New York, Unreal, Surreal and Real

New York, Unreal, Surreal and Real

Janet Gilmore

gilmorebooks@yahoo.com

I think now that because I had a happy childhood, I didn’t recognize betrayal when it happened to me. 

Not all  back seat car adventures are fun. 

I was in the back seat of a comfortable yellow Chevy Vega. It was my car but I wasn’t driving. He was driving. That is, he was driving me and another woman back to New York. I was his girlfriend on the drive up, but not on the drive home. I didn’t understand.

She was in the front seat; I was lying down in the back, asleep in my own car. I wanted nothing more than to sleep all the way home to my apartment in Philadelphia, but I had a long way to go.

I went to NYU for the summer to take classes in Media Ecology. How the new media affected people. 

        He and I met in class and lived together for the summer, with the understanding that I would go back to my teaching job in Philadelphia at the end of the summer. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. We said, “I love you,” to each other. We had bikes and explored the city together. While he worked, I poked around by myself, shopped, and went to a gym. For the first time, my life had a romantic musical soundtrack. He was the center of my emotional life. Life was glorious. I loved New York.                       

 In the fall, he invited me to be his guest at a conference in some town in upstate New York that I never heard of. And used my car and me to get there. The conference was “1973 New Media Conference.”

I was glad to have been invited, but that was going to change.

After lectures, dinner and socializing in the lobby of the motel, there was a keynote speaker. He was Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist magazine, and I wanted to hear him.

Listen, I don’t want to hear Paul Krassner,” he said. “I’ll be in the bar.”

The speech was smart and funny and I was glad I went. But when it was over and I left, he had disappeared. I looked everywhere and asked everyone, but he was gone.

Now what?

I went upstairs to our motel room and knocked on the door. I knocked for a long time louder and louder, but there was no answer. There was no reason to stop knocking, because I had nothing better to do, but my hands and arms tired, so I stopped.

As I found out later, not only was I probably being cheated on, but the whispered conversation behind the door must have been, “Sh-h-h, don’t make any noise and she’ll go away.” 

Evil and mean-spirited.

It occurred to me that what was happening was happening. But I thought if I stayed in one place that he would find me more easily than if we were both wandering around, looking.

 I went to the lobby to wait. And wait. 

A few conventioneers were talking to each other, the bar was still open, but I didn’t drink alcohol and didn’t see him in there, so I went back to the lobby. 

Where was he? Hell, he had invited me. I had pulled out all the stops – well-dressed, well-coiffed, wearing make-up. Red turtleneck, blue bell bottoms, long braid down my back, great shoes. 

I hit the vending machines— bought a diet soda and some Cheetos, which tasted very good in my late-night state of void. At least the vending machines were steady and reliable.

Where could he be?

       It was about 1:30 when the bar closed, the last human left the lobby, and I was still alone. Still wearing the same clothes I had worn all day. I wanted a shower, a change of clothes and a bed with him in it. Or with just me in it.

       I walked around. A rack off to the side of the lobby held tourist brochures – showing couples on water slides or strolling hand in hand on a beach. All the fun I could have had if I were in a different town with a different date.

       Wandering down a hallway, I saw room service trays outside room doors. Some of the empty glasses had lipstick stains on them. I saw a barefoot woman in a long skirt carrying a bottle of champagne, then opening a room door with her key and going inside. I envied her. I envied the entire hallway.

         I tried not to cry. But the back of my eyes stung and a tear or two ran down my cheek. 

       It took a while to work up the nerve to lie down on a  lobby sofa, but no one was around, so I did. The night clerk had disappeared. I listened  I yawned. A lot. I fell asleep to the hum of the soda machines and the buzz of the fluorescent lights because I couldn’t stay awake.

       I slept fitfully; sleeping in a motel lobby is not relaxing.

       It was during one of the sleeping fits that a male voice woke me with a loud, “Hi!”

       “Huh, what?,” I said, lifting my head slightly and shielding my eyes from the light. It was a guy I didn’t know. Older than me, wearing a suit and narrow tie. Okay-looking, confident voice. Maybe he was a salesman.

