Skyscrapers vs. Sunshine: A Bicoastal Craig's List Tale of Two Cities

I was supposed to be relishing the city sounds and skyscrapers, but her f*ing framed photos of crashing waves and the two surfboards crammed in the corner of the studio apartment were an unsavory reminder that I was not, in fact, in my own home. Even his arms around me snuggling on the subleased couch - the arms I'd uprooted my whole life for! - felt fleeting.

Still I wanted it, January snow and all. Just as in "The Holiday," the sadistically sappy Christmas movie my best friend back home in Los Angeles and I had inhaled a million times like Cheez Its, M&Ms and Diet Coke, Jacqueline Bush and I had pulled off a caper that is the dream of every girl trapped in a cubicle somewhere fantasizing about her Parallel Life. If you're not that girl, you know her. Her eyes are always glazed over from late nights of staring at the computer, Facebook-stalking all her friends who are leading more exciting existences. On Mondays she puts on gray slacks with a red thong to be rebellious, but the most gumption she can muster to alter the course of her deplorable self-pity is to intrepidly Google the one-who-got-away, then idly peruse Craig's list apartments in his far-away city pretending she has it in her to pack up and go that next weekend to get him back.

I don't own slacks and it's been a few years since I shunned my cubicle in favor of my sexy no-strings-attached blogger life, but I did have a childhood dream of The Big Apple, closets full of black dresses, an unhealthy obsession with glossy Vanity Fair pages and, of course, five years worth of thwarted efforts to be with Him. This is the story of what happened when a girl in New York clicked on my hair-brained Craig's list ad ("Skip Winter, Drive My BMW Convertible in LA!") and taught me that love, adventure and ambition are magnificent, yet malleable pursuits no matter where you hang your hat. And scarf. And mittens. And wool coat.

***

Almost a year ago, my father was perched atop a ladder, held securely in place by my mother, intent on hanging the Christmas lights with precision. They did not look up from the belligerent burnt-out red bulb that threatened to ruin our San Diego beach house's festive aesthetic when I announced that I would be swapping lives with a celebrity hair stylist from Gramercy Park whom I'd met on the internet. It was either a testament to their familial strategy of stoic supportiveness or a reflection of their general acceptance of my zaniness over the years. Probably a bit of both. In any case, they showed up as scheduled that first week of January at my hipster house in East L.A. with a pile of cardboard boxes and duct tape, ready to ship their only child off to pursue her dreams, misguided or otherwise.

Perhaps I should have been more concerned that Jacqueline was a serial killer, but everything about our arrangement had an aura of destiny surrounding it that negated the need to fret over her criminal proclivities. She had responded to my ad within eight hours, and we freakishly discovered in that first exploratory phone call that she'd already met my roommate, Shannon, when they were both working on the set of Faith Hill and Tim McGraw's Soul2Soul tour the previous summer. She was flexible on travel dates. She was comfortable looking after my cat, Scarlett O'Hara, and Shannon's dog, Ramsey, while I was thrilled to play Auntie to her twin tuxedo cats, Millie and Lillie. And most importantly: She knew how to drive stick shift. (As every woman should.) Convinced that at the very least Shannon could score a hot new haircut and we'd have improved our chances of becoming besties with Faith someday, we agreed to the arrangement with open minds and hearts.

Originally from Atlanta, Jacqueline had been a New Yorker for six years and had fallen victim to what I now realize is a common affliction in this town: Bicoastal Escapism. Having traveled the world and conquered America's urban epicenter to her satisfaction, she was looking to slow things down a bit, and possibly settle in with a studly SoCal surfer with whom she could build her happily ever after.

Five-foot-eight, blonde, svelte, stylish and outdoorsy, Jax is everything I failed at growing up. My pasty, freckled skin, dark brown hair, and buxom 5'2" frame meant I had to rely on wit and charm to distinguish myself from the Glamazon Barbies on the volleyball courts. While other girls donned wet suits and surfed Moonlight Beach, I was awkwardly watching from behind my Nick Hornby books, flesh concealed by jeans and hoodies even in the 80-degree sunshine. As they slinked by me in two-pieces better suited as dental floss, I visualized myself in Manhattan, clad in power black pencil skirts with spiky heels, leaning against a desk, arms crossed and channeling Graydon Carter, dropping words those bitches couldn't pronounce, yet alone comprehend.

I'd always intended to move to New York after I graduated from UCLA, but life took some interesting turns, specifically to Chicago and then hurriedly back to Los Angeles. The specifics of the saga are oblique to this tale, because all individual pursuits in one's 20s are passionate quests to defy confronting our childhoods, paying credit card bills and planting roots in a place like Portland. (See 'Bicoastal Escapism.') Thus I'll condense the story: graduate school at Northwestern rocked, all my friends moved to Manhattan while I stayed behind, dated older richer guy who didn't get me while secretly loving Him, quarterlife crisis, fled for home, therapy, big impressive jobs, got cat and a friend with benefits, read "The Female Brain" to see if I was crazy, woke up one morning a year ago to Him's Facebook-friend-request-that-launched-a-thousand-ships, posted "Skip Winter, Drive My BMW Convertible in LA!"

When Jacqueline called about my ad, it felt like the universe had conspired to help me finally realize the things I'd been afraid of. No more flirting with the idea of New York, or the awful entertainment executives in Beverly Hills who were looking for B-list actress arm candy. It was time to step into the life I fantasized about and find out if I had what it takes.

