Second Person Soliloquies

It's 3AM in the morning an you're just leaving work on what you still consider Saturday night. You've spent a majority of the week soul searching. Instead of taking a cab uptown with your friends to get closer to home, you decide to take the train and save the money to have the time to think.

When you approach the first station and all 3 machines decline your card but don't take cash, you consider jumping the turnstile, but fear the consequences.

Instead, you run 3 blocks to the next entrance with an attendant on hand and you hand him $5 asking for a single ride. Though you know he has the capability to sell you one, he points you toward the one machine in Manhattan that will still take your cash. You wait in line behind two husky drunk girls, grab your pass, and sprint to the doors of your train to watch them close in your face.

The next train is twenty minutes away.

It's 3:10AM. You take a seat on a bench next to nobody. The husky girls caught the train.

You've considered leaving New York a lot this week, giving up on acting, finding a real career, maybe going to grad school and taking life seriously. Really, you just long to be pretty, wear pretty things, and have your pretty friends back. Still, knowing that each day contained those three things sounds like heaven.

The one thing you didn't need to motivate you any further was train doors closing in your face at 3AM on what you still consider Saturday night. I guess you got that time to think.

You think about all the calls you've made to all of your pretty friends this week. All in Chicago. All with real futures. All of them happy.

You, however, are choking back tears, talking about how things are going "swell" and how you're so "lucky" to live "here". Their words of encouragement let you know they know you know you're lying.

The train comes at 3:30 and you're moving now, thinking about what you would do if you did leave New York for Chicago. You remember all those times, like a good theatre major, you said

"If you HAVE a fallback, you WILL fall back."

You realize that "back" isn't the only direction you can fall. The others just don't give you options.

So why don't you just pack up and move back to Chicago? If you think you'd be so happy there, why stay? Are you afraid? Everyone will say you gave up? Didn't give it a fair chance?

Or maybe people will applaud you. Tell you it's OK to abandon one dream for another. Welcome you home. With open arms.

But it's almost 4AM on what you still consider Saturday night, and you're still trying to figure out why you think New York sucks so much. Is it because you're not rich and famous yet? Or is it because everyone around you still acts like they are. You can hardly even think straight while that guy who looks like what you remember Bob Marley looks like starts to play a song about Obama, but all you can think is


What happens when The Big Apple doesn't happen?


You had the conversation with your coworkers tonight. One of them, 30, working your part-time as a full-time and dating the other one, 21, unsure of what his future is.  And there you are from New Mexico, Nicaragua, and Northwestern all wondering what the hell you're doing in New York. But somehow you all moved here for the dream, the opportunity, and the promises that have been fooling immigrants for centuries.

Time. Sure, it takes time. One of them suggests you give it at least 10 years.

You've never thought about 10 years in the terms of "least".

So you sprint to your second train to get home as the clock hits 4 and you see it trailing off into the distance. You feel it carrying away every fuck you give about N.Y.C. You think about those 10 years and where you want to be at the end of them.

It's 4AM on what you finally realize is Sunday morning and suddenly, you can picture it perfectly in your head.

So what happens when The Big Apple doesn't happen?

TJB: