Where I'm Writing From

I was born in Phoenix. I was raised in Tempe and went to college there. My first job was in Tucson. I am ready to get out of here.

The Phoenix Metro Area freeway and road system were engineered in the time after the urban planners took over. Blocks are a mile long. They run due north-south and east-west. Intersections follow 90-degree angles. Stickly oleanders buzzed into rectangular prisms line the roadways. This is a driving city, and you need to drive to live here. In a town where everyone is driving around in separate cars to separate strip malls people ought to be diffuse, removed, distant, unlikely to run into each other. Unfortunately this is not the case.

This is my main beef with my city. Trips to the grocery store, the coffee shop, the bank shouldn't have to involve the Does He Remember? smile at the guy who saw me projectile vomit onto a group of smokers at the really cool concert. He surely remembers. The mom who saw me having sex in her pool; the guy whose wife divorced him in order to run off with my boyfriend; the man I mooned: all awkward.

I saw a movie once where a young woman realized her town was too small for the extensive adolescence she lived and decided to move away. I'm considering following her instructions.