Moving in Madrid

March 1, 2019March 1, 2019 Joseph Lyttleton5 Comments

I have a new home. That makes 25 in 35 years.

Moving days

On September 1, 2017, like so many September Firsts before it, I moved. Not from one US city to another, but from NYC to Madrid. As of today, I have been in Spain for exactly a year and a half. Of the 13 cities I have called home in my life, I have lived in Madrid the third longest amount of time.

At home in Madrid

I came to Madrid to teach English; rather, I used teaching English as an excuse to come to Madrid. Upon arriving, I joined with friends to finagle our way into a flat on Calle de Alcalá, a historical street that bisects the city, cutting a diagonal line through Madrid’s center. That four-bedroom flat was imbued with unassuming charm and the Madrileño aesthetic of a generation that had known life under Franco.

I technically lived in that flat for about nine months, enough time for one roommate to be replaced by another and the group to settle into individuals routine. While I lived there, most of my income came from online English tutoring, a workable if not consistent (or consistently enjoyable) endeavor.

Though I’ve given up teaching online, for a few hours a week, I still teach/tutor English to working adults and a couple preteen boys. The majority of my income, though, comes from a variety of freelance editing/writing gigs. Freelancing is both the worst and most OK way to work. It’s the definition of sufficient.

My 18 months in Madrid have been good – okay to great depending on the day. Early on, though, it become clear that my new life was just another version of the lives I had lived in all the other cities I had passed through. I worked, I drank, I wandered, I met people, I washed, I rinsed, I repeated. Okay to great, usually somewhere in between.

But, in March of last year, I met Helen.

Malasaña

Helen celebrated her tenth anniversary in Madrid back in January. For almost every day of those ten years, she has lived in various flats in Malasaña, a rapidly evolving neighborhood that in roughly a generation has turned from an at-times dangerous barrio to one of the hippest (and most expensive) places to live. Yes, your city guide recommended it.

Helen moved here from a town in the north of England not far from Liverpool. Before moving to Spain, she studied optometry and had lived in various cities across the UK. She has now lived away from her birth country long enough to have developed excellent Spanish-language skills, but she still starts most every day with a cup of tea and will always prefer English bacon over American bacon. No, she doesn’t want to talk about Brexit.

For over nine years (before we met), she made a life for herself. She taught English at schools and in corporations, before becoming involved in a TEFL academy. She’s built a network of friends here, both Spaniards and expats from the UK or elsewhere. She has a favorite Indian restaurant, a favorite terrace, and even a favorite apartment building (not one she’s lived in).

Wine and Whiskey

Helen and I matched on Tinder and arranged a date for a Thursday in early March of 2018. Then, as so often happens, she had to cancel due to work issues and reschedule for the following night. I agreed to the change, but I was dubious.

I hadn’t been on a date in well over a year, yet I knew, last-minute cancellations were almost always a sign that a date was never going to happen – for one reason or another. I was thus pleasantly surprised when I spotted her approaching on the street that Friday night. I had been preparing myself to be stood up.

My original idea for a stylish cocktail bar in Conde Duque floundered when the compact bar was packed. She suggested another spot a few blocks away and we wound up sitting in a brightly lit bar against a mirrored wall drinking wine (her) and whiskey (me).

Our conversation covered topics both common and less so, as first dates do. We went through the big three: Home, Family, and Why Did You End Up Here? Lulls in conversation were rare. At one point, when I inelegantly tried to explain the tone of my novel by referencing the incredibly niche book/TV series, The Leftovers, she not only knew the reference, she said she had enjoyed the show. A good sign.

Dates and Appendicitis

When, the following Friday, she invited me to meet her for drinks with her cousin and her best friend, I probably should have been freaked out – this was only our third date – but I didn’t think twice. If I had to choose between being grilled by (friendly) inquisitors or not seeing Helen, it was an easy choice.

I don’t suppose either one of us expected or even hoped there would be such a quick, thorough connection. It wasn’t based simply on similar tastes; in fact, despite having The Leftovers in common, we actually shared few pop culture points of reference. Rather, we aligned in more conceptual ways. For instance, when it came to our senses of humor, we never had to feel each other out.

We share a pugnacious investment in politics that’s tempered, somewhat, by our mutual senses of irony and pragmatism. Her reaction to the Brexit vote had been remarkably similar to my reaction to Trump’s election, even down to the celebration-turned-drunken-commiseration that we had on the nights of our respective votes. From afar, we follow the ongoing turmoil of our home countries, some days with more interest than others.

The world is a disquieting place – more often than not these days – but life goes on.

And then, on the evening of what would have been our sixth date (give or take an extended weekend), Helen had to cancel once again. This time, she told me she was headed to the hospital because of stomach pain. She was sure it was no big deal. She might even be able to still meet up with me, she said by text. When the process was taking longer than expected, she wrote:

Well the doctors are all panicking over appendicitis but my guess is it’s something less dramatic

That was a bad guess.

She went in for surgery the next morning. That same evening, I was flying out to Portugal for eight days, so I was desperate to see her that afternoon. After my persistent badgering via texts, she agreed to let me stop by. A couple of her friends who were already at the hospital rushed to throw some makeup on her before I got there, unnecessarily.

I texted her every day from Lisbon and Porto. Meanwhile, with a few more days stuck in the hospital, she read my novel. The first night after I returned, I went to see Helen the first opportunity I could. It turned out, her mother, who had come to help out during the recovery period, was there too. The three of us spent the evening together. Again, maybe a reason to be freaked out, but I wasn’t.

I knew by how I felt the moment I saw Helen again that we weren’t just dating.

A Relationship

In part because of her lack of mobility post-surgery, and in part because we just wanted to spend as much time together as possible, by the end of April, I was practically living with her. By the end of May, I was. In the first week of June, we submitted my empadronamiento with Helen’s Malasaña address to make it official.

This was the first relationship I had been in almost a decade that had staying power. If I’m being honest, it is probably the first relationship I’ve ever been in where circumstances – either within or beyond my control – aren’t precluding it from continuing. Later this year, we’ll file for pareja de hecho (de facto couple).

In almost a year together, we’ve had our ups and downs. We have fights, we sometimes struggle to communicate our perspectives to each other. But even in the arguments, what comes through is our similarity, our nearly unthinkable alignment in how we view matters, in ways both good and bad. The central frustration underneath every disagreement is that we both know how the other person would think and act if roles were reversed.

Which is why the good times are so great. We know how to make each other happy, and we’re constantly learning how to better be in each other’s presence when one or the other of us is in a bad place mentally. I’ve written quite openly (and often) about my struggles with bipolar, a disease that makes me want to hide away from everyone. I don’t want to hide away from Helen.

Which is all to say, I’m in a relationship. It’s a stable state of being, which is not common for me. It’s worth fighting for.

Puerta del Angel

On Wednesday, Helen and I moved in to her newly purchased flat in a neighborhood called Puerta del Angel. This neighborhood, that is clearly on the precipice of gentrification (whatever that means in Spain), falls on the western side of the Manzanares “river”, across from the Palacio Real. Like my first apartment in Madrid, this barrio reflects the older generations that built it, but youthful energy is moving in.

This marks the first time since I was a teenager that I’ve moved to a new apartment because of a decision someone else made. Which is not to say I’m moving because of Helen; I’m moving with Helen because it’s where I want to be.

When I lived in Chicago, I had a coworker with whom I had many conversations about love, life, and all that other stuff. One day, he told me that he imagined I’d move to Europe someday and wind up with a European woman. (This guy also said he wanted to learn how to play saxophone to impress girls, so he probably isn’t clairvoyant.) I liked that sound of that back then. I like the sound of it now.

I don’t know what comes next, other than a few more days of unpacking boxes. My 10 Cities/10 Years may only ever exist as a collection of blog posts on this site. If so, let it stand as a testament to change. The young man writing angry atheistic screeds and making silly (and fruitless) attempts at internet infamy has grown up and moved on. I changed a lot over ten years of traveling, and I celebrated that change through my project.

But some things remain the same. I’m still an atheist, I’m still internet unfamous, and I’m still in Madrid.

None of those truths are changing soon. I’m all the better for it.

Happy anniversary, LB.

A wedding by the sea

June 20, 2017June 20, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton1 Comment

Over the weekend, I traveled through Boston to Gloucester, Massachusetts to attend the wedding of my old friend, Kate (yes, that Kate). The ceremony and reception were held at Hammond Castle, the ornate mid-20th century creation of an eccentric millionaire rocket scientist, complete with artwork imported from Europe and the Gothic vibe of a Scooby Doo haunted mansion.

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The last time I saw Kate was a week before I moved from Chicago to Nashville, some seven years ago. To say a great deal has happened in our respective lives since then would be a colossal understatement. The roads have been long and winding.

I’ve been to my share of weddings over the years, some rigidly traditional, others idiosyncratic and wholly individualized; most find a balance, maintaining the well-established structure but punctuating the traditions with unique touches or turning them on their head. Naturally, each couple has a way of injecting their personalities into the ceremony, especially those with, shall we say, strong personalities. Kate would fit into that category.

As a friend of the bride and the de facto date of one of the bridesmaids (former girlfriend), I spent most of my time in the company of Kate and her female coterie. I don’t have a lot of experience with the male version of a wedding party. I’ve never been a groomsman and the only bachelor party that I’ve been to was for my brother, a rather chaste event in every since of the word – it began with 30 minutes of prayer.

By contrast, I’m rather well acquainted with bridal parties; for reasons surpassing understanding, I tend to be closer with more brides than grooms.

Marriage: It’s, like, a whole thing

The language of marriage is steeped in notions of commitment, which is obvious, but still of interest to me: “vows” and “dedication,” “taking the plunge” and “ball and chain” (admittedly, not all the terminology has a positive connotation). Reaching back to its roots, the institution of marriage is simultaneously a business arrangement and a romantic bond, a facilitator of families and a symbolic gesture. In all its iterations, though, marriage remains a blind leap into the future, the unknown.

Blind leaps of faith are kind of my forte, and yet I find marriage almost unimaginable for myself. It’s not due to some cliché, “I don’t believe in the concept” political stance, or any desire to remain a bachelor forever. I actually find the notion of being married to the right person quite enticing, always have. Even having witnessed my share of marriages dissolve – including my parents – I still see the appeal.

What I imagine a marriage to be has changed considerably since my younger years. In my Christian youth, marriage was the end all, be all of existence. I believed all future happiness would be found within its boundaries. So powerful was this belief – and so insistently was it emphasized by my spiritual leaders – that even once I left the faith, it took me a great deal of time to shake the idea that being married with the only natural conclusion to a relationship, and by extension, to a life.

Based on my experiences, I feel I’ve had the opposite development of a lot of people. Most people spend their 20s saying they’ll never get married and then as their 30s approach, they open up to the concept. I spent much of my 20s absolutely convinced that marriage was the natural next stage in my life, but now in my 30s, I no longer put much stock in it, if only because I can imagine a life without it and – for me – it doesn’t seem like a tragedy.

There are any number of reasons why I’m not ready for marriage (besides for the obvious fact that I’m single by necessity). A more charitable person might suggest I haven’t met the right person, or haven’t reached that destination in my journey yet. If you were feeling less than charitable, you might suggest I’m just too selfish or immature to make such a commitment. All good reasons. I can’t argue with any of them.

I do know that at this moment in my life, there’s something I want more than wedded bliss, and that’s the open road. My dedication, my commitment – the plunge I will always rush to take – is travel. Honestly, I reject the idea that I’m a commitmentaphobe. At 22, I set aside ten years of my life for a travel project and I followed through with it. How many people could honestly say they could’ve successfully made a decade-long commitment to their significant other at 22?

I’m right at ten weeks from making the next big blind leap of my life, one that is even less knowable than 10 Cities/10 Years, and there are a lot of conflicting thoughts going through my head, a mix of “This is going to be amazing” and “You aren’t doing enough to prepare.” There’s so much that could go wrong; it’s what could go right that pushes me to take the risk.

Over the two days in Gloucester, I couldn’t help but see parallels to my own unknowable travels in everything that was going on around me. The excitement and fear, the uncertainty about the future and the memories of the past, the physical and mental exhaustion, all of these reactions are part and parcel with a a big move in the same way they are at a wedding. That wave of emotions is inevitable whenever you take a risk; it can become intoxicating. When it’s all said and done, we leap because we believe.

At the wedding, tears were in abundance before, during, and after the ceremony, from Kate and her groom, from the bridesmaids and the guests, and even from the officiant. There was talk of nerves and moments of stress throughout the weekend, but before the sun had set on Sunday evening, a new couple had taken the plunge together and the long path to their union was completed, one journey having reached its end, another just beginning.

Congratulations to Kate and Aaron; here’s hoping that every leap they take together only raises them higher and higher.

As for me, well, I don’t know if I’ll ever take the matrimonial leap. It’s always an option, but it’s not the only road out there. I’ve got plenty of other plunges ahead of me.

Epilogue

May 16, 2017August 12, 2022 Joseph Lyttleton6 Comments

“Are you happy?” She asked me.

