Suburban Stylings

Holy cow, did you guys see this?  It’s like the good (er, dubious) people over at American Apparel read my mind (or my blog!) and realized that yes, what the world needs again are Hypercolor T-shirts.  Sure, they’re calling them “Thermochromatic” but I know '90's fashion when I see it!  Being American Apparel and thus wholly misogynistic in every way (sorry, couldn’t resist the soapbox), they’re only selling them in men’s sizes.  Then again, being American Apparel, the clothes are made for scrawny, androgynous hipster men, so I will probably need, like, a large. 

Oh right, I live in the suburbs of Maryland now.  So I’ll have to drive to the nearest store, which the interwebs tells me is in Silver Spring, exactly four miles (14 minutes) away from my new apartment.  And then they probably won’t have them because only New York City stores are receiving shipments or some shit like that and I’ll piss and moan because mere weeks ago I could just walk a few blocks from my office during lunch and then I’d be the instantly gratified owner of a ridiculous nostalgic t-shirt. 

Can you tell I’m homesick?

The truth is, I don’t really miss New York City all that much yet. Sometimes it comes back to me like a knee-jerk when I realize there’s no Afghani bodyguard waiting for me downstairs, no Central Park a few blocks north, no roommate across the living room. It’s quiet here in my strange little apartment complex, and I’m not used to quiet. My lovely little Midtown apartment overlooked Ninth Avenue, whose loud traffic fed into the Lincoln Tunnel. Around the corner, QZ’s apartment is en route to a popular neighborhood gay bar. The gays, I learned, are a loud bunch – especially at 3am.

A city is a great place to be alone because you’re never really alone. There’s always someone in the next bedroom or the next barstool to keep you company if you so desire. The suburbs may be great for couples and families, and maybe it will be great for me eventually too, but right now it feels very lonely.

I’m getting there. I’m slowly finding my bearings around the area, and I haven’t gotten lost on campus since…well, yesterday. It’s a huge campus with no sensible grid whatsoever and while I can get to crucial outposts like the library and my classroom, I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the whole place. I’ve never been so good about the big picture anyway. When I get lost I start to berate myself, thinking that for a very smart person I should be able to figure out how to get to the recreation center. I could handle Manhattan, why can’t I handle College Park? For six years I could orient myself on that island just by looking at which direction the street numbers went, but now I feel like one of those rooftop weathervanes that has been spun around by a gust of wind and no longer points due north. I know I’ll get the hang of it eventually, but this is me here and haven’t I already mentioned instant gratification?

My NEW lovely little apartment is starting to come together as well, though the more boxes I unpack the more apparent it is that my living room utterly lacks furniture. I have a TV, a bookcase…and nothing else. Buying a sofa is high up on my To Do list, but it was trumped by buying a car last week. Sitting comfortably will just have to wait until I get a paycheck. In typical JackieOh fashion, I have a nice apartment in a questionable neighborhood. Okay, it’s kind of in the ghetto. But hey, I have lots of fast food restaurants to choose from! And nail salons, and cheap gas stations, and a convenient store that sells Swiss Farms Tea Cooler! What more could a girl want?

It’s funny how attached we get to our routines. All I wanted for the past two years was to escape the Midtown Holding Pattern. Now that I have landed here in Maryland pursuing my dream career, I miss it. I actually miss getting up and going to work every day; I miss the office interactions and the weighty lunch decisions. And while I don’t quite miss New York City itself (have I mentioned that I have TWO closets here?), I miss the little community I had built around myself of runners and cyclists and all-around wonderful people.

There I go now, getting all sappy.