It was 1973. He had no sideburns and his hair was cut short above his collar, unlike the Media Ecology crowd.

       “How you doin’?” he asked.

       “Hunky-dory,” I answered.

       “Enjoying the conference?”

       “I’m not sure. I lost my boyfriend somewhere and can’t find him.”

 I sat up

“Oh,” he said. “Okay if I sit down with you? It’s a free country after all. ha. ha.” 

He told me his name; but I forget it. 

I looked around the lobby; it was still empty. The guy’s presence broke the monotony. Neither of us knew what to say. After our non-interesting conversation, we sat silently for what seemed like a long time.

I looked at my watch; it had stopped ticking at 2:12am. Perfect.

“Can I ask you a question? “he asked, “Do you mind if I put my head in your lap?”

“Get lost.” I thought. “I have a boyfriend.” 

Then, “Oh, what the hell.”

In my exhausted, abandoned frame of mind, I said, “No, I don’t mind.” 

I think I let him put his head in my lap to re-connect me to the human race. And so that if my boyfriend showed up, it might make him jealous or at least curious what I had been doing all night.

We sat that way for a while, when he said, “You know, I date both men and women; do you think we could go out some time?”

The lobby spun around for a second. I found a clear voice and said, “No, thanks, I’m having enough trouble with one man who dates only women.”

“Fine,” he said and left, insulted.

I was alone again, still waiting for my so-called boyfriend to find me.

After a while I decided not to be pathetic anymore and to drive myself home to Philadelphia. If I was going to spend time alone, I might as well be in my own apartment.

I had my purse, map, and keys, and didn’t need anything else other than the ability to stay awake. 

He could have everything in my suitcase; I was wearing the good stuff.

I found my car in the parking lot, got in, put the key in the ignition and just sat there. I didn’t start the car. I could have, but I was prodded into inaction by my own self. 

       Why couldn’t I start the car?

Because I was afraid that if I left the conference he wouldn’t love me; no one would ever love me. I’d be alone forever. I believed at the time that a bad boyfriend was better than no boyfriend and better than a sharp stick in the eye.

I was wrong.

The morning sun came through the lobby windows. 

He eventually wandered into the lobby with a blonde, and my suitcase.

I opened my mouth to ask a bunch of questions when he said, “Where have you been? I was looking for you!”

“How hard did you look? I’ve been here all night!”

He said nothing.

I wanted to yell, but not in front of a blonde stranger who had obviously taken my place in his heart and pants within hours of our arrival.  I was furious, mortified, flabbergasted.

The blonde said nothing and I refused to learn her name.

The three of us had a silent breakfast together, pointing at the condiments we wanted passed. 

Then the three of us went out to my car.

I motioned her to get into the passenger front seat, and I climbed into the back.

Under normal circumstances, I would have picked both of them up by the scruff of the neck and left them by the side of the road, but I really needed that 90 minute ride to sleep. 

Him: Cold, faithless, passive.

Her: Blonde, chatty, faithless.

Me: Speechless, unhappy, exhausted.

I didn’t realize that I was part of something larger than myself — the world-class game of New York dating, and I couldn’t figure it out. 

So I slept instead.

Back in the city, they dropped themselves off in front of his apartment, sorted out the luggage, and I got in the driver’s seat to drive myself home.

I tried to see his behavior as something normal and hip that I just didn’t get, but I couldn’t.

And when you’re in a situation, the abnormal becomes normal. At least for me. Some people are self-aware enough to say, “Wait a minute; this is too weird,” but I wasn’t one of them.

A few weeks later, I was talking to my hairdresser Karen at her salon. I told her about my adventure.

She said, “Maybe he wasn’t in your room. Maybe he was in her room. Maybe he was in the shower. Maybe he was passed out drunk and didn’t hear you. Anyway, you just like him because he lives in New York.”

I closed my eyes and thought about the wisdom of those words.

She was smart and maybe she was right. And after that weekend, I didn’t like him much at all. No matter what, he had left me in the lobby all night.

“What would you have done?” I asked Karen.

She shrugged and kept snipping. It was a tough question. Too tough to answer.

I saw him again once in a while, and enjoyed New York, but the magic was gone.