It’s been nearly two years since I reached the end of 10 Cities/10 Years. My first year in New York came to an end, and a second one started with little fanfare. I had girded myself for a come down period, but I wasn’t prepared for it to come so soon, or so brutally. Apparently, ten years of moving had trained my body to crave change and it didn’t react well to being deprived.

It was the deepest mental crash I’d experienced since New Orleans, triggering a complete emotional and physical exhaustion. My first year in Brooklyn had been exhilarating, but now everything curdled in my vision as I felt walls closing in. For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have a goal. I needed purpose.

One Last Story

We barely spoke to each other as Ruth drove me back to my Bed-Stuy apartment. This would be her first time coming to my neighborhood with me. She wasn’t staying. We pulled up to my front door, parking briefly. I leaned over, kissed her goodnight, and then, before opening the door, paused.

“This is over, isn’t it?” I asked.

We met on a dating app.

A week after I moved to Brooklyn, I downloaded the Tinder app to my phone. A week later, I went on my first Tinder date. That woman cheerfully offered to give me a tour of Brooklyn. We walked around on a drizzly end-of-summer Saturday, had a few drinks, and exchanged the details of our lives. It was the prototypical first date.

Our second date was a concert. We had a pleasant but unspectacular time before kissing goodnight. Then she went out of town and when she returned, she texted me that it wasn’t a good time for a relationship (I later learned this was a common dating trick: use a trip out of town to ghost an unwanted date). I said I understood and moved on. I ignored the app for another year.

It was a couple months after Sophie left that I tried Tinder again. As it turns out, my life is great fodder for casual conversation – one Tinderalla called it “the perfect first date story,” and she had a point. If a conversation was stalling on a date, I could turn the subject to some city I had lived in and it would open up all new avenues.

Dates came in waves. Some weeks, I saw two or three different women, and other weeks all matches went ignored. There were numerous first dates, a smattering of second ones, and on a few occasions, I made it to a third. The fourth remained out of reach. It got to the point that getting past the third date seemed like a milestone.

I’m certainly not the first person to feel that dating apps essentially make a game of the whole endeavor. With each fleeting connection, as the fourth date grew more elusive, it started to reinforce that game mentality, with each date feeling like a level to be reached and beat. There was a goal to be achieved. But I kept dying at the same spot. Reset.

Though a lot could certainly happen in between a first and third date, I convinced myself that what I wanted – a lasting relationship, a reason to stay, a purpose for a life in Brooklyn – waited right on the other side.

Yeah I was losing, but I was having fun playing all the same. There were good conversations, making out, even a couple one-night stands. Some connections felt more substantial than others, and it was disappointing when they fizzled out. Trysts were a nice enough distraction, but I was, perhaps naively, hoping for more. I’d spent the previous decade ricocheting between wildly impractical love affairs and loneliness. I was ready to try a stable relationship. Didn’t I deserve one?

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I decided to expand my pool of dates by downloading Bumble, an app practically identical to Tinder except that it requires women to start the conversation. It appealed to my shy nature and I appreciated that it gave women more control. I’ve seen enough Tinder Nightmare posts to feel bad for every women, ever. The connections on Bumble were, indeed, better. It was harder to get to the first date, but when I did, it didn’t feel like we were wasting each other’s time, even when it didn’t go anywhere.

I connected with Ruth on Bumble in June. For our first date, over drinks and appetizers, we talked literature and our different upbringings – she grew up in New York City and had lived there most of her life – and when the night was over, I walked her to her bus. Our second date was a sushi dinner in Brooklyn Heights. Afterwards, we walked along the Promenade and kissed in the glare of passing traffic.

Our third date took place at a Celebrate Brooklyn concert in Prospect Park. She arrived fifteen minutes late, and partially into the date, one of her friends joined us. This felt like a signal, the brush off, so I was surprised when she proffered an invitation to her Cobble Hill place following the concert. The next morning, we made tentative plans for a fourth date.

As that night approached, I anticipated a text saying she was sick or she had to work, any of a dozen excuses I’d been given by past connections. Instead, she arrived (late) for dinner. The date itself wasn’t particularly interesting – we saw a movie she didn’t enjoy and then returned to her place – but we had reached a fourth date. It felt momentous.

More dates followed, usually ending at her place. I met her friends and her parents, even attended her father’s poetry reading. She went out of town for a week around the 4th of July and when she returned she didn’t blow me off. She had me over on a particularly scorching Wednesday night and cooked us dinner. My friends, who hadn’t met Ruth, took to referring to her as my “girlfriend.”

The following Saturday, we returned to Prospect Park for another concert. She was late again. From the moment she arrived, I could sense her absence. I knew she had just received some upsetting family news so I chalked it up to that. Back at her place later that night, though, she turned to me and confessed in her matter-of-fact way, “I feel ambivalent about you.”

She clarified that she wasn’t disinterested, just uncertain. She had strong feelings about me in opposite directions. I suppose she thought that would be reassuring. As best she could articulate, my best quality appeared to be that I was “nice.” Never a good sign.

We hashed out our feelings for maybe an hour and the next morning the tension had dissipated. We went to a neighborhood coffee shop to work next to each other. If felt like a couple thing to do. I’d started to relax when, as we walked back to her apartment, she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and said, with a pitying smile, “I don’t want you to worry about how I feel.”

Yeah right.

We didn’t talk again until Thursday night when I received an unexpected call from her. I’d spent the week bracing for her to end things, so I was shocked when she invited me to join her and a group of friends for a weekend trip upstate.

The weekend was almost perfect. There was swimming in a pond and climbing waterfalls. We cooked BBQ and drank, roasted s’mores and played games. Group conversations covered religion, politics, and art. The trip felt like a turning point; Ruth appeared to be giving me admission into her group of friends. It was somewhere to belong.

And yet, I could still sense it: Ruth’s ambivalence.

The next weekend, we went to see Louis CK perform (this was well before the accusations of misconduct were public). She picked me up, arriving early this time, and drove us to the show out in Forest Hills. On the way, I noticed her respond to a message on Bumble. Ruth’s distance was palpable – while waiting in line, I tried to hold her hand and she pulled away. We both laughed heartily through Louis’ typically brilliant set, even as he touched on the uncomfortably relevant topic of doomed relationships.

She took me home – she had an excuse for why I couldn’t come over that night – an interminable drive. Sitting mostly in silence, I spent the time working up the nerve to ask the question I knew would end our nascent relationship. After I asked her if it was over and she answered in the affirmative, we talked for another ten minutes, exchanging only a few words. While she didn’t feel strongly for me, she couldn’t bring herself to break up with me. I had to break up with myself.

“I don’t want you to be sad,” she said as I prepared to exit her car. I almost managed a grin. She had never had a say in that.

We’d only been seeing each other a month and a half.

I was, of course, sad after the break up, but not devastated. Even in the moment I could recognize that we had never really clicked as a couple, and that I had placed undue weight on the relationship because of that arbitrary fourth date milestone. I was rushing towards a fabricated resolution because I wanted there to be an endgame.

Ruth was a smart and funny woman, independent and focused. She had her failings, everyone does, but they were irrelevant. She was a reminder of the greatest gift that 10 Cities/10 Years had given me: a surplus of remarkable, strong women in my life. So many, in fact, that in these chapters, I’ve barely scratched the surface. There are so many more stories left untold.

I count myself incredibly lucky for all the women who have come into my life, some for only a matter of months (or days), others for years, and maybe even life. Their perspective has changed me for the better, their support sustained me, their creativity, grace, and beauty invigorated me when I had lost the will to continue. 10 Cities/10 Years was a journey from boyhood to manhood, and women were my guide.

A couple months after Ruth exited my life, my travel companion, Emily, and I took a trip to Spain together. I had a revelation. Upon returning to the States, I deleted Bumble. I resolved to forgo dating for the next year in order to save for a move abroad, a decision that was met with some skepticism by my friends. But if there’s one thing more enticing to me than love, it’s the road.

I thought that when I reached New York I would feel a sense of place, of purpose. I believed that the city would be a star of too great a gravity to escape, that I would finally find a home. And I do feel at home in Brooklyn, I do feel a sense of belonging. Maybe I could be happy and in love here. Why not?

But I haven’t reached the end of the road.

Now I get asked a lot, “What’s the plan?” How long will I be in Spain? What will I do after that? When will I come back? The answer, to all questions, is, I don’t know. There isn’t a plan this time; no goal, no purpose. I’m going because it’s where I want to be right now. That’s enough.

I’m not looking for a destination, anymore. It can find me if it wants to.

“Are you happy?” She asked me. This woman who had been the center of my world at one point had all but vanished from my life. We hadn’t spoken in years. She has a good life now, a happy one. The life she deserves. I may never be a part of it again.

I couldn’t answer her question. I’ve never been able to. The answer isn’t yes or no, it’s a treatise.

I’m alive. For however long as that’s still true, it’ll suffice.

Read the whole book.

A photo of Brooklyn Bridge in black and white

The Art of Jumping

May 9, 2017May 19, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton40 Comments

X

[Names are whatever I want them to be]

I spent much of my youth with a group of boys, which explains why I was such a surly kid. Following church one Sunday afternoon, where the message had been “Good Ideas vs. God Ideas” (your wisdom or God’s wisdom), a group of us gathered at a buddy’s place to hang out and be teenage boys.

From a tall tree in that friend’s backyard, a zip line had been attached that shot across the yard to a patch of grass a dozen or so yards off. This bright summer day, the boys were taking turns riding, but there was a hold out: Dylan. No matter how much the other boys badgered him, Dylan wouldn’t ride the line.

“I don’t think it’s safe,” he protested.

“Well, maybe that’s a good idea,” a kid named Chet intoned, “but is it a God idea?”

It says something about Christian youth that, even as a joke, that line still worked: Dylan climbed the tree. I surmise the jumping off spot for the zip line must have been roughly three stories, though details are fuzzy: let’s say at least 25 feet. By the point Dylan was stepping up to the ledge, at least four or five other boys had already ridden the line.

Effectively goaded, Dylan stepped out of the tree, putting all of his faith in the strength of the line, and immediately dropped. The line snapped. He hit the ground like a rock.

There is an art to jumping out of a tree, and Dylan apparently had forgotten it: Instead of bending his legs and rolling with the momentum, he locked his knees and came straight down on his feet. Following that fall, Dylan spent the next few weeks in a wheelchair, though nothing was broken, only bruised.

When Dylan hit the ground, he went fetal, writhing in pain. The rest of us were frozen in a mixture of shock and awe until Chet broke the silence with the soundest theological statement I’ve ever heard:

“Maybe it was a God idea.”

Meet Cute

I met Sophie the way all New Yorkers meet: outside a Williamsburg coffee shop after attending an independent movie premiere. This short film, about the Manson Family, had been created by a friend and his theater troupe. At 30 minutes, it was an artfully shot re-enactment of rape and murder, a feel good romp if ever there was one.

Sophie, not part of the troupe but involved in theater, had a role in the film. The post-screening party was being hosted at a nearby Starbucks that also served alcohol. When the only two people I knew were otherwise engaged, I wound up outside conversing with a group that included Sophie and another woman, Amy.

With the party unwinding, Sophie, Amy, and I, joined by some guy named Stan, continued our night at Rosemary’s around the corner. As tends to happen with the male of the species, once in a booth, Stan brashly hijacked the conversation and soon the ladies and I were communicating telepathically to make our escape.

After telling Stan we were calling it a night, the three of us regrouped outside and Sophie suggested that we prolong the night back at her Greenpoint apartment. Though late, her place was just past McCarren Park, so we hoofed it. Along the way, spurred by the admission of my Kansas youth, we turned to the topic of climbing trees, as you do.

“Everyone climbs trees in Kansas,” I probably said, because this is factually accurate.

“I never have,” Sophie admitted. Since alcohol was involved, her confession became a challenge.

The London Planetrees lining the park weren’t as sturdy as the cottonwoods I had grown up with, but they’d do. Showing surprising dexterity, I scurried up one and straddled the lowest hanging limb. Proud that I could still get up a tree in my 30s, I jumped out with ease, a height of maybe eight feet. It was Sophie’s turn, now.

We selected a suitable option and with a little assistance from Amy and I, Sophie scampered up the tree’s white tree trunk. As she settled into the nook between its three branching limbs, her expression was a mixture of relief and mild terror.

Reveling in the glorious absurdity of our endeavor, I neglected to mention the most important part of climbing a tree: the dismount. Leaving Sophie in her perch, Amy and I chatted a few feet away when, in our peripheral, we saw Sophie come sailing down.

The art of jumping out of a tree is best learned when you’re a child and your body is made out of rubber. You might start by cautiously sliding your ass along the trunk until you’re on the ground with a scratched up back, or maybe you just take a haphazard leap and limp off the impact. Eventually, having done it enough times, you develop a second nature for it.

Having never climbed a tree in her youth, Sophie wasn’t practiced in this particular skill. Landing firmly on her ankles, she crumbled to the ground. Amy and I raced to her side and helped her up. Attempting to put weight on her right foot, Sophie yelped in pain.

“I think I broke my foot,” she fretted.