***

Standing at LAX's Virgin America ticket counter for the redeye flight to JFK on a Tuesday night, I was flushed with the excitement of my undertaking. My pal Rich, whose family runs a flower shop in Pasadena, had given me a gorgeous corsage of yellow roses, which I wore over my winter white wool coat on my left wrist. It matched Shannon's gift of a yellow scarf. ("I want you to look like the sunshine in the snow!" she'd said.) Equipped and emboldened with the tokens of friendship, I finally felt like I wasn't going to throw up from anxiety.

The man checking me in grinned and asked, "And what are you up to in New York?"

"Well," I paused. "I'm going to try to convince the love of my life to pick me. Wish me luck!"

"Wow," he deliberated. "Sounds like you're going to need faith more than luck."

He was right, of course, but at the time I misinterpreted where exactly that faith should be directed. As is always the case, we can't offer much to another person until we've sorted out ourselves. Like many women, though, I wanted Jack Black to leave Shannyn Sossamon's house, show up at the Kodak theater and ask me to hang out with Jude Law and Cameron Diaz in London on New Year's Eve.* In reality, I was running right into the arms of Jasper Bloom.**

[*See 'The Holiday.' **Asshole who drags poor Kate Winslet along for years without really loving her, simply for the sake of keeping her on his ego's backburner.]

Instead of appreciating context and being honest with myself, however, I had faith in romantic delusions - and not just about Him. I expected New York to envelop me in fluttering snowflakes, inspire unprecedented prose and palpitating intellectual adventures. Imagine how my sullied red suede boots appreciated the snowflakes, how my over-stimulated neuroses resulted in writer's block that cramped my style worse than Jax's miniscule apartment, and how the narcissistic blog wenches who troll mediabistro panels for free booze boxed me out of their pre-existing cliques.

Some nights I grabbed a slice at Mike's on 2nd Ave and sat flanked by Millie and Lillie, The Twin Kitties, on the couch pouring my frustrations out into my journal. Some nights I rallied to meet a new friend or attend a lecture. Some nights I'd be jostled from my sleep by the buzzer at 2am, and I'd meet Him downstairs and listen to him drunkenly vacillate over whether we were 'meant to be' or if he just 'has a weakness for me.' Some nights were unrepentantly exhilarating.

It would have been a very isolating experience were it not for Jacqueline, calling daily with updates from my house or crying in frustration when the GPS malfunctioned ("How do I find the 10 freeway from Hollywood?" Ha! Wouldn't everyone like to know?). I never got jealous hearing about her hikes in Griffith Park with Ramsey, surf trips with Rich, carne asada burritos at my beloved El Arco Iris or singing with the top down in my car stuck in traffic on Sunset Blvd. In fact, it was comforting to know that my real life still existed, that she was living her dream, and that at any time we could switch back.

Over those couple months during our first swap, we became each other's biggest cheerleaders. She empathized with the voyeuristic limbo I felt in a city I wasn't quite sure I wanted to make my own. As I experienced her deciphering Los Angeles, with its vapid beauty, sluggish work ethic and seductive-but-subtle cultural power, I noticed that we were saying the same things. "I can finally be myself." "The are so many more datable people here." "It's so much easier to get around." "There's a lot of opportunity to grow professionally out here." It was amusing to realize how much personal baggage we'd imposed on the cities we loved, romanticizing the other as though it offered an alternative solution to appreciating what we had to begin with, growing roots.

***

Going home to LA in March was like being slapped across the face. It wasn't that my friends and family didn't welcome me back, although my relationships with some people had clearly suffered as a result of my decision to swap. It was more like a wake up call to reality, knowing that I would then have to decide what exactly it was that was going to make me happy.

I could tell it wasn't going to be Him. We'd spent my last night in Gramercy Park lying on the couch in each other's arms staring at the ceiling, offering nothing. He said 'our conversation isn't over just because you'll be gone,' but I knew deep down that it didn't need to be that difficult. For whatever reason, he was going to pick Her.

It also wasn't going to be My Career. I love being a political news analyst, but I have enough close, uber-successful older female mentors to know that you can't just be a workaholic. You need friendships, nights on the couch watching "Lost" marathons, a Rhett Butler for Scarlett O'Hara.

Jax and I spent 10 days together in LA going on hikes, driving up Coast Highway for margaritas at Duke's in Malibu, and soul-searching. Neither of us wanted to be running away from something, and at 31 and 29, respectively, we knew the decisions we made would be significant. The truth was staring at us: Happiness was not going to be a destination, but an attitude.

Apparently we weren't the only chicks struggling with this dilemma. My old boss, Arianna Huffington, recently sounded the alarm on the issue of women's unhappiness by introducing an in-depth series of posts by trend analyst and author Marcus Buckingham. Apparently as the fruits of feminism have flowered, men are the ones who got happier. The comments sections on these posts are flooded with (some vitriolic) theories explaining this phenomenon, from the "second shift" of work women still do at home to the trend of women who take on so-called male attributes to be equal. Not long after the HuffPost series began, I read some commentary from Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson proclaiming that young people today are lost without a courtship narrative, stuck in a world of causal sex, passive-aggressive social network-stalking and co-habitation. It captured the frustrations of my peers so accurately, despite all its moral pompousness, that I felt nauseous. Are we really so terrified of embracing the responsibilities of adulthood?

I was struck by these observations because I think, just like Jacqueline and I did, a lot of us have a Parallel Life in our heