To the driver of the blue Lincoln Navigator:

Look, I’ll assume you’re probably not a planar physicist, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt in further assuming that this might not make a lot of sense when I say it— but there are more than six lanes on the Bronx expressway, and it’s actually physically impossible for you to occupy them all at the same time. I’m being generous is this explanation because heck, it was Sunday night, it was raining, and snowing some of it, and we were all upset and ready to get home and whatever. But when the four year old in the passenger seat of the red Mercury LeSabre beside cracks his head open on the window because his mommy is dodging your juggernaut assault into traffic that is already more congested than anything I’ve ever seen in my life, and consequently that four year old turns to his mother holding his head and lets out a perfectly pronounced “What in the f*%$ing h@#* was that!?” loudly enough that I can hear within the battened hatches of my Nissan Sentra above the tumult of horns and sirens wailing ad-naseum around me… my generosity tends to wane just a bit.

I am the most patient human being on earth. If I were paired in a waiting contest against Michelangelo’s David I’d win. Lotus blossom. Lotus blossom.

I drove through the city of New York in my battered Nissan Sentra, avoided having an accident, was not stopped by police, was honked at only seven times, and I still use my turn signal. I am however 30% more likely to wear a seatbelt. I arrived in Roslyn, NY Sunday night eight minutes before midnight Eastern Standard Time. I drove a full lap around the city in the dark, fleshing out the size and pleased to find the quaint, yet outlandishly expensive suburb to be not much larger than my origins in Joplin, Missouri. I was tired and absolutely fed up with driving at said point and retired for sleep (yes, in my car. For gosh sakes it’s not the apocalypse, you’ve got at least seven more years before that.) I slept for four hours.

I awoke and did the only thing I really had to do at that point, drove some more. I took another lap around the town for the day perspective and realized that, oh, it’s not much bigger than Joplin. It’s much smaller. The illusion being that it’s quite nearly impossible to tell where the village of Roslyn ends and where one of any number of cities (Greenvale, Glen Cove… Mineola?) begin, making it quite easy to bleed from one into the other without notice. I became acquainted and set to memorizing routes I assumed I’d be taking often (primarily routes with a great deal of business attached to the nearby real estate) and looking for [NOW HIRING] signs.

I found a beach. It was lovely and cold as bloody hell.

Jess called soon after, she had the day off, I had my whole life as it stood for now, so we spent the subsequent day together. Most of that involved me holding her accessories while she took to prancing from jeans to jumpers all the while happily muttering things like “Let me borrow that top!” and “Oh my god, shoes.” to herself inside of a myriad of shopping centers three of the four I’ve never even heard of.

I also saw a Mars bar for the first time in my life. Jess introduced me to it.

“Oo look! You have Mars bars here!”
“We have what here?”

Between that and an absolute inability to locate something called ‘chicken chips’ she was thoroughly appalled.

Not a great deal otherwise was accomplished, though I did get an oil change. That was depressing. The weather remains chilly and dank and wet. It’s been drizzly all day which I suppose is why we spent a great deal of it inside. Thus far I’ve been unable to find any sort of internet and as today is January the fourteenth, this post may not see cyberspace for some time. I haven’t however been immensely zealous in my search for a hotspot I’ll admit, during our escapades about the towns today Jess and I encountered in classic New York tradition a total of seven Starbuck’s shops within three total miles and only bothered enough to enter two of them. One to try for internet, the other to ask where the nearest mall was.

Somewhere around seven or so I took Jess back to the Engineers Club and met, somehow beside the policy against visitors, two of her room mates and a couple of the chefs. I even received a minor tour of the accommodations. There was a bit of pride in their eyes as they showed me their homes for the next year, apparently just in time for my visit the toilet had finally begun flushing properly and the unexplainable beeping machine that had aggravated the living daylights out of the students had, just as unexplainably, stopped beeping.

We unloaded all of Jess’s merchandise, said our goodbyes, and I again set out on the road.

Due in major part to the unbelievable persistence of my rapidly growing network of bloggers, webmasters, and generally anyone who falls under the not-so-broad classification of being at least as much a screwball as I am within the New York area (who’d have thought) I made my way about a half an hour (probably less, traffic and one absolutely ridiculous hill made the journey longer getting to than I think it will be to get anywhere from) away to a town (that and the fact that I got lost twice) called Huntington, and the house of a father of a blogger friend of Connie’s (I say this without any intent of inhumanity but I so solemnly swear that people, human beings, are the innately valuable currency in history, and in a moment you may read exactly why), whereupon I was received by the most unnatural host I could have ever imagined.

I’m typing to the tune of reasonable presumption when I say that I believe enough editorial distance has been counted that I can mention some names. Grandpa Squabbler, as one. I don’t know his age, I don’t know his health entirely, but it took less than two seconds to determine what drives the man. “I refuse to grow up.” He told me. “My goal now is to stay as adolescent as possible.” His body tagged along by not long ago by developing a peculiar throat anomaly seen almost exclusively amongst seventeen year-olds, something I believe he said attributes in whatever way to his bronchitis.

Not more than two minutes in the door he offered me something to eat. So we ate and had hot tea while he explained the history of the house, the fact that he’d been born in it and the reason that he was the most blessed human being on the face of the earth. I listened for three hours to his story, maybe more, and after hearing it, I have to admit, he may be right. We got along very well.

Somewhere in the midst of the conversation Connie called to check up on me and to make sure I’d gotten there safely. (Perhaps more to make sure that I’d decided to go there at all…) I told her I was fine and safe and the host and I were merely having a chat. A sliver of skepticism trickled through her many layers of faith and to appeal to that exclusively I put Grandpa Squabbler on the phone. She was thrilled.

Grandpa Squabbler immediately confused her for my girlfriend.

Once all of that was sorted out they chatted nicely and it became quickly apparent that even as I came here, the little community that put us all together hadn’t unanimously come to terms with the length of my stay under the hospices of my new host, and it became obvious that we were all of a greatly differing opinion the moment that Grandpa Squabbler said into the phone to Connie- “Ah, well I’m happy to have him, and he’s more than welcome to stay for however many years he intends so-” At this point, Connie made a noise I cannot quite describe, suffice it to say that it was potent enough to reach me through the cell phone speaker, across the living room and into the bedroom where I was rearranging.

Years.

My perception was closer to the mention I made to him when I was carrying in the single box I thought I might need to unpack for the trip. “I really appreciate this.” I said. “But I want you to know that I don’t intend any imposition, I’ll be as much a ghost and as out of your way as I can be and the you feel no qualms about kicking me out the moment you feel the least bit uncomfortable.” He laughed. My intent was find a job and get that first paycheck as quickly as possible and move into the cheapest available apartment as soon as consistent income had been established. Connie apparently projected I’d be there a month or so to get settled.

My host thought nothing of my staying several years. I read Les Miserables, I know the bishop… He told me that within the next week or so he’ll be traveling to Arizona in his RV, just taking a vacation and I’m free to watch his mansion on the hill and keep it up while he’s gone. He mentioned it because he said he’d see me again in the spring when he returned. I was moving my things around the little room he allotted and in the process discovered it had been his old office. Among the piles of paper- Credit cards, dollar bills, and blank checks littered the desk and floor.

I have never been more thoroughly trusted by a human being… and I just got here…