Imbued with the confidence of manhood and alcohol, I replied, “I doubt it. You probably just bruised your ankle.”

Though she was in evident pain – just how much, I didn’t realize at the time – we continued walking to Sophie’s apartment, she directing from the rear. Once there, we poured more drinks while Sophie elevated her leg. Removing her boot proved a struggle as her foot had ballooned inside. Now a discolored rainbow, I nonetheless surmised with my expert medical opinion that it was a minor injury. With enough ice, she’d be fine in a day or two.

A little later, I passed out on the couch while the two women talked. In the morning, Amy urged Sophie to see a doctor, but she was reluctant and I was still confident that it was unnecessary. However, since Sophie was struggling to walk and Amy had to go to work, I volunteered to hang out for the day. It was Friday morning, I didn’t work again until Saturday afternoon.

We whiled away the hours conversing and watching television on her couch. We ordered Chinese food for lunch. When the dog needed to go out, I walked him. There was such an easy, natural tempo to our conversation that we never hit a lull, whether we talked family, politics, or art. We delved into our pasts, those dark passages that few others ever saw. The sun rose and fell across her apartment’s bay windows.

It was almost dusk and the progression of the day had brought us together, our legs touching as I argued with myself whether or not I should kiss her. It seemed a foregone conclusion, but I’d been wrong before.

Glancing at me sideways, Sophie inquired, “So… is it wrong to fuck a cripple?”

I laughed.

Friday became Saturday. I made a few half-hearted efforts to exit throughout the morning, eventually leaving some time after noon to return to my Bed-Stuy apartment and get ready for work.

In my absence, a worried Amy returned and brought Sophie to urgent care. That night at work, I received a text:

My foot is broken.

I’d been in Brooklyn for eight months.

Flashback

New York City couldn’t possibly live up to my fantasies, to the extended nine year tease I had put myself through; and yet, in many ways, it somehow did. Every free afternoon, I walked the borough, barely scratching Brooklyn’s 97 square miles. There was art and music and the quintessential melting pot of diverse residents. My first full weekend in the city, I saw Spoon play a rollicking concert in Central Park while the sun set over the treetops. Purely cinematic.

Shortly after my arrival, I attended a rooftop party at my apartment and met a young French photographer studying in the city for the semester. We had a brief, caustic affair and then she returned to Paris. Meanwhile, I served tables in Park Slope, one of the many neighborhoods in Brooklyn where the locals will proudly tell you how it had once been a much different, rougher neighborhood. Now, their dog walkers make six figures a year.

Naturally, New York tried to kick my ass. That’s what it does. It’s impatient and unkind, expensive and exclusive, unimpressed by anything you’ve ever done. The city doesn’t need you or want you, thank you very much; although, it’ll gladly have another meal.

And this is the easy version of New York City. Most everyone will report with nostalgia how much harder – and better – this city used to be. Nothing will ever be greater than the past.

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Montage

Sophie’s broken foot complicated matters. She could no longer continue her theater internship, her main reason for being in the city. A job was out of the question and she was essentially immobile, Brooklyn being hostile to the hobbled. When not working, I was invariably with her.

After a few weeks, we attempted a visit to my apartment, a fourth floor walk-up. Our collective restiveness induced Sophie to push herself – and her foot – sooner than she should have. Every time Sophie thought her cast could come off, a new complication extended her recovery. As the weeks turned into months, my guilt grew exponentially, her every grimace a reminder that I had played an active role in her agony.

Sophie was immensely frustrated by her lack of mobility and her inability to take advantage of New York City’s lucrative theater network. She sought other avenues for pursuing her artistic ambitions. Having no great affinity for the city, no reason to chain herself to New York, she figured “why not?” and applied to numerous graduate schools, most of them in England where she had spent much of her childhood.

Though we were simpatico on most every level, our nights occasionally flipped from romantic to adversarial seemingly on a dime. We shared ideals, but some conversational tangents could splinter us, as tends to happen with any two headstrong people. Scotch might have been a factor.

Everything between us felt emotionally charged, whether discussing our pasts or our ill-defined futures, during physical intimacy or a heated argument. She challenged me, as a writer, as a thinker, as a man. She could infuriate me – and I her – but conversations with her never ended without me questioning my assumptions, and that’s a rare talent.

She was just as talented as a writer. Every grad school she applied to, most of them prestigious, accepted her. She had her pick of the litter. She was to be in England by September.

At the end of July, not even three months after we met, and less than a week after having her cast removed, Sophie flew to Washington to spend time with family before her next journey.

I don’t suppose either one of us thought we were built for the long-term. We’d both been nomads. So much of the fire between us was in the immediacy, the sense that neither one of us had ever known permanence – maybe we never would – but at least for a few hours together the outside world’s beckoning wasn’t so loud.

I would have taken more time with her, but she couldn’t stay. New York City wasn’t where she belonged; it wasn’t where she was going to make her mark. And she’ll make her mark. She’s a resolute woman, audacious in her convictions. She was always going to jump; I can’t wait to see her land.

Like few others, Sophie’s voice continues to ring in my ears. It’s the voice of my conflicting internal monologue, challenging my opinions and making me step back from my preconceptions. It’s telling me to listen more, speak less. I’m still debating with Sophie in my head, and she’s still winning.

The Final Reel

For the final week of 10 Cities/10 Years, as my first year in New York City came to an end, I hit the road with Emily. She was moving back west, from Boston to Los Angeles, after graduating from nursing school. Our route this time took us through Kansas where we spent a night with my family before continuing to see her brother in Flagstaff and on to Long Beach.

I stayed with Emily’s family for a couple days and revisited Costa Mesa where I met up with Selene who’d recently moved back home. After all the cities, all my experiences over the past decade, it felt like the pieces were being reset with the project’s conclusion. Maybe there would be nothing to show for the effort. No matter, that’s life.

On the last Saturday of August, I returned to New York to be alone.

There’s one detail I left out of Dylan’s story. Another kid didn’t ride the zip line that day: Me. I was just as scared as he was; more so, because not even God could get me up that tree. No one ever called me a particularly adventurous child, which is why I’m sure it surprised more than a few people when I embarked on this journey.

Ten years of constant uncertain, of impending financial ruin and personal angst – of being out on a limb – and I am no less afraid than when I set out. Anxiety still roils my gut when I enter an unfamiliar social situation, whether it be a new job or a packed bar. The self-doubts, the fear, it never abates.

I live with that fear every day, and I always will. It’s my main reason for climbing trees: so I’ll have to jump.

Read from the beginning

St. Roch Blues: A storm rages in New Orleans

April 25, 2017May 19, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Chapter VIII

[Names have been changed]

“I love you,” I whispered. Perched on my chest, Ava repeated the words back to me.

