Getting Here

I was born under the Brooklyn sky on a particularly innocuous September afternoon. There’s not much to say about the first time I was born. The air was mild and warm, cooler than it should’ve been if I had heeded the doctor’s advice and arrived three weeks earlier. Soviet birds and East German birds that made it as far as my little patch of sky found themselves confused, suddenly without an identity to cling to while I, a sad sack who never asked for this shit anyway, got to be born a named Brooklynite.

I was next born under a fluorescent-lit patch of cement art-school ceiling, molding putty into creatures that dwarfed my small hands. Pinching and pulling the dry white clay, I breathed life into beasts that I made to roar and hiss and howl. Back in my bedroom, my animal friends lined the wall, cheering me on as I sang my opera and danced my ballet. “Breathtaking,” exclaimed the turtle. “Well I do say,” growled the tiger that everyone thought was a cat — he knew he was a tiger and that’s what mattered. The music ended and I collapsed at the end of a particularly raucous number. The elephant roared his applause.

The third time, I was born under New England leaves, lying on the grass that spanned a hundred Providence parks with the boy I was sure would love me forever. He animated my limbs with a brush of his hand; my hair messed under me as he brought me to life. Together we were thirsty to know about East German birds and urban operas and all the paths that led to and from us. And then, suddenly but slowly, together wasn’t enough, and on a cold November day, in the same parks where I warmed myself on his name, he hacked open a wound that I tried to cauterize for years.

I was last born in the sky high above the Rockies. Just shy of 21 years after that Brooklyn birth, it was warm September on both coasts. Next to me a loud-mouthed woman squirmed in her seat, spilling her tomato juice as she opined on the state of terrorism in the world: “Well, see, the Russians, they just do it for fun.” On the ground Benghazi was about to enter the common lexicon and birth a million conspiracy theories. As I watched talking heads spew hot trash on my small airplane screen, I almost forgot to be scared about what would happen when the plane hit the San Francisco tarmac.

Do you know what it is to love Brooklyn and the messes you make and the dances alive within you and the men who build and break you and the trips that seem like they might lead nowhere? Are you still being born? I just got here.