After Hours

Last night, Lou and I watched the Scorsese movie, "After Hours," which is one of my all-time favorite films. With persistent tick-tick-ticking in the background and a dreamy score, it tells the story of Paul, a word processor in Manhattan who meets a pretty but odd woman at a coffee shop late one night, then later decides to go down to Soho to meet up with her to buy a bagel-and-cream-cheese papier-mache paperweight from her artistic friend, Kiki. Many events ensue after his only money, a twenty dollar bill, flies out the window during the wild cab ride there. The movie, which follows him as he tries to get home, is quirky and funny and almost painful to watch, but it reminds me of being 20 again, in college, when my views of sophistication and art were the opposite of who I was.

When I was twenty, I was invited to live in a gorgeous apartment over a dry cleaner store. This was a real coup as far as I was concerned; after all, I was in college, and college towns are generally not known for their abundance of spacious, clean housing. This apartment overlooked the main street (which was dotted with a couple of fun bars) and was located only a a block from the best pizza joint in the tri-state region.

I moved into the apartment at the beginning of August, weeks before the other college students infiltrated the area. I set up house in the front bedroom, with its two large windows that opened to the street. I learned that the place ran a constant low-grade temperature, what with the steam from the cleaners. I learned that it is hard to keep a white apartment, with its gray carpeting and black and white bathroom, clean, but I felt grown-up, sophisticated. I played a lot of Michael Bolton music and waited for my girlfriend, Grown-Up Life, to sweep in and tell me what to do.

I had broken up with a boyfriend earlier that Summer, and he was coming back to start classes in the Fall. I was tired, tired of drama, tired of needing someone to complete my identity, and I took the time in my new apartment to get back to who I was. Unable to drop down to the bar for drinks, my roommate on vacation in Arizona visiting her mother, I spent five to six days of my week working ten hour shifts at the video store, but when I came home, I had the after hours to contend with.

These are the things that I did, late at night, as street lights glowed: I began to decorate my room. Mick Jagger post here, decorative potpourri there. I wrote poetry about ice cubes and being misunderstood and an abusive ex-boyfriend in a marble-composition book (which was later stolen). I hauled my heaping laundry (leggings, flowery dresses that stretched to my knees, tee-shirts, rolled up jean shorts) to my '85 Chevy and took it on a half mile joyride to the 24 hour, "clean" laundromat, where I hunched over newly purchased textbooks, taking notes and trying to get a head-start before classes began. I went for long walks along the lake, swatting mosquitos and smelling sycamore and mulch; I sang aloud to whatever was on my Walkman, usually Sisters of Mercy or U2. I brought home movies, films that I wanted to watch, and called my friend, Jeff, another lonely soul, asking him to come over for late night screenings: we ate chips and dip and Sara Lee cheesecake as we made our way through a montage of horror movies.

And one night alone, I watched "After Hours" for the first time, which reminded me that I was young and full of options, and that there was a world beyond my country-college town; there was New York with its loft apartments, crazy cabbies, beehive wearing women, artistic souls, and all-night diners. I did not know people or places like this--we had Maurice, the rangy guy who slinked around the laundry whenever we were folding our panties, and Richard, the crazy college professor who wore slippers to the bar--but that was not fun to me. I wanted real life, real art, real quirk. And I immediately began formulating a plan to find some. "NYC or Bust" is what I scribbled in my journal, big block letters like the Hollywood sign, shouting the dream.

I never made it. But for a while, I thought I would. I imagined a cramped, sunny apartment, writing, a cat, a plant, but beyond that, my daydreams never coalesced. I wasn't far-sighted enough. And I was scared. Scared to be lonely, scared of being unable to pay my rent, scared of failing. I chose a predictable path: degree, job, husband. When I looked to escape from the town where I grew up, I flew to Rock Springs, Wyoming and interviewed there. NYC wasn't even on the list, thought still, it was where I imagined that I would end up. But the mistake that I made wasn't in the dreaming. It was in the stereotypical, unimaginative dreaming. It was in the not recognizing that life is whatever you make it, regardless of where you are. There is always material in front of you--you just have to sift though the crappy goods to find the designer ones.

My present house is on a busy street, and sometimes, I pretend that I live in The City. Last night, as I crawled into bed (the windows face the road), I heard the engines rev, and for just a few seconds, I was back in my apartment over the dry cleaners--pretending that it was a loft in Manhattan--eating cheesecake in bed, watching horror movies, and waiting for life to grab my shoulders and shake me hard.