A little over a week later, she broke us up to be with someone else.

This story is, as all of them are, more complex, but in the next weeks, as I obsessively replayed the movie in my mind, these were the only two plot points that mattered.

We met in Chicago when we were both in long-term relationships. Like my own relationship at the time, Ava’s was perpetually rocky, and so we confided in one another about the circumstances of our dissatisfaction, as friends.

Then she visited me two summers later. Newly single, she and another friend, Nadie, came to explore Seattle, beauties sans commitments. On the first night of their visit, having given them my bedroom for their stay, I was preparing to sleep on the couch when Ava came into the living room, bent over, and kissed me on the lips.

I’d never had a woman make the first move before and it caught me quite by surprise. The following day was spent exchanging furtive looks until that night, with Nadie gone to bed, Ava once again came to me. A couple days later, the two of them returned to Chicago and that was to be the end of it.

The Air

New Orleans is far and away the most idiosyncratic city of all I’ve lived in, a village from the past thrust haphazardly into the future, with a personality so distinct that, at times, it could feel like a foreign country. It was exhilarating, but also wearying.

I avoided Hurricane Isaac by three days, but not the damage. Almost all of New Orleans outside the economic hub of the French Quarter was without power. With temperatures in the 90s and humidity thick as taffy, I sweated through my first weekend, unable to sleep, crushed by the atmosphere.

Like many of the inhabitants of New Orleans, my new roommate, Donatella, was not locally grown but had nonetheless embraced the city as her one true home. She did her best to give me a proper welcome, greeting me with a shot of vodka the moment I stepped out of the taxi before bar hopping me to the French Quarter. Insistent air conditioners whirled in the Quarter, but there was no escaping the oppressive heat.

I wasn’t suffering alone. The entire city was on edge, even with Southern Decadence providing a festive aura of greased up, naked men dancing in the streets. My first night, I tagged along with Donatella who was tending bar at the AllWays Lounge, a home and performance space for the proud mutants and outsiders of New Orleans. Nudity and liquor were flowing, but the move and the heat had melted my energy.

“One second,” Donatella commanded after I told her I was calling it a night. Reaching under the counter and into her bag, she came back up wearing her radiant, incorruptible smile and holding out a box cutter. “Take this. Just in case.” The darkened St. Roch neighborhood was no place to walk without protection, especially on a roiling September night.

The Clouds

As had been the case with some of my previous moves, a budding romance distracted me from the difficulties of adjusting to a new locale. This year, it was Ava.

Ever since Seattle, we’d been exchanging daily texts and emails, with plans for her to visit in October. Built upon a three-year friendship, our relationship blossomed quickly. In discussing the future, it was suggested that she move to New York City where she could further her fashion career. It meant more time apart, but after seven years of travel, two didn’t seem so long. To have a beautiful woman waiting at the finish line felt like a perfect, Hollywood ending.

Meanwhile, even though my savings went a long way in New Orleans’ cheap economy, I wasn’t taking any chances. I accepted the first job offer I received, working at one of New Orleans’ most mismanaged 4-Star restaurants. The nightmare conditions were due almost entirely to the GM, a ladder climbing egotist who ruled disinterestedly as the restaurant’s sommelier, yet rarely made appearances in the presence of a customer.

That job taught me that New Orleans rewarded free-spiritedness and penalized a work ethic. As the year progressed, I naively believed I’d be rewarded for dependability, but instead, my coworkers enjoyed their holidays off while I served an empty dining room. I should’ve heeded Donatella’s warnings. She encouraged me to look for less regimented employment in the essentially citywide, gig economy. Alas.

The Wind

I suffered through the heat until it broke in October. The city came alive again as it prepared for its second favorite holiday, Halloween, AKA warm-up for Mardi Gras. I explored the city with my roommate, but the party generally came to my door. Donatella’s irresistible personality drew in everyone, and so our apartment was a hive of varied and interesting strangers blowing through. Almost literally.

Donatella had sold me on the “shotgun”-style house, a floor plan that abandons hallways and fourth walls for an unbroken passage from front door to back. In my roommate’s perspective, this nurtured a free-flowing, open, and creative living environment. Fine in theory, but in practice it meant no privacy.

My room was the only route to the kitchen from Donatella’s room. I erected a partition out of thick sheets, but even with flimsy doors between our separate spaces, all barriers were essentially ornamental. Sound carried indiscriminately. With Donatella being a fully realized, independent, and carnal woman, I went to sleep many nights with headphones affixed to my ears.

Work drained my spirit and home didn’t provide the rejuvenating solitude I needed after spending the day with people. New Orleans was exhausting me, and not in the fun way.

For this reason, Ava’s daily messages and looming visit were my sole source of restoration in those early months. When she finally did arrive at the end of October, we had the kind of sublime reunion so rarely enjoyed by long-distance lovers. Seeing New Orleans – its towering churches, the Museum of Art, the street performers – with Ava’s fresh eyes made the city beautiful. There was no awkward acclimation period, no time wasted on rediscovering our groove. Laying together after reacquainting our bodies, we spoke of our love.

But she couldn’t stay. On my own again, real life nullified the highs of our romantic weekend, each day proving anew that the Big Easy cared nothing for my worsening mental state. My daily notes to Ava grew increasingly despondent, and so, when in early November she told me she couldn’t keep the relationship going, a part of me expected it.

The Storm

I couldn’t even reel in private. Donatella walked into my “room” just as I hung up with Ava. She was kind enough to offer a comforting hug and invite me out to drown my sorrows in booze. Strangely, that night I turned down her invitation.

Depression was overwhelming my entire being. I knew it was too much to count on Ava to shoulder my burden, so while the breakup devastated me, I understood. Until, that is, the inevitable Facebook post of Ava with her new boyfriend some weeks later. Now there was an acute sense of rejection to go with my loss.

For a time, Donatella was an unbelievably gracious source of comfort. When I had to work from 9 am to 11 pm on Thanksgiving – the one holiday I celebrate – she greeted me upon my return with a bear hug and a plate of leftovers. She then escorted me out for drinks and lively karaoke performances (her, not me).

After tiring of Kajun’s Pub, she used her key to let us into the closed Allways Lounge. Under a soft, orange glow, we sat together at the empty bar’s piano, shoulder to shoulder, neither one of us knowing what we were doing, and riffed for hours. From our staccato notes emerged restorative, shattered music. I felt weightless for the first time in months.

We walked home with the rising sun, raw with emotions. That night I’d seen the darkness in Donatella that she mostly covered by emitting light like a strobe. She opened up about a history of abuse, a wound still tender, both from the pain she had endured and the guilt she felt for another victim left behind. Her heavy and intimate confession underlined a growing platonic affection between us more substantial than anything I’d had with Ava.

