In two days we leave for New York

Richard
In two days we leave for New York
Starbucks, December 17, 2007

I feel trepidation and joy.

1. Laurie’s apartment is on the Upper West Side where Suzanne and I lived some twenty years ago. I expect my ghost is still at the Three Brothers Diner on Columbus Avenue, pressing waiters to deliver the sandwich I actually ordered.

2. We'll be staying in Laurie's place where I’ll visit her life before I arrived in it. I’ll see Gardner’s furniture and the rest, and like an archeologist interpreting the hieroglyphics of another time, I’ll try to decipher their meanings.

3. We’ll be moving in on Alan, with whom Laurie has shared a sexless though oddly eroticized friendship for many years. He will be strange with me and I with him, and we will both think the other strange, and Laurie will have the bother of making the best of it.

4. I have never felt myself to be an object of beauty or any sort of object of contemplation, but Laurie will exhibit me to her friends, and I will do my best to be an object. I want to behave well and be beautiful enough for her to be proud.

5. And I will remember my old life in the city and miss it. I will remember the subways, and I will want to run away from Arizona and be an artist, but I am not an artist. I cannot be an artist, and I cannot run away.

6. I fear meeting old friends in the streets. The fear I have here of bumping into Suzanne everywhere we go will be transferred there, and I will have to confront what this really means. I have no idea, and if I had one, I wouldn’t mention it.

7. I want to go to museums and see "ground zero." The differences will creep up on me.

8. I imagine all sorts of fears in meeting Laurie's mother. When I do, it will be as if Laurie and I are married and I am the inscutable son-in-law, regarding the frail and formidable Toby, a person I can’t wrap my head around, despite the many descriptions of her Laurie has spoken and written.

9. I will be frozen, my blood having thinned in the scorching desert air. My blood hasn’t really thinned. I perspire on a larger percentage of my body than the average New Yorker, and therefore feel cold more intensely. I will be wrapped up, and I will love the city at Christmas.

10. I will be tired and won't be in good shape to meet Laurie’s sister. But she will be nice and ease my awkwardness.

11. I want desperately for Laurie and I not to fight, but I worry we will. I have not come up with a way out when we do.

12. I have decided not to be neurotic and enjoy the ride. Ha.