Subway to California by Joseph Di Prisco

Author:Joseph Di Prisco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rare Bird Books
Published: 2017-03-16T19:34:46+00:00

Liberal Education

My first true love lived on a nice part of Riverside Drive, which is on the island of Manhattan. Though Riverside Drive and Manhattan were part of New York City, in effect it was a starship journey away from Humboldt Street and Greenpoint. We met at our East Coast college and proceeded to do four years together full bore—complete with spectacular break-ups and poignant make-ups coast-to-coast and on two continents, in airports, cafés, bookstores, classrooms, dorms, seashores, and concert halls.

I missed this truth at the time, but more than anything, the two of us were good friends who stood by each other during family and personal travails. Luckily for me in the long term, she was smarter than I was, but I did not grasp this—unluckily for me in the short term. This was all the essential meaning I could use: I had fallen in love, head over heels. That seemed like the single and capacious and clumsy concept that applied to the feelings I could not manage. Whenever she got on an airplane, I thought I would die. Yes, I was a diva.

Naomi was unquestionably the best first girlfriend any mostly red-blooded Brooklyn-born Catholic-with-a-sudden-question-mark could ever have had the good fortune to come across. As for the Catholic part, I did stop going to church, but oddly, this decision did not constitute a spiritual crisis. I had misplaced the religious need, if that was the word, at least for now. I had my hands full with other concerns. Naomi received extra credit for being Jewish, too, which also made her exotic—in my world if not in Manhattan, where I heard there were a number of Jews.

I was not in Greenpoint anymore. Or California, either.

Was difference the ultimate turn-on for me and for her? The ultimate turn-on is often the, well, ultimate turn-on. Still, does anyone know the truth about such connections? She was slender and I have never been known to miss many meals. What connected us? I amused her. I wrote poetry. I was intense. She was coruscatingly smart. She was sardonic. She was very attractive. She was charismatic. She spoke French. As I may have mentioned, she was Jewish. All signs indicated I had died and gone to Manhattan.

Naomi had friendly domestic help, people who wore uniforms and made nice sandwiches and toasted bagels with lox and cream cheese. A gastronomic breakthrough if I ever saw one. They were kind to the California-transplant New York boy. Once I carelessly used the word “maid,” which was in poor taste, I discovered to my horror. How was I to know the fine distinctions? Naomi’s family had fancy paintings on the walls of the beautiful apartment. If I squinted, I recognized one from pictures in art books.

During dinner, she and her parents effortlessly alternated between United Nations-ish English, French, and German. The dinner table itself was gorgeous, maybe mahogany, under a lovely chandelier, like the kind I had seen in movies. As for the table, there were situated

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