Today I find myself standing before huge piles of my things heaped together on a filthy garage floor. The remaining ruble of yet another smoldering failed relationship burns before me and singes my nostrils leaving them ashy and charred. Wadded up a dress shirts still on hangers and precious personal artwork were urgently packed for me in an attempt to erase my memory as quickly as possible. Cue tips and band aids spill out of my picnic backpack along with all my medicine cabinet supplies proving it was a hasty and angry packing job indeed. It's a quick attempt to remove all traces of me, to be completely wiped clean of any and all painful remembrance. Its a shedding of the prickly snakeskin that my truest self so badly needed to wiggle out of six months ago and was long overdue. It would've eventually encrusted me into a false sense of self anyway and it had to loosen and fall off before even more damage was done to either party. Sometimes everybody looses in the gritty game of a love filled life and the risks involved. Old inspirational cliches just seem to fall flat to unsympathetic ears. How can you know when your time is up and movement is required? My stagnant Tennessee life has demanded immediate action and a facing of the beast herself...New York! I know the answers to all my stupid questions actually but I'll press on anyway because I so rarely have any comment at all. I figure I'll judge myself and edit later.
I stand broke and vulnerable, open to my close friend's kindness. Their true colors have presented themselves amidst this cloudy confusion much like a rainbow after a heavy unavoidable storm. Ghosts of close VIPs have slipped into the shadowy background while trying to stay politely uninvolved while others have stepped forward into the light to show themselves as the radiant human beings they truly are. These are the people who are open and willing to listen and bleed with me and be patient. These are the kind of folks willing to help me see the forest through the trees when all I taste is bitter bark and anger. Kindness, in a emotional desert like this one, stands out like a mirage that tempts you to drink freely. But you blink and you're all of a sudden spitting out sandy mouthfuls.
My blind trust-fall back into the dirty city makes me freeze in my tracks and my spine tingles like Pop Rocks candy on my fat tongue. Paranoia and anxiety set in as soon as I realize I overslept and missed moving the car by 10:30 am before that merciless, hard bitch of a meter maid slaps a bright orange envelope on the pigeon poop covered windshield. Just a few days back here and my wheels are spinning out of control and my thumbs can't type fast enough. My gut is churning with the idea of high rents and weekly Broadway show rejection but it's not the same New York it was when I left because I'm not the same person. I've been still for the first time in my life in a good way. Best friends have moved away and gotten pregnant. I've lost people....grandparents and loved ones. Gorgeous, stunning babies came giggling and burping into the world this year while I was gone such as little Dawson, my butterball of a self proclaimed god son! Big Broadway shows I never saw have opened and since sadly closed. The blood and tears of my show friends stain the sticky subway poles with vein attempts at squeezing themselves into a role that couldn't be further from their type cast. I haven't written a thing in months nor cared to comment on the world or my questionable part in it. But something cracked me open that Jim Carrey said in a commencement speech on you tube, "You can just as easily fail at what you don't want, so why not take a chance on doing something you love?" Precisely my point Ace Ventura!
The subway crackles like fingernails on a chalk board, shocking my body into stark urban reality while the hot air from the train makes me want another shower. Getting the dirty subway under-arm sweats in the muggy summertime takes me right back to the good ol' times. My Tennessee detour was originally only supposed to be no longer than two months but ended up morphing into what has become almost three years now away from my friends and the city life I've known since 1998. You do the math! This blog has remained virtually dormant with not so much as glimmer of literary inspiration since I last hobbled around these city streets with my shin splints. I could've punched a Gerber baby right in the fucking face when I left three years ago and no amount of giggling infant beauty could've cracked this jaded gay exterior no sir! But now happily my NYC friends tease me saying that "Tank's lost his New York edge!" when I get taken for an idiot in a gypsy cab. A big piece of me smiles inside and knows that was my original goal all along, to loose that sharp edge that was quickly becoming a permanent mask that was all too real underneath. My quick-to-judge protective responses were becoming a problem. My Berlin Wall was flying up upon any weirdness which is totally unavoidable here. Weird is the norm in New York and almost a daily occurrence so get over yourself Tankersley and look into people's eyes again and acknowledge the human race before you because it's a beautiful thing.
A subway car represents a rainbow of colorful genetic DNA spanning through all the worlds nations and every possible race is represented in immediate eyesight. I've missed it. The best and worst of us all jammed on top of each other like sweaty summer sardines. It's dirty and real....the hug of human nature. Two years ago I would've tazed an old lady before she could've even formed the words to ask for my help across the street! It was certainly time for a serious intervention of sorts and some therapy that didn't involve H&M or my debit card. My Tennessee home gave me that chance to salvage what was left of my shipwrecked New York state of mind and allowed me to hit the long over due reset button on my life. My best friend in life told me one day that the goal in his own life was to make his anger-fuse grow longer with age instead of shorter.(Like mine) Wise words from a grounded and sound mind clear of pointless distraction.
Far too long have my fingers been absent from this notebook application. I've had nothing but time to write and gush out any and all things that flourish inside my cloudy, smokey haze yet nothing ever came. I'd wait every morning with coffee in hand for an actual family of bunnies to come hop-hopping across the front lawn for inspiration but still nothing. A blinking cursor on my touch screen has mocked me many a night with its modern dance and the silence around me just grew louder. The green Tennessee fields are brilliantly sprinkled with countless lightning bugs twinkling like Christmas lights strung up in mid air just for me. The scent of honeysuckle and pine wood burns from the neighboring chimney into my country soul but the city still calls me back like a deranged distant wolf. This is the necessary inner peace platform one needs before taking the blind leap into the unknown. Taxi honks and turnstile clicks bring me all the noise I need to fill that epic canyon of silence. What is it about this bustling hustle that makes my mind explode with creativity as the images and thoughts sizzle in the synapses of my brain, shooting like divine lightning through my finger tips and out into the universe? The freaky Japanese bubble teas, five dollar cinnamon muffins from the upper best side, and overpriced bad coffee seems to always set the world straight again for me. The panic is actually part of that alive feeling that keeps me feeling young while welcoming daddy's crows feet with open arms like an express train when you're running late. New York.......where every stop is either delayed or a skip stop....no grey area. It's exactly where I wanna be.
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