November 16, 2012 scottcjones 7Comments

If you ever find yourself driving from east to west across the state of Pennsylvania in the middle of winter in a 1989 Subaru with everything you own in the backseat, be sure to bring the following items: several extra-large packages of beef jerky, a pee jar, and an invisible companion to have conversations with. You’ll need these things because Pennsylvania, to put it mildly, is an extremely large state. It’s so large that you’ll wonder sometimes if you’re actually driving across it, or if you’re stuck on one of those old time car-driving movie sets where all the windows in…

November 7, 2012 scottcjones

The Subaru was diagnosed with having a failing radiator. “Forget driving to Chicago,” the mechanic at Hal’s Autos explained. “That thing won’t make it across the state line in its current condition.” The Subaru was a foreign car, he said, which made parts difficult and costly to acquire. The whole thing, including labor, would set me back around $300, which would be a significant blow to my meager savings. I was out of my depth when it came to cars, so I telephoned my father for advice. He was beside himself. “Three hundred dollars? For a radiator?” he said. “That’s…

October 24, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

Phillip and I emerged from the subway near Rockefeller Center. “This is midtown,” Phillip said pointing at the twinkling buildings around us. “That way is uptown. That way is downtown.” I was trying to play it cool, to look like I fit in, to be a wallet-tucked-away-in-my-back-pocket kind of person. I tried to put on a cool front, to appear entirely unmoved by what was unfolding around me. My unmoved expression, of course, didn’t last. I don’t believe that anyone can take their first, virgin steps down a New York City sidewalk and not look like Charlie Bucket walking into the…

September 21, 2012 scottcjones 3Comments

Phillip’s mother drove us to the subway entrance. She put the car in park, then delivered a brief speech on how to survive in New York City. She told us to carry our wallets in our front pockets; to keep a spare $20 in our socks for cab fare, in case we got mugged; to never unfold a map, no matter how lost we were; to walk with the flow on sidewalks, not against it. She told us to stick together. She told us not to walk down any streets that didn’t feel right to us. Then she let us…

September 13, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

Phillip’s family bounced down the stairs like a cluster of pachinko balls. They rolled into the overheated kitchen and lodged themselves around the cramped breakfast nook. I sat shoulder to shoulder with them, so close together that the rims of our dinner plates practically touched. Phillip’s siblings—all of whom were significantly older than Phillip and held down white-collar jobs; two of his brothers were still wearing their Wall Street ties—had vacated their Manhattan apartments and moved back home, back to Yonkers, after their father died six months earlier. He’d had a heart attack on the subway during rush hour, no doubt…

September 6, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

I drove across a sunny, frozen New York State at a sensible 62 miles per hour—the speed limit was a conservative 55 at the time—feeling anxious and excited to meet whatever was out there for me. There was a feeling that my life was finally starting now, that all the pretense and training was over. I’d followed a path up to this point—school, followed by more school. There probably would be more school in the not-so-distant future for me—I liked the structure of school; I liked dining halls and dormitories; I wanted to become a tweed jacket-wearing teacher and write…

August 30, 2012 scottcjones

On a subzero February morning I packed up my car in the pre-dawn dark, said goodbye to my parents, then got on the road. My plan was to drive south to the township of Yonkers, just north of New York City, where my womanizing college friend Phillip was currently living. I’d spend the night at Phillip’s place, he and I would go see the Letterman show together at Radio City Music Hall, and I’d finally be able to get my first look as this mind-blowing, Paula-destroying metropolis that everybody had been crowing about all these years. The next day I’d…

August 23, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

I moved home after college and took Paula’s old job tending bar at the seafood restaurant. The bar’s patrons despised me for two reasons: one, I wasn’t Paula (she and her tight T-shirt collection had gotten engaged to a bald lawyer and moved to Albany); two, I constantly read fat novels behind the bar and would act put out whenever any of the fishermen asked me to refill their empty draft glasses or fetch more pretzels. I was patiently waiting for my life to start. My parents’ disappointed faces, which I saw each night at the dinner table over plates of…

August 14, 2012 scottcjones 6Comments

A full third of the students in my freshman class at college were either from New York or from one its numerous surrounding regions (Long Island, Westchester, etc.). They constantly talked about “The City,” and how great it was, and how they could barely stand the fact that they weren’t there at this very moment. (For the record, the college was located on top of a verdant hill about four hours north of The City.) When I’d admit that I’d never been to New York, they’d narrow their eyes and cock their heads to the side, like dogs who’d heard…

August 8, 2012 scottcjones 4Comments

The first person I ever met who made a run at New York was a woman named Paula. I was working as a dishwasher in a seafood restaurant for the summer and Paula was the bartender. She had large, sympathetic eyes and wore spectacularly tight T-shirts, which are two ideal qualities for a bartender to have. Customers were forever mooning over Paula. Even after we’d close, men would come to the door and cup their hands around their eyes, peering into the dark bar. “Paula!” they’d shout. “Paula, are you in there? Paula!” These men became known as “Paula’s Fan…