I drive to New York City from South Carolina… in my pickup truck. No, there isn’t a gun rack, but there is country music and I might have sung along, though I wouldn’t admit it. I park in New Jersey, drag my luggage to the train and change trains at Syracuse still dragging the luggage. I’m carrying two shoulder bags and a massive red suitcase, but the man sitting on the empty four person seat at the back of the train glances at me and then doesn’t even slide over so I can sit down with all of my crap. I make eye contact with him pointedly so he gets out a newspaper and begins to read. So I remain standing, balancing everything in a group of others passengers standing by the door so they can rush out. As we near Penn Station I get a cough so bad my eyes are watering and I can’t stop coughing and people are staring at me like I might have the plague and maybe I do have the plague and I’m digging in my bag for a piece of candy, or gum, or tissue or absolutely anything since now I am practically crying and coughing and my nose is also running and I drop one of my bags but there’s no chance that anyone would touch the plague bag to hand it back to me and just then the doors are opening and people are pushing past me and I am dragging out all of my shit so I can stand on the platform coughing until finally I stop and finally all the people are gone. I’m back in NYC.
Then, the escalator is broken. The elevator is also broken. Up two flights of stairs with the suitcase that weighs about half what I do. Onto the sidewalk, into the taxi line, suitcase into the trunk of the cab, me into the backseat and then we’re cutting through traffic so I get the old taxi nausea and we’re at 14th and broadway where I get out. Standing on the corner with my giant red suitcase and my two shoulder bags, I’m wearing my long grey NYC trench coat but I don’t remember when I last brushed my hair. There are people everywhere. The guys in red jump suits giving out their rap cds, the modern hippies hunched against Virgin megastore smoking, the thousands of well dressed women with streaks in their hair and cellphones against their cheeks and shoes which are inexplicably pointy walking with men with rumpled sexy bed hair carefully sculpted with Product. And I’m standing there on this street I lived on for three years in the city I lived in for eight. But at that moment, I am absolutely certain that I am visiting a movie. A movie where there was girl named JamieSue who lived in the city, texted friends to meet at diners, went dancing three times a week and knew the subway system without a map, got promotions and nicer apartments -some girl named Jamie Sue whose movie life I was magically visiting. I wore her clothes and talked with her friends and nobody might notice that I wasn’t the real JamieSue. Some girl who was certainly not me. Visiting someone else’s life. Because certainly, absolutely, obviously, I never lived here.
