Larger Than Life
<<2003-02-02 - 7:46 p.m.>>

The people I love are almost always golden people. Ambitious people. Achievers. Name-in-lights people.

Sometimes the people I love are self-consciously bohemian people: hate Starbucks, like dyed hair and thriftstore T-shirts and all the right music. Oh, how they love art movies. They write starry-eyed sentences full of glitter, and they invent new rules of capitalization. They talk to strangers and flirt with waiters and cut their hair short and drink herbal tea.

Sad people. Fists pounding at thighs, hating the curve and plane of them. Fingers in throats. Huge, silent faces and voices that say "I'm fine" in flat unfine tones.

Brilliant people. They give speeches at political gatherings. They win prizes and acclaim. They read books before they are old enough to understand them and sometimes understand them anyway. They sift through the days inside their heads. They footnote their emails and they are always, always more than I am.

Sometimes they lie.

Elitists. Best and brightest, cream of the crop. But there's the casual, nonchalant gesture, there's the unassuming grin. A discussion of plays or of books, an exchange full of wordplay, a reference, a joke. That time at the Met. The Almodóvar movie at the Angelika. This city under our feet, here, this city ours, full of museums and bookstores, and we are sitting on the floor of a Barnes & Noble reading out loud poetry which we disdain, giggling. Hallmark poetry, neo-Beat. Friends with the teachers, staying in touch.

All this in summary. In the past tense?

The people I have now are ordinary people. Hardworking people. Wonderfully sane and stable people, most of the time. Quirky people, but fundamentally functional people, people who will not lie and hide and flee and make themselves throw up and make me feel small and sometimes leave.

Life-size people. Oh, so ordinary. This ordinary life here. Beautiful and safe and wonderful and ordinary.

Is that okay? Can I stay here? Is it better somewhere else? Somewhere with its nose in the air and history in its hallways? Somewhere with pedigrees and prestige?

Somewhere too hard for me. Somewhere that scares me. Somewhere that dwarfs me and stares thunderingly down at me, small and pathetic and scrabbling at its walls.

Oh yes, that sounds nice.

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