that's a plural 'your', ' I note, adding you into the conversation when I'm not even imaginarily interacting with you. It's not as if I don't see enough of you in real life.

Real life.
I look up.

Our office is a room. Eight researchers in a row. Three facing west, five facing east.

Me at the back, due west. Number One browses kids sneakers. Number Five salivates over pork recipes online.

It is 10:31 AM.

My coffee is lukewarm and tangy.

To my left, a waxy green plant which was brown and crisped at the edges upon my arrival six months ago. My neighbor, Number One, brought plant food. I applied water. It now stretches for our window. 'The building next door blocks your sun. I'm sorry.' I apologize a lot these days. Even for things that don't require an apology.

To my right, massive aluminum file holders. Six in a row, tall and girthy. They ping when you open and close them. They absorb all light, artifical and otherwise.

Talk turns to meatball juices. Something about garlic, "and ooh, cheese. And fatty meat. Not that lean healthy stuff." If I had eaten anything today, I'd hope to throw it up, as if to say, "This puddle represents how disgusted with you I am."

I try to think of why I started writing this.

I look at the goosebumps on my arm. It's August in New York City. The bosses at the front turn on the air conditioner full blast every day. The vents are back here, they are up front with their doors closed. "Man it's hot," they say with a smile, thinking 'Does this count as friendly banter with the employees? Should I inquire about their children?' We are bundled in dark sweaters and cashmere wraps. I pull on your olive wool sweater. I wish I could smell you, and instinctually feel how much I love you, as I'm told smelling has the power to do. Instead I feel the stick of your skin on my neck, and the scratch of your beard on my forehead, because you always pull me that low, so your chin rests on my crown. As if standing over our bed, I picture burrowing my face into that crook in your chest, looping my arm around your warm gut, and legging myself into your sleeping dent. I picture it rather than remember what it feels like because I'd like to see something other than the unkempt backs of heads and airport style carpets, purposely spackled in colors one can only describe as various shades of dirty.

I feel miserable. I feel like sitting in the sun with my eyes closed. I feel like I don't deserve lunch or dinner. It doesn't feel right for me to open my mouth for anything, food and talking least of all. A massive jug of water dwarves my computer screen, dappled with water beads and fingerprints, respectively.

My supervisor tells me I am not detail-oriented. She is pudgy yet boxy, and wears squaring pants with square Korean sandals. She smokes every day at 2 PM, and brushes her teeth at 3. Still, they're yellow with a grey outline.

Back to work.