City Love

Sometimes I hate New York. I hate it because it is busy and impersonal, loud and angry, blindingly fast and achingly slow, all at once. I love it for all the reasons I’m supposed to, but occasionally hatred gets the better of me and I scowl at the streets themselves. And sometimes I hate it because I’m convinced that if I didn’t live here, my love life would be normal. I know… normal. What the hell is that?

I’ve had more awkward, end-of-date goodbyes at the Union Square subway station than should be allowed. I’ve had “dates” with actors that involve little more than a late night board game and a sleep over because rehearsal kept him from actually taking me out. I’ve dated the bar owner, the bartender, the waiter, the probably-gay actor, the probably-pedophilic screen writer, and the iPhone obsessed college boy who literally couldn’t put it down during dinner. I have to wonder – would I have met these men if I lived in Des Moines? San Diego? Austin? Or would I have met a slew of even weirder dudes (hicks in Des Moines, bleached out surfers in San Diego, music geeks in Austin)?

My best friend lives in South Carolina and she told me one time an old boyfriend of hers called her when they were dating in a pure panic. “Baby! Come quick you have to help me! I’m in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart!” She dropped everything and raced over to the Wal-Mart where he was sitting in the parking lot of his pickup truck. In his thickest Southern drawl he said, in all seriousness, “Thank God, Baby. Can you watch my tools in my truck while I run inside?”

Maybe it isn’t just New York – losers lurk in every corner of the world.