Drowning in Soho

            Phoebe Love is not famous, contrary to popular belief. She has a thing for snow globes, sewing, decoupage, and Turkish Jade 100s.

            She will call at five o’clock in the morning to tell you, in her seductive, wispy voice, “One of my only requirements for having friends, especially long distance friends, is that they answer their phone no matter what time it is. And another thing, your voicemail is really funny. ‘You have reached the voice mailbox of…’ You sound really important. Like a lot of important people call you. It’s Phoebe. And it’s almost two o’clock in Portland. And I’m having a little bit of an identity crisis, which apparently isn’t supposed to come for another twenty years, but I tend to have them pretty frequently. I’ll talk to you some other time. Bye.”

            And the only reason she calls is because Phoebe and you are going to become roommates in nine days. So she is calling to get to know you before you move in with her and your best friend, Noah Waters. But you choose not to answer. This is the situation you find yourself in. You have lost your mind, wearing the hat of a starving, frustrated, lonely artist living in New York City. South of Houston Street. You wrote one petty novel and got it published, so you walked away from a full ride to New York University after your first year. You soon realized the book was not selling enough copies for you to eat, you lost the opportunity to go back to school, you cannot go back home, and you are hungry.

            So you receive a call from your best friend, an aspiring someone, who says he wants you to take what petty life you are faking in New York City and pack it into your Volvo wagon and move to Portland, Oregon. Pack up the contents of your tiny studio apartment into your Volvo wagon.

            You ask him, “Why Portland?”

            And he says, “There’s this girl…” He does not have to say anymore.

            So you say, “Well, what the hell am I doing here that I couldn’t be doing in a new place with my best friend?” So you agree to go. You agree because he is your best friend. You agree because you have no ties to New York City. You left college. Your family disowned you. You are hungry. And Portland is a new place. And you are hungry. So why not do the same thing you are doing in New York City, in a new place, with your best friend?

            He tells you who the girl is. Phoebe Love. A girl he loved in high school, who is a year younger than your best friend and yourself, and who just graduated. But you have no idea who she is. You do not remember her from high school. Phoebe who? A drama kid? Was she not an anemic, anorexic girl who lived in antique shops around town and hung out with queers?

            You are an imitation of the person you were in high school. You have changed. Your best friend tells you so. He says, “You need to move with me to Portland.”

            You are pretending to be some successful artist who is a shell of the former high school kid you were. You are trying to make sure everyone knows you left home, you left the town you were born in. And you will be damned if you were going to die in that foolish town with the antique shops and the high school has-beens who will never amount to anything of admiration in life. All of your friends from high school have been told that you are making it in the big city. The Big Apple. And they believe this. They are gullible. They never left home. You have some credibility seeing as you published a novel after leaving home. You make it sound as though you are rubbing elbows with the rich and famous and infamous faces of New York City. You make it sound as though you are dining at the finest restaurants and hanging out at the swankiest lounges in New York City, when in reality you are hungry.

            Your best friend tells you how great life in Portland, Oregon is going to be. He tells you his theater teacher from high school knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy in Portland who can get him into acting. You say, “Great.” He says this is going to be the greatest thing to happen to he and you. You say, “Great,” but you are still hungry, looking at a blank piece of college-ruled notebook paper and a blue ink pen sitting on the desk. And while he is packing his things, asking what you are doing, you are trying to figure out who Phoebe is. This is going to be great.

            You can be doing the same thing you are doing in New York City, in Portland, with your best friend. And Phoebe.