If There's a Book, Here's a Prologue

I don't know.

Maybe you didn't.

Maybe when you were a kid you never wanted to run away.

Maybe you never rode your bike to the park and cried on the swings as the night air turned too cold for your t-shirt. Maybe you didn't hide under the bleachers in the gym, only to reappear after the other kids got picked up and then you threw the basketball up at the hoop for hours. Maybe you never snuck out at night and flipped burgers and then used that entire shift's pay on a nightly room in a boarding house and had to share a bathroom with the other boarders on your floor. Maybe you never sat out on the sand or lay back on the band-shell or just walked the city streets trying to stay awake till the dawn.

Maybe you never wanted to run away.

When I was a kid, I always wanted to run away.

****

Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

She collected quirks. She so wanted to be noticed - to stand out among the photographers, comedians, jewelry designers and professional skateboarders she lived around. They drifted on the boundaries as they wrestled with plans and definitions - she didn't. She never had to. Her father founded a bank in the 70's and died soon after. When she hit the age of twenty-one, most of his money came to her and from then on, she was what she would always be.

"I can't help it if I'm lucky." she often whispered - but only to herself and never very convincingly.

Private confessions like that filled her. She distracted from them with constant movement and afternoons in boutiques. She fell in with the social circle in and around Nolita and bought an apartment on Elizabeth. The crowd there was mostly from London and knew how to be destructive while still remaining driven. Each of them stood alone with their own little ticks and habits. This seemed so cool to her. She wanted in on that dance. She wanted to be seen the very same way she saw them. So, she collected quirks that she would pick up along the way and would take them on as her own.