Boston
Why?
You don’t have to understand something to respect it. Yes, I do.
It’s dirty. I don’t care.
The streets don’t make ANY SENSE. I don’t drive.
The people are aggressive. I don’t read them.
I can try to get flowery, but I don’t think it will work. I’ll never like chocolate ice cream or be unafraid of my own doorbell, either. But if you really wanna know, I’ll give it a stab.
The Longest Time, pretty good for airport muzak, was echoing through Logan in June 2014, my first real time. The harbor took my breath away like your mountains do now, both a step up from Houston flat. I laughed at myself when the sun was up but the iPod Touch read 05:14 and my panic about oversleeping was all for nothing. I could walk everywhere, and it wasn’t even hot.
I had a paper map of Cambridge and flubbed up how Mass Ave bends through Harvard at least three times. I loved every dumb blue mailbox (something about the proximity) and every dumb clapboard house and every goddamn Dunkies and every bumpy brick path (except on my scooter, but when Mem Drive is closed on Saturdays, it’s smooth and magical and you can whiz by the river). I took a sailing lesson and met a man on Craigslist who wanted a walking buddy and was actually truthful about it. We walked in the summer and saw the Natural History museum in the fall and spent Thanksgiving 2014 eating apples in Davis square on account of his frugality and my eating disorder because neither of us was going anywhere. My first friend, whom I hope is doing well.
The leaves took my breath away and Halloween during a real autumn took my breath away (how were those happy kids not freezing cold? I remember that for some reason) and that first November snow wasn’t my favorite thing, but it and much worse was what I’d signed up for. The seltzer aisle amused me and the marshmallow fluff shelved with the peanut butter amused me and ‘STREET CLEANING! NO PAHKING ON THE ODD NUMBERED SIDE!’ amused me and I still go to Stah Mahket to loitah like a weirdo and listen for “meat depahtment,” because I adore accents and ambient voices and bustling strangers that I don’t have to solidify myself for, metaphorically speaking.
I loved the people like me, the darn Endeca network that I can’t seem to get away from, the ones who gave me a chance and a niche and Hungarian pálinka (not a huge fan)…and self-confidence and accommodation and ruthless banter and Eastern European escapades where I’d get mistaken for belonging and more friendships, the kind that make two years apart feel like two weeks when you catch up again. I loved walking Harvard Bridge and waving to the same doorman at the Eliot Hotel en route to Fenway’s little tech hub and then walking the bridge again at night, all the way home to Somerville, photographing the water and the leaves and the skyline at least three times per week like a giddy tourist who’d never seen any of it before. I don’t like a lot about my brain, but I love how stuff doesn’t get old.
I love Fresh Pond and the Minuteman, losing myself in Beautiful Anonymous and The Secret Room and music loops and picking up honey lattes at True Grounds and cold brews at the Kickstand, miles and miles of intersection-free freedom and leaves and dampness and snow (with gear, naturally. Begrudgingly nice to look at, despite the sludge). I love the Lexington town square when I make it that far, and Arlington’s Great Meadows when I don’t.
And I know that the snow is worse here and not even my thing to begin with, and I know that lattes and accents and late sunsets and stupid blue mailboxes and even acceptance — queer, quirky, or otherwise — are everywhere, but they say you don’t get over your first.
I’m sap and I’m stuck to Grill 23 coconut cake and the public transit system that everyone loves to hate, maybe because I tried them first, maybe because they’re special. Maybe because I’ve always been a little better at things and ambiances than people. Either way, I was raised in a place less tolerant of difference, so the first place chock-full of it was bound to leave a mark.
But who cares? It’s my vanilla to someone else’s chocolate, in a personal way that I’ll never be able to dissect to anyone’s standard.
