So what is different? What has really changed in the two years since I checked my email at a cheap Times Square café, temped for a real estate company high above 42nd Street, made pilgrimages to “Virgil’s Barbecue” for one satisfying taste of home?
Not much. And that’s why I can still taste the fear of the ordinary, feel the numb desk legs from too much time doing spreadsheets, answering phones, filing inane memos, remember the humiliation of taking sandwich and coffee orders from the pasty, pot-bellied executives that got loaded on summer Fridays. My modified job description after their 4 martini excursions to “check out a new property?” A patient, naïve, smiling, $20-an-hour psychiatrist forced to nod and sympathize with their plights as over-paid, over-fed (on the company credit card, of course) suits with dissatisfied wives and needy, materialistic girlfriends. Was it really my job to advise George and Frank about the “It Purse” of the season for their new lover?
Wake up, Dixie Dorothy! You’re not in Oz anymore!
That’s fine. That was my education. That was my world tour. It was as if I were backpacking around the globe with the rest of my college friends, learning about myself, my limits, my place in the world, a notebook tucked away in my back pocket. From south of Houston to 42nd Street, I feel like I’ve crossed the river, breached the gates and come to a place that often feels like hell but sometimes—on the really good days—transcends it all… a little bit like heaven and Oz.
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