All Over the Map - Laura Fraser [20]
I left the city around the time I was offered my first full-time job in publishing, as an assistant on the advertising side of Omni magazine, owned by Penthouse, where you had to look at soft-core porn covers every time you stepped out of the elevator. I considered the offer, because it was a job, and you have to start somewhere, especially if you have no contacts in New York, nor a trust fund, but it seemed to define soullessness. I’d have to put on an outfit every day, would come home too tired to write, never see the outdoors à la Colorado, and would face the distinct danger of turning into a bitch.
Just then my late Grandma intervened, leaving me that small inheritance, and I went for breakfast at the Greek diner near my apartment to mull things over. Before the waiter even poured the weak coffee, I decided New York City could live without me and I was leaving for Greece. (Who knows what would’ve happened if I’d been in a Chinese restaurant.) I spent the rest of the summer temping for an ad agency, which tried to hire me after I took advantage of a break from word processing to test their client’s new coconut liqueur, creating several new cocktails and marketing ideas just so I didn’t have to go back to typing. But I couldn’t see working somewhere you could get fired for drinking a Diet Coke if they shilled for Pepsi.
Nine months in the Mediterranean put to rights everything that had troubled me at Wesleyan or in New York. It awakened all my slumbering senses: I had my first fig from a tree in Greece, my first fat black olive in Spain, and my first simultaneous orgasm in Israel. I learned to dance flamenco and ride a camel, I saw the art I’d seen only on slides at Wesleyan, and I kept a journal along the way. When I returned to New York, I sensed right away that it was too confining a space; I needed some cross between the city’s culture and Colorado’s outdoors, and set out, on a hunch, to San Francisco. I cried as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and have felt at home ever since.
But I still get a thrill every time I visit New York. Part of it is peeking in on a parallel life that I passed on; part of it is feeding on its energy and unexpected scenes. This time, it happens that Doug, a childhood friend who is a film director, has a movie opening. In line for the movie, before heading in, Doug introduces me to Gustavo, a friend of his who is standing next to me. Also in the film business, Gustavo has shaggy black hair and is wearing a mountain parka and hiking boots in New York City, oblivious to fashion. He has a soft accent I can place only in the vicinity of Latin America. I have a soft spot for Latin men; they are less confused than American men about how sensitive they should be and whether to open doors, and are just men, which makes it easier to just be a woman around them. He gallantly asks if he can take the empty seat next to mine at the movie, and we whisper a few remarks about films we’ve seen lately before the lights go down. He helps me off with my jacket, and his sure, gentlemanly touch makes popcorn explode under my skin. In the dark, I can barely watch the movie because two hundred pounds of male pheromones are sitting right next to me, transmitting wildly, uniquely attuned to mine. I want to lean in to smell him better, rub my face right into his soft sweater. Every time he shifts his hand on the armrest I jump; I feel like I’m fifteen and on my first date at the movies, practically trembling at his proximity.
Doug invites us to an after-party at the corner bar. Gustavo and I sit in a red leather booth and drink too much champagne and then beer when the champagne runs out. We talk about Japanese novels