I Totally Meant to Do That (31 page)

No way is this not a subliminal message. I didn’t mean it this way when I wrote it, but it seems so obvious now: New York is the tiny store; buying an apartment or marrying a local would be a major purchase, a commitment to the city, which I’ve not been considering. It’s clear that I’ve spent too much time here and someone was trying to tell me. Add “girlfriend” to the end of the sentence, read it again, and you’ll see that my subconscious is my sassy gay friend.

That’s three—in a row—for the home team. At this rate, the Yankees will need a home run.

Exactly! I’m not even getting away with it. Approaching those lines in this new context reminded me of an incident that happened about a year and half ago. While I was shopping in one of those cheap-o wholesale purveyors in the Garment District, an employee, a man of Middle Eastern origin, approached me from behind and asked, “Can I see your face?” Startled, I turned.

“Yes,” he said. “You are not from here.”

“Um, no,” I muttered.

Then, while continuing to pin me between the rack of shorts and the folds of his tunic, he twisted his neck and screamed to a coworker across the floor, “I told you!”

“Where are you from?” he continued.

“North Carolina,” I said, trying to fidget out of his trap.

“I knew it,” he said. Then he turned around again, screaming to his coworker, “I knew it! Look at her eyes: North Carolina.”

My eyes? There are people with blue eyes all over the world. Maybe not in Pakistan, I guess—which brings up another question: Someone who’d traveled to Manhattan from the other side of the globe says that I’m not from here? That’s how out of place I must appear.

Here, here!

That’s redundant.

And mine is littered with furniture I found on the street—items that are “valuable for having no value,” that I’m only keeping around until something better comes along. My apartment screams “commitment phobe.”

My one-bedroom in Gowanus may not be a HalfFrat, but it is definitely a halfway home. The only difference between me and Ooh-Ooh-Ooh Allison from the bar on the Upper East Side is that I turned two years into eleven. Which means, unless I want to hang a Bob Marley poster on the wall and a
NO FATTIES
sign by the bed, I’ll have to throw another point on the home team’s scoreboard.

I just did it! I’m doing it right now: being terrifically daft. How do I not hear myself use the word “home” as a synonym for North Carolina? My subconscious couldn’t be more conspicuous. Another word search reveals that “home” has appeared 120 times in this manuscript. That number seems high, but I guess it makes sense; you’d read
bear
as many times in a book about koalas.

In fifty-five instances, I intended for the word to signify the South. But only eighteen times was I referring to New York City. (The remaining uses were general.) In “Groundhog Weekend,” I wrote, “the distinction between home and destination has disappeared.” There is now incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.