Last week I crashed our friend Beck’s Escalade. That, I think, is where this story begins, except that sentence is false, crashing the Escalade is not exactly what I did. Crash is a strong word, and what I did was lightly scrape the side of a bread delivery truck with the front bumper of Beck’s Escalade while attempting to parallel park. Despite the mildness of the collision, the bumper cracked and fell.
I crashed our friend Beck’s car. The sentence is false also because Beck is not my friend. Last week, she was my boss. Last week I was driving Beck’s car around taking pictures, photographing old theaters where some R&B video could maybe be shot. Photographing theaters where men in wire-frames and expensive haircuts walked me to the guards, gave permission, saying, “This is Sarah, give her space to shoot, this lady is a big deal.” They were talking about me. I am Sarah. When they said this, I had greasy skin and a pilling acrylic sweater from H&M. I did not even really know how to use the giant camera that somehow landed around my neck making me look cooler, more legit than I was. I was not a big deal. I am not a big deal. I just imitated Beck. I imitated Beck badly. I dressed too shabbily, walked too aimlessly, smiled too easily to be Beck. Beck: owner of the biggest locations agency in New York City. Called upon by producers who need a rough-looking alley for a movie street fight scene or an old-time ice cream parlor for a music commercial. Tall and glamorous, she could have probably been a supermodel or movie star herself save for a distinct lazy eye which, really, only makes her more striking-hot.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe this story begins when I came to New York. I came to New York with a bag of clothes and slept on my cousin's couch. On the couch of my cousin and his pregnant wife. I spent days searching the internet for jobs, homes. All the time people asked why was I there. I made up answers. I want to work in publishing. My ex lives here and maybe we’ll get back together. I have always loved New York and known I wanted to live here. None of these things were true even though all of them were. Eventually I got a job teaching English as a second language, night school, and people stopped asking. Somehow, being a night school ESL teacher was enough of an identity. The real reason I came to New York: I was living with my parents. I worked in retail. I had no friends. I cried most nights. I did not sleep. I read the complete works of J.D. Salinger at night. Again and again, like a maniac. Maniacally I read Salinger. Unlocking. Looking for. Looking? And I cried.
It is not that my suburban existence with my parents had to be so bad. In many ways it was not bad at all. The retail store I worked at was Anthropologie, the chain store, that sells things, you know, maybe, things that are plush, sewn, beautiful.
Maybe this is where this story begins, really: In the suburbs. As a child. As a child, my first heroes were the teenagers that worked at the Dairy Queen, all pink-dyed and shaved and pierced. With braces, which may not seem all that heroic, but to me at age six, those metal teeth were the epitome of rebellion—of rejection of the bland suburban beauty I already found so banal-ugly. My next heroes were the Anthropologie people. At age fourteen, Anthropologie was, for me, a strange oasis of metal and afros and color right in the middle of the expansive plains of black Prada and square-toed boots in which I existed, cactus-like. My secret first love: The cash wrap girl in the black-circled eyes and uneven layers of dresses and pants and silver and yarns; hair bigger than her head, all thick frizz black curls. She, I knew, dedicated her time to something essential. I imagined her apartment looked like the Anthropologie home section. Fantastical candles and draping embroidered fabrics. I imagined her in there reading Eastern philosophy, sitting cross-legged and serene on the scuffed wood floor. I wanted into her world.
