On the middle

I leave the plane anxious, knowing this all has to end. I’ve only just arrived in New York but New York is a city, especially if you’ve lived there before, where you can see the ending before the beginning even starts. It doesn’t like to think so, but it is predictable in its unpredictability. In some ways, I feel like the 18 year old girl who drove here with her parents to go to college. In some ways, I feel every bit the 31 going on 32 year old girl, scavenging for a Tylenol in my tote bag as I exit the aircraft. My head hurts more now, I’ve filled it with more things. I didn’t eat many vegetables in Ohio that weren’t drenched in thick waves of curry so I get a salad and watch the planes go by in the large, newly renovated windows of Laguardia.

I’m replaying my mom screaming at me right before I left for the airport in Columbus. I had avoided that side of her for so long, but there we were again. I knew better than to take the bait, but I couldn’t help it. The tone in her voice, the agitation over something so meaningless, she’s scratching at something ancient inside me. So I yell at her to leave me be, she screeches back - something ancient has awakened in her too. I’m so frazzled at the airport, that old anxiety coursing through me, that I leave my luggage outside the gate. I had to go through security all over again to grab it. My heart settles as I grip the handle of my suitcase. I feel stupid. I feel 17.

At 17 I thought I would leave this all behind. That is what New York is supposed to be best at, being an eraser. Instead it’s a flashlight, illuminating all that needs fixing. There is nowhere to hide in New York. I am reminded of this over and over.

In New York, the sky has now turned grey. I swallow a mouthful of arugula as I watch a plane take off. American Airlines growing tinier and tinier as the metal tube jets into the clouds. I put my feet up. I have tickets to Oh, Mary! but a little while until I need to get there. I don’t mind hanging out at the airport though. I like to watch things come and go.

At last in an Uber to the theater, I notice the trees. They’re the same color as the trees I left in Ohio. Dark emerald green. There was a flash rainstorm before I left. I felt so lucky, watching the rain fall over my lush front yard. Frank Ocean softly sang in my head, “it usually doesn’t rain in Southern California. My eyes don’t shed tears, but boy they pour when…”

I first cried at Webster’s. The inaugural cry of the ten day trip. It’s all I can do lately, cry and cry and cry. Even in LA. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, or what’s happening in the stars, or if I just need to see a new therapist, but I started crying again a few months ago after a many year hiatus and haven’t stopped since.

We’re sitting in her sundrenched backyard on the most beautiful Columbus day. The city is showing off, every blade of grass is on their best behavior. She set out all our favorite snacks and made me brownies. It’s a gesture I cherish so much that right there she makes the first crack in the dam. Sitting in the sun, I try out on her the line that has been spinning around my head for weeks. It’s the only way I can explain the state of my life. “Right now, you’re meeting me in the middle.”

I am in a great middle. Nothing for me is nailed down, at a time where I’ve been told a great deal should be. Webster reminds me that isn’t ever how life has worked. You can feel solid and still break. I say, “At thirty-two? When did I become thirty-two?” We talk about Sex and the City, how Carrie was thirty-two at the start of season one. Webster tells me this should be comforting, Carrie had less than nothing nailed down. “Except her column,” I say, envious of a fictional character. I am desperate to have my own Carrie Bradshaw column, but with no idea how to get there. She wrote and people read it. What else needs to be figured out? I say none of this, and instead tell her, “What ever happened to being chic? It’s a lost art, no?” I muse that maybe we should bring back smoking. I take a fake drag and recognizing my deflection, she touches my arm. I dissolve into tears. Her dogs circle my feet, confused by my outburst. I pick one up and let the warmth of her tiny body calm me down. I talk to the dog on my lap, unable to look up. “I just don’t know where to go or who to be.” I tell her you’re supposed to tell your mom things like this, and I thank her for being my mom. At thirty-two she gives me the experiences I craved when I was a kid. It’s starting to come together a bit. Maybe a lot of things don’t happen in order.

I’m now in Times Square. New York at least smells the same. Humid and sticky, a little desperate. New York air clings to you in a way Los Angeles’s doesn't. In LA it floats around you, almost dancing, too unbothered to actually attach to your body. New York air hugs you, and at least for this moment, I need that embrace. I am glad to be back. For the first time in a while, I do in fact heart New York.

Oh, Mary! is perfect, I cackle endlessly. At one point I almost cried. “I could see so many great days with you.” I forgot what theater was like. To sit in a room with other people, to have a line that was said right in front of us settle into our collective consciousness at the same time. Oh my god, I might be human again.

I take a car to my friend’s place in Brooklyn. It’s expensive and wasteful but I just need to see the city from a car again. Driving away from Manhattan in a car is comforting to me. It’s a film scene, it’s the ingenue I never got to be, it’s goodbye to all that. I want to be my dog and stick my head out the window. But it’s 10pm, and I’m feeling every bit thirty-two. I order a grilled chicken sandwich to meet me in Brooklyn. Protein before bed.

The next day I’m running late. I’m meeting Torrence to see another play. I haven’t been sleeping well since Ohio and I needed to squeeze a run in before I met him. It’s raining. Rain does very specific things to my hair. My loose curls turn into ringlets, a hairstyle I haven’t felt on me in ages. Hugging Torrence, I can see my ringlets hit his cheek. Two old friends meeting.

John Proctor is the Villain changes everything. I see those girls and something crystalizes. I hear the sniffling of all the women around me and I wonder what ancient wounds are being awakened all around me right now. I heavy sob at the final scene, Lorde’s Green Light blasting through the theater speakers. Water pours, pours, pours, out the dam. “I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it!” A deep inhale as I try to soothe myself. It’s the “I want it” that always gets me. The desperation of that sentence, the agonizing truth that, no matter how hard we drive towards it, we don’t always get what we want. What I want right then is to scream out with all the women in the theater, “I WANT IT!”

Afterwards I am unsettled, but in a good way. My mind is racing, but in a good way. Nothing inspires me anymore, but this did. It’s given me something new to think about, or reexamine something old, I'm not sure, likely both. The rain continues and Torrence and I decide to skip around the West Village. And I mean literally skip, I’m so happy I do little jumps. I am with my best friend, I am in the city we met, I just saw an amazing piece of art and we’re about to get lattes. I am in love with New York again. Over a large slice of cake we burst into laughter about something infinitely dumb. We’re being so stupid in this tiny cafe even the barista tosses us a little chuckle. The cafe is playing jazz, the rain has quieted to a drizzle, and all I can feel is, I am in love I am in love I am in love.

This trip is a tour of past lives. Each friend I encounter holds a specific piece of a person I used to be. As I see each person, some things come together and some things fall apart. Less pieces of a puzzle, more magazine clippings piled onto a collage. Memory is so funny, so tricky. How did I see you then? How do I see you now? Did we miss each other, back at 17? Are we finding each other again, at thirty-two? Maybe I won’t know for sure for another fifteen years.

I meet Ritu at an impossibly cozy wine bar. Everyone here is gorgeous and smiling. She slips into the restaurant casually, like only an actually cool person can. She is unphased by the extremely New York New Yorkers around her, and I remember why I was first drawn to her in college. Chic. She has been, and will always be, chic. A not so lost art after all. Together we talk about the past, we remember things the same and a little different. We fill in some blanks. We talk about the future. She tells me about the concept of a “Covid graduation” and without knowing fully what that means I know exactly what that means. 2020 to 2024 was a time spent in the trenches. Heads down looking at our own papers because looking up would simply invite too much else. Too look up would have meant having to make sense of a concept too big to come to terms with. No, absolutely not. No thank you.

But now, in 2025, finally, maybe, things feel different. We are not “ourselves again,” because we never can be people who didn’t know Covid, but we could be somebody else. I feel like somebody else. This new person is a little lighter, a little happier, and a lot more lost. But I’m starting to see that clarity is a rare commodity even amongst those I know with all the normal life markers. The graduation seems to be that we all are a little more human than before. AI, I know, I know - but I don’t buy it. I have never felt more human than I have this year.

I mean goddamn, I’m crying everywhere, including the walk home from the bar. The drunk walk home, hello old friend. The drunk walk home is a beautiful, sacred ritual. New York taught me that. In LA, if you’re even able to do a drunk walk home, the sights of the walk aren’t pretty, but the smell is. Jasmine and oranges. In New York it’s the architecture that paints the ritual. The brown-red brick against that stupid gorgeous emerald green of the trees. Warm yellow street lamps spreading a soft blanket over the scene. This is the easy emotion Taylor Swift sang about in All Too Well. “Dancing ‘round the kitchen in the refrigerator light.” Unpretentious and full of feeling, I am dancing down the street under the refrigerator light.

I am in the middle at a scary time. I don’t recognize the world anymore. Every time I think I am not naive I am reminded that I am. I am still young after all. There is so much I don’t know about how to live. But right now it seems like no one knows how to live. What does it mean? To see all these people again who I met at the start? Are we all in the middle? Is that the only place we’ve ever been? I inhale.

Summer still smells the way it always did. Somehow we have been granted that grace. Twinkle lights still dangle from outdoor patios. Twinkle lights, our most accessible magic. Couples still kiss under twinkle lights on outdoor patios in the perfect smelling summer. They exit the kiss smiling at each other. So the middle has moments, then. Maybe it actually has silver linings all over.

I tell Abby and Matt after we’ve finished a perfect meal, the only kind of meal we have together, that I am in the middle, and Matt replies “I like in the middle Keerthi.” I am deeply comforted to hear that from someone who knows me so well. Abby nods her head and agrees. Along the way I met them. And I was supposed to meet exactly them. My friends make me believe in fate.

We exit into a downpour, each of our called cars waiting for us. We rush into them, shouting “I miss yous” onto the drenched cobblestone street. I get in my car and leave with the feeling that I forgot something important I had to say.

The rain has left for good and I am singing on the street with Torrence. We have just finished seeing Sunset Blvd. We head to the E, belting “Sunset Boulevard! Twisting boulevard! Secretive and rich, a little scaryyyyyy!” in our deepest baritones. We mix it with the theme tune of ‘44: The Obama Musical’ that I taught him earlier. “His name is Obama! Barack-a-lack-a Obama! He’ll charm the pants off your mama!” In conjunction, we sound quite insane. When we get on the train Torrence says everyone here must think we’re crazy. But I look around and disagree. “Everyone on this train is jealous of us,” I reply, smiling. “Because no one else is having this much fun on a Wednesday.”

When Torrence leaves the train he says he’ll see me later. I think we might, but I'm also not sure. I choke up. Before the train doors close I tell him I love him. Right then I decide then to tell everyone I love on this trip that I love them. Because when was the last time they heard that from me?

Whatever is on the other side, I don’t know. My gut is gnawing at me, Keerthi, I think it might be worse. The silver lining of that is now everything is more precious. I am good at being sentimental. Maybe the middle is okay. Mustn't it be? If the only thing left to do is tell him I love him?

Torrence says he loves me too. The train doors close. An ad for Doordash plays. I put my headphones on.

Back at the beginning, I wanted something else. Something else, but not all that different. I wanted to find a family. I wanted to make TV. I wanted to be thinner. It’s a bit sad that those desires didn’t mutate more. But something has changed. I don’t know about film, I don’t know about TV, I just want to be a writer. “I WANT IT!” It doesn’t matter how or in what capacity, I just want to write and have it resonate. I want to feel a lot, even if that means I hurt a lot more. The dam doesn’t need to be built back up, it can stay broken. And really, I’m not being fair to myself. Visiting my old friends, I see through them just how much I have changed. Objects in motion stay in motion. Revisiting the past has actually moved me forward. And I have to keep moving. I promise myself, all of them, that I will. “I WANT IT!” I promise you, I do.

It’s my last night in New York and I’m watching Tom dance at his birthday party. He is so free in his body. I admire him for that, and for so many things. Watching him dance, I fall in love with him all over again. I have fallen in love with each one of my old friends all over again. Brooke is so smart, Carlos is so funny, Lizzie is so sweet. Looking around that room, I realize I got a lot right in the beginning. So if I could then, I can now. I don’t cry. Finally the love I feel doesn’t make me want to cry. My guess is I’m starting to feel worthy of it.

The next day I am going home, and the question mark of my life will grow more pronounced. But my god, I have gotten so very much right, even when I have been so completely wrong. Is across the country, in Los Angeles, the reality of the middle? Or is it here, in this bar? Either way, I have an ice cold martini in my hand and my old friends around me.

“But I hear sounds in my mind” Tom dances, the music revs. “Brand new sounds in my mind.”

He body rolls as his friends around him stand sipping drinks. He doesn’t care, he dances.

“But honey I'll be seein' you 'ever I go” I don’t think I can join him just yet. I don’t feel that free.

“But honey I'll be seein' you down every road” Instead I do what I can do right then. I wrap him in a hug. I squeeze, tight. New York air clings to you. “I'm waiting for it, that green light-”

I want it!