High Fidelity

“I seem to recognize your face, haunting familiar yet, I can’t seem to place it. Cannot find the candle of thought to light your name. Lifetimes are catching up with me…Hearts and thoughts they fade, fade away.” -Pearl Jam

I’m somewhat of a closet John Cusack fan. Actually, I can’t think of one of his movies that I haven’t seen. So excuse me when I say that I’ve felt that the last week of my life has been quite similar to Cusack’s movie High Fidelity. Indulge me for a moment.

I went home for the entire week of Thanksgiving and even if I told you where “home” is, you wouldn’t know it, although I’m sure you understand where I’m coming from. Like many people I’ve met in New York, I was raised in small town America – for the purposes of this blog, I’ll call it Smallville. Let me describe Smallville for you. There are only two high schools in the entire town and growing up the idea of a “rager” was driving out in the country, setting up shop by the city dump and drinking beer. The cow population in my home county outnumbers the human population by about a 2 to 1 margin and the local idea of “pimping your ride” consist of raising or lowering one’s pickup truck and adding a gun rack. I’m not kidding, this is the environment in which I was raised.

Every so often I’ll get an e-mail from an ex-girlfriend, just to check in and see how I’m doing. In fact, over the past month I received an e-mail from two exes that still live in my hometown. One was an ex from high school (the captain of the cheerleading team for my rival high school)-Danielle- and the other was a more recent ex from a few years ago when we tried to pull off a long distance relationship-Heather (now my idea of a long distance relationship is dating a girl that lives in Queens). Since I was going to be home for an entire week, I suggested we get together for some coffee when I was in town (Smallville just got their first Starbucks a few years ago).

Unfortunately, I was only able to catch up with Heather, as Danielle was too busy drinking beer in the country. I wish I was joking. Nevertheless, Heather and I met up on Tuesday evening at the local Starbucks for a chat over a latte. We hadn’t been together five minutes when I realized that I felt like I was John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity. Remember how he gets together with exes after a few years only to discover they are in the same place they were before and realize how he has moved on and grown into a better person for it? That’s exactly how I felt. Here is this person in front of me that I used to have pretty significant feelings for telling me how “boring” her life is in Smallville. She goes to work, hangs out with her roommate, watches her TV shows and that’s about it. She says she has dated occasionally, but that it’s very hard to meet new people in a small town. You see, making it to 30 without being married in my hometown is like a death sentence. Most of the people that I went to high school with that still live in Smallville are married and have several kids. In fact, I ran into a girl that I went to high school with at a local Mexican restaurant…she was there with her husband and their three children. I did my best to avoid eye contact, which, if I hadn’t would have lead to a very awkward conversation. I deliberately try to avoid people when I go home because I don’t understand the world they are living in and they certainly have no idea about mine. Many of them haven’t received a college degree, much less visited New York City. What do we really have in common? I’m not passing judgment one way or the other, but I just can’t imagine living in the same town, hanging out with the same people, doing the same things year after year after year. Life is too short and there are too many things to see in the world to fall into a rut at such an early age.

So Heather and I talked for about an hour and a half. She told me about how her family was doing, how her roommate still hasn’t figured out that the toilet paper should be placed on the roller so that the paper comes out over the top of the roll and how she can’t stand when the paper towels aren’t ripped perfectly down the perforation. I told her about my new job and recent promotion, the places that I’ve traveled in the past year and about my favorite restaurants in New York City. Yes, it was quite apparent how things have changed, how I’ve moved on and much like Cusack’s character in High Fidelity, I reaffirmed that the world I have built for myself is the world that I want to live in…that and the fact that Heather has since added 20lbs to her former size zero frame. I guess some things do change in a small town.

Cheers,

NYCDG