Naturally, it didn’t last.

The Devastation

Years of itinerancy had taken their toll. I was unable to make the simplest human connections knowing that in a short time I’d be gone, a barely remembered name popping up in a newsfeed. People were temporary and I was a ghost. Ava’s disappearance had been particularly crushing; for a brief time, I’d fooled myself into believing in her permanence.

Amplifying this instability were the unending guests passing through our doors. Donatella signed us up to host couch surfers. I’d wake up to unknown out-of-towners on the couch; sometimes they were bar patrons she’d met the night before who’d taken her up on an offer of a place to crash. If I had had a door on my room, I might have found the rotating cast of strangers vaguely endearing.

The depression would not relent. Under a confluence of factors, no one cause, my mind had become a tempest, volatile, erratic, boiling over one moment in manic rage, then leaving me hollow and weeping on my floor. I couldn’t even feel in possession of my own emotions.

It’s easier, now, to accept why Donatella lost patience, but at the time it was just one more battlefront, our once close friendship degenerated into screaming matches. It was a cruel irony that a woman who welcomed everyone and readily accepted any sexual, gender, or racial identity, found my illness so intolerable. Perhaps it just hit too close to home.

And yet, no one hates a person with depression more than the person themselves.

In December, distraught over everything – my job, my home, my broken heart, myself – I resolved to end it. Suicide had always hovered in the back of my mind, a personal nuclear option, but now, I woke up and went to sleep contemplating it. I made a plan: At month’s end, I’d throw myself off of the Crescent City Connection into the Mississippi River. The thought of sinking brought me rare moments of peace.

I suppose I gave myself a buffer, in part, because my brain goes through cycles and I knew there was a possibility I could still rise out of stark misery. Instead, each day, I felt worse. I became a practical mute at work and stayed offline, falling further into isolation. When no one seemed to notice, I took that as confirmation of my worthlessness, justification for my choice.

Marianne noticed.

On an evening in mid-December, my D.C. friend from college appeared on the caller ID. Surprised, I almost let it go to voicemail, but succumbed to curiosity.

“Hey,” she said in her hesitant, unassuming way. “Hadn’t seen you post lately, thought I’d check how things were going with you.” Without hyperbole: Marianne saved my life that night.

I didn’t admit to her what I planned to do, probably attempted to sound lighthearted and casual, but after we talked briefly, I hung up and bawled. For once, the tears brought relief. Such a simple act; Gomorrah spared for the benevolence of one friend.

Clear Skies, Again

Life didn’t immediately improve. Climbing out of the depths is a process.

My rift with Donatella grew apace and after five months, I relocated to a new apartment in Mid-City with co-workers. The job remained a drudge, but an incredibly lucrative one. I earned more money serving the well-heeled of New Orleans than I’ve ever made at any other job. I could pay to see a show or buy a necessity without checking my bank account. I reached my savings goal so easily that I gleefully quit my job a month and a half early.

Despite my mental state, NOLA gave me extraordinary, one-of-a-kind experiences: waking up early on Fat Tuesday to drink Irish coffee in a crowd of colorful costumes on Frenchmen Street; sinking into mud while watching Fleetwood Mac at Jazz Fest; dancing upstairs at Blue Nile and being kissed by a stranger; feeling the city’s incomparable rhythms pulsing from every street corner. Hell, even the graphic gay porn playing on the TVs upstairs at Phoenix Bar was delightful in its own way.

Cracked by Mother Nature and enshrined by ineffectual governance, the city’s splintered infrastructure can’t hide that underneath it all, NOLA and her people are big-hearted and dynamic. Still, like that friend who always knows where the party’s at, sometimes you’re just not in the mood to answer her call.

Which is to say, I’d take any opportunity to visit New Orleans; I’ll just never live there again.

In the summer, New Orleans’s suffocating heat and humidity returned, but planning for Boston invigorated me. After only one more year, I would finally arrive in the Promised Land.

Keep Reading: Chapter IX – Boston

Letting It Ride: Remembering (and forgetting) what mattered in Music City

April 11, 2017May 19, 2017 Joseph Lyttleton2 Comments

Chapter VI

[I’ve changed names when I felt like it]

I came to on an elevator, floating somewhere between the first and fifth floor. At my feet, half-conscious but laughing all the same, was my friend, Ariel. Abruptly, the elevator stopped – had it been going up or down? – and the doors opened to reveal a parking garage.

“Where did you park?” I asked her, not entirely certain where I was or how I got there, but apparently fully cognizant of our mission to find Ariel’s car. From her position splayed out on the ground, she pressed the button on her key fob. No horn. The vehicle, it seemed, was not on this floor, whichever floor that was. The doors closed and we progressed to the next.

This continued for a few more minutes – or was it half an hour – with Ariel losing the fight to regain her footing and I determinedly stepping out of the elevator on each floor and trying to spy the missing car. Eventually, either through exhaustion or the miraculous return of some sense, I realized that even if we found her car, Ariel was in no state to drive. I sent the elevator back to the ground floor.

Exiting the parking garage, I half carried, half dragged my friend to the street and waved down a taxi, sliding her into the backseat.

“Tell him your address,” I commanded Ariel, which she dutifully did. I gave the driver a twenty-dollar bill and they were off.

With each passing minute in the late March night air, my senses were gradually returning to me. I walked to clear my head a bit before waving down a taxi for myself. Slouched in the backseat, I gave the driver my address and held loosely onto my fleeting consciousness until I arrived home. My neighborhood: Fisk-Meharry, Nashville.

Safe and Secure

I arrived in Nashville defeated. I had crawled through San Francisco and Chicago amidst the worst of the Great Recession and come out the other side, officially in the latter half of 10 Cities/10 Years; I was drained, bitter, and ready to give up. Just a few weeks prior to my move, I briefly contemplated scrapping my plans and moving into an apartment with my brother in Austin. It would’ve been a terrible idea (for both of us).

I finally settled on a dirt cheap two-bedroom apartment in the predominantly black neighborhood between two historically African-American colleges, Fisk University and Meharry Medical College. And by “predominantly,” I mean, the only white people I saw were driving through with their windows securely rolled up.

Like my time in West Philly, I heard frequently that Fisk-Meharry was a dangerous neighborhood, including from my white landlord and my black neighbors. Taxi drivers regularly refused to drive me back home after work or to pick me up when I called for a ride. The recession had hit Nashville, too, leaving city projects in my area, intended to usher in new growth and development, incomplete or abandoned altogether. I walked the neighborhood every day without being accosted, but its reputation was fixed.

