That Was Then…

Times Square. Monday. Mid-afternoon. Dizzy and clear, that’s how I am—off kilter from the lucidity of my memories. Has that ever happened to you? The past invades your present with such precision and credibility that you’re scared of it. “That was then and this is now,” like the title of that book we all read back in middle school…

The 42nd Street internet café—“$1.99 an Hour!”— was my home base once upon a time, “Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum” flanking one side, “Applebee’s” the other. Without a working computer or internet access in my apartment, and the “Kinko’s” and downtown café’s costing about as much as my hourly temp wages, I needed the cheap rates of that foul, halogen-lit space to write home, construct resumes and compose long, foolish letters to Spanish and Italian men that never really loved me. Look right, look left: a man logging on to his usual porno site, a blonde, back-packed Swedish couple checking airline rates to get back home.

And there I sat.