To Taylor’s Bookstore, Dallas

I wasn’t 100% clear on why, but, at 19, instinct was telling me I would like college more if it was in California or New York. A beach school or something in The City: black turtlenecks and holey jeans.

 

I drove to Taylor’s bookstore on Northwest Highway in Dallas and sat down in the aisle with books about colleges stacked by my side. I open one to “California” and begin to study the list. UC Berkeley? UC San Diego? Definitely not UCLA. I write down the tuition and cost of living for each one.

Then I flip to New York. Immediately, it’s clear California is too expensive, so I forget about it completely. I look at two things: price for out-of-state students and if they have creative writing.

I decide on the cheapest: SUNY-Binghamton. I read it’s “upstate,” whatever that means. Texas doesn’t have an “upstate.” We have Dallas, Houston and The Rest of Our Huge State, but’s it’s one state. But “upstate” sounds exotic. Cold, but since I don’t really know what that means yet, it’s not awful.

I go home and do a lot of math on loose leaf paper. I have no idea how this works, how one gets to New York, how one convinces one’s parents this is a good idea. How does one convince a school to accept her? How does one just leave? This is entirely uncharted territory.

Somehow, I get there. My parents agree. The school accepts me. I get on a plane one day with two suitcases and a jacket of fears.

Binghamton was broken in so many places. If there was heyday, no one spoke about it anymore. The houses shook with trains and rivers and bad traffic patterns. Rust on the bridges. A downtown that had given up.

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oparrish/3242538388

I loved it. It was the cosmic, spiritual and polar opposite of Dallas. I felt, finally, like I had really escaped whatever it was about Dallas that I never understood. Once winter came and I was indoors for days--writing and writing and writing and writing--because it was too fucking cold and too fucking dark, I knew I was meant to be there. We went to bars on Conklin Ave, smelling of Rolling Rock and wool sweaters and I never wanted to leave. I saw Milt Kessler read at open mic night and was sure I was meant to be right there, in that chair. That night.

He read:

“There is.

There is.

There is.

There is.

This

Is all

There is.”