6/30/03
WEEKEND IN BOSTON
2 PAGES

I went up to Boston for a bachelor party this weekend. Actually, most of the time was spent outside the city in Randolph playing paintball, but we came into the city on Saturday night for pool and beer at Jillian's.

Man, it has been so long since I have really seen Boston. We went up there for New Years Eve this year, but it wasn't really the same. We came in by train, went to dinner, spent a couple hours at the restaurant, walked around a LITTLE bit in the common and looked at the ice sculptures and stuff, then walked up to Copley and found a bar where we hung out until midnight and then we headed to the train home. So we really didn't SEE Boston, at least not the Boston I so fondly remember. At the time, I had just recently finished a year and a half of working in New York City and I honestly felt as though I might have been there the whole night. I guess New York had infected me so much that I had started feeling the same way about each city I was in. Plus we came in by commuter rail which only reminded me of my New Jersey Transit train rides every morning. And it WAS night time, so subconsciously, I wasn't actually SEEING the Boston skyline clearly. It was hard to let my mind understand that this was a city that I loved, not one I despised.

And the times before that weren't the same either when I'd come into the city. I think after graduating from Emerson, it was really hard to come back into Boston because so much of what had made Boston great for me was the fact that all my friends were there and I was at a school that I loved learning something that I enjoyed. And after graduation, all that disappeared from Boston for me. So each time I came into the city, it was almost bittersweet because it was like the city could never ever be the same for me. And now I find out that Emerson has actually sold all of their old buildings in the Back Bay section of town. All the old brownstones that gave the school such character, such Boston CHARACTER, gone. GONE. And now the college is really heading in the direction of a technical school, teaching kids how to use computers rather than teaching them how to create stories and art within their medium. Thomas Wolf said (to be cliché) "You can never go home again." With Boston, that really seemed true. Nothing that I remembered and loved seemed to be there anymore.

But this time, for some reason, things were different. For some reason, being in Boston felt like being home again. Really home. Part of it was the fact that I was there with Eli and Chris. We had experienced Boston together at one point. And now we were experiencing it together again. And unlike New Years, our wives weren't there. Not that there was anything wrong with them being there at New Years. Lauren and Susan, Chris's wife didn't live in Boston. And no matter what, no matter how we tried to explain it to them and share it with them, no matter how much they wanted to understand, they couldn't.

Boston, I have realized over the last few years and while I was living there, is not a city you can get in a day or a weekend. You really have to live there to take it in. You have to walk through Kenmore Square before and after a Red Sox game. You have to walk through the North End on a Saturday night. You have to stumble home from a party in Southie to your apartment in the Back Bay. You have to walk through Chinatown to North Station or the South Street Diner. You have to ride the T to the science museum on a Saturday night to see laser Pink Floyd and then walk home by way of the Charles River esplanade. You have to drink a beer in the little dive bar like Charlie Flynn's across the street - and not on St. Patrick's Day ("amateur day" as they call it in the Hub). You have to stand up against in the wind whipping through Copley square, channeled by the John Hancock building in Fall. You have to take the Red Line over to Harvard Square and tip the street performers playing covers of Bob Dylan songs. You have to play frisbee in the Public Gardens. You have to quack at the Duck Tours. You have to be able to identify Bikehorn Charlie as he comes "whoooooop"-ing by on his tricycle. You have to walk along the First Christian Science reflecting pool on a cool night and dare each other to jump in.

You just have to BE there. And unless you've BEEN there, you just can't understand it. Eli, Chris and I have been there. We know. There was no need to explain why we liked something or why it was special. We all just knew. It was a shared experience. And that's what made Boston feel like home this time. When you're home, you don't explain to you're wife why you sleep on the side of the bed you do or why you drink out of your particular cup or why you do any of the dozens of other insignificant things you do. You just do it because it's what you do. The same thing with Boston. It was home again because we just did what we did without having to explain it.

We drove into the city around 6:30 and the sight of the Prudential and the John Hancock stirred me in a way I haven't felt in a long time. We parked in the Prudential parking garage and walked from the Pru past my old apartment up on Charlesgate, through a back street and into Kenmore square. After a night of pool, drinking, waitress ogling, and plain old reminiscing, we had to head out. We drove our friend Drew back to his place on Beacon Hill, passing through the old neighborhoods where we used to walk every day. The light in the Old Hancock Building was solid blue - "skies are clear." We headed out of town by way of Storrow Drive, riding along next to the Charles River. Under the Arthur Fiedler footbridge, past the Hatchshell, under the Smoots bridge, past Fenway and the Citgo sign and then on out of town.

I had always said that Boston would be the only city I could ever live in. Permanently I mean. I've obviously lived in other cities since then. But I knew they were always temporary. L.A., New York (sort of) and now Philadelphia. After 4 years now of being out of a city that I loved and truly called home, I had somehow forgotten that not all cities suck. Most do, but not all. There is at least one. But I forgot about that and had started thinking that I just couldn't live in any city, period. But after spending only 5 hours in Boston on a Saturday evening, it all came back to me. Yes, I could live here. I had forgotten, but I could most certainly live here. And I would be happy here. I'm sure that once the parental part of me kicked in, I wouldn't want my kids growing up in a city, even one like Boston, but then again, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing. Who knows. For now, I'm just happy that Boston is back in my heart the way it once was. I can't believe I ever let it leave.