I lived on an island set upon a sea of liquor.

Every month, I went through a handle each of bargain bin whiskey and vodka – the kind that comes in plastic jugs and doesn’t even pretend to have a pedigree – on top of drinking with coworkers after nearly every shift and any other occasion I could find for “exploring” Nashville. When I couldn’t work up the energy to go out in public, I hid inside my apartment, a sparsely furnished grotto for my isolation.

My one lifeline to humanity those first months in Nashville was Ashley, the woman I’d left in Charlotte. After having spent four years far apart, only one state divided us now and we still had a crackling electricity in our flirtations. She’d endured the separation and my relationship with Selene – the Facebook posts, the pictures, the public display of romance that we’ve masochistically made a part of our societal norm – under the pretense that we were “just friends.” But we were never just friends. Or, more accurately, we were never good at being friends.

As long as the possibility of a future romance remained on the table – and with Ashley, it always did – she tolerated the distance, both physical and emotional.

In my post-Chicago malaise, I gifted Ashley with the fractured pieces of my psyche. She helped me put them back together. We used the word “love” – we never had during the nascent, Charlotte period of our relationship. I started making concessions: I could end my project a year early, count my hometown as Year 1, and move back to North Carolina once I finished so we could live near her family. That’s all that mattered to her.

Now a nurse, Ashley looked into travel nursing so she could spend a few months in whichever city I lived. I supported the idea, but it meant giving her a vote in my next cities. She wanted to live in Arizona, but I was adamant against it: the state had recently passed Arizona SB 1070, the draconian anti-immigration law, and I suppose I felt I was making some political point with my stance. Mostly, I just didn’t want to be back in the Southwest again.

Our long distance relationship lasted nearly four months, a mix of highs and lows. The week of Thanksgiving, we spent a few days in a secluded cabin up in the Great Smoky Mountains, the border between her state and mine. The picturesque, revitalizing backdrop offered all the promises and pleasures of what a simple life together could be.

So, of course, I broke up with her. The distance – the continued separation – required too much energy, too much focus, and the thought of stitching together a relationship over the next four to five uncertain years apart was unthinkable. Once again, I had a choice between Ashley and my project, and I chose 10 Cities/10 Years.

Nash Vegas

After a fruitless and demoralizing stint at a phone bank calling up dissatisfied and very angry customers, I found a gig waiting tables in downtown Nashville. The restaurant, Demos’, is a regional institution with its steaks and spaghetti varieties, positioned in that niche between fine dining and generic family fare. All of Nashville came through those doors, whether to eat or to serve.

The staff at Demos’ was your usual mix of students, burn outs, lifers, and strivers. Like Los Angeles for actors, screenwriters, and directors, Nashville’s official status as Music City means seemingly everyone in the service industry has (or had) a dream of making it in the music business.

It was the one city where, when I told people I was a writer, they immediately assumed songwriter.

As I gradually climbed out of my depression, the Demos’ crew was always around to provide at least one drinking buddy. In an industry with massive turnover, some servers came and went in a matter of months or even weeks. From shift to shift, I could repeat the exact same day – serve lunch, go for midday drinks and pool at Buffalo’s Billiards, serve dinner (partially in the bag), and then get more drinks – with a whole new group of coworkers. Server life is a bit like Groundhog Day.

Not everyone vanished. There were a core group of Demos’ servers who regularly went out together, including the high spirited Ariel, a favorite drinking companion.

That black out night in the elevator had begun commonly enough at the Beer Seller, where our group was playing pool and watching March Madness. A couple hours into the night, we were joined by one of our usual creepy hangers-on.

There is a type of older man who hovers in bars where groups of young friends regularly gather. These men ingratiate themselves into the group with the hopes of getting a shot at one of the attractive, young girls, which, as servers, we had no shortage of. Everyone knows their intentions and no one trusts them, but they buy drinks and other substances, so the group usually tolerates their presence.

That night, our creep – John? Sure, let’s go with John – had supplied the usual rounds when he offered to up the ante. Retrieving his wallet, he slipped out tabs of what, at the time, I assumed were Xanax. I suppose they could have been almost anything, but I wasn’t really in a questioning mood. Four of us – John, Ariel, myself, and Will, another coworker – put the tabs on our tongues and washed them back with beer.

And then I woke up on the elevator.

A few days later, when Ariel and I had a shift together, she beelined straight to me.

“How did I get home?” She asked, a mix of confusion and concern in her tone.

I told her about the cab. Thanking me profusely, she explained that she could remember most of the night, but not what happened after we had been kicked out of the last bar. As she recounted, after splitting from John and Will, we had bounced from bar to bar, dancing at one, hogging the jukebox at another, generally being young and obnoxious as you do when your mind is erased.

She could recall up until the point that we left the bar, well after closing time, and then, like something out of science fiction, we swapped consciousness: the moment she blacked out, I came back online and filled in the rest of the memory. She remembered the partying, I remembered our egress, and together, we completed the night.

As the year in Nashville progressed and each day pushed Chicago further into memory, I regained my sense of purpose. For the better part of a year, when I thought of 10 Cities/10 Years, all I saw was everything I had lost, everything I had given up for this quixotic venture.

The friends I made at Demos’, the strangers I met in bars and the stories they told, even the failed attempts at romantic flings, these were all a reminder of why I had set out on this path half a decade prior, and why I had to keep going. In the process of falling in and out of love, I had lost sight of what mattered: the people on the road.

That year, my sixth, I made a vow to myself: I would complete this project no matter what came my way, even it if killed me. So what if I was throwing good money after bad, I had come this far, and I was going to let it ride.

Ironically, after resisting Ashley’s direction of my future, for Year 7, I created an online poll to let friends and strangers determine my next city: Austin, Denver, Portland, or Seattle. When the voting closed, Seattle claimed the victory by one vote.

Let It Ride

One of my last nights in Nashville, I ascended the towering grassy hill known as Love Circle, joined by Dustin and Jacky, two close friends from Demos’. As its name implies, the spot is a popular, shall we say, “make out” spot, but at a nearly 800 feet elevation, it also offers one of the best views of the entire city. We climbed up to the hill with a bottle of Eagle Rare and sat on top of the world, recounting our shared times and envisioning our separate futures.

Jacky was a singer in a band, Dustin was in school, and I had four long, unknowable years ahead of me. But for a short time, our paths had merged.

Maybe I’m just projecting, but that night on Love Circle had the feel of a transitional moment for all of us. High above the city that had brought together three dreamers from different hometowns, we could see for miles. Other than a few clouds, we had clear skies. I felt something I hadn’t in a very long time: contentment.

And that was reason enough to keep going.