Sepideh Saremi

Cities rub off on you. It’s a shift that’s imperceptible unless you have flown across the country enough times to notice that on your way out East,  you’re friendly, and on your way back West, you’re surly. I noticed it this time. When I was making my way to the lavatory in the back of the plane on my flight home to LA today, I grimaced at someone that was looking at me funny. (Or I thought he was. I’d just woken up from a nap, so all bets were off.) Whatever, I shot the evil eye right back and I was ready to throw down, and this is the New Yorker in me.

I have so much of that New Yorker in me now (steely, cautious, a little jaded, knows better about smiling at strangers) that on my trip to San Francisco a couple of months ago, the disposition of the Bay Area’s people really freaked me out. Where else in the world does an “Excuse me” prefacing a request for directions elicit a cheerful “Hello!”? Certainly not in New York. Still… I wouldn’t trade New York for three San Franciscos, especially after that visit. Though maybe I’ll trade in LA again, at some point.

New York winter didn’t feel as bad as I’d remembered. The snow fell on my face like down feathers, I saw celebrities and had no desire to approach them, I ate out every meal, I couldn’t afford any of the clothes I liked, and I stayed below 20th Street except for the few nights I spent in a Times Square hotel. All in all, business as usual.

Walking down the main drag of my old Brooklyn neighborhood, I forgot for one moment that I didn’t live there anymore and thought that I was just going home. There was my old bagel place, and the pool I used to go to all the time, the stinky cheese store that still didn’t stock the German sweets I always checked for, and the little pretentious bookstore I loved/hated - everything just the same as when I left it four months ago. But when, in the next moment, I remembered that I don’t live in New York anymore, that I live in LA now and I get to try to be an adult in a city in which I’ve never really been a grown up, it didn’t feel so sad. I felt alright with LA, with my life.

And maybe that feeling came before a hipster lady ran my over my foot with her ginormous stroller, or maybe it came after. The point is, I’m content, and I’m going to make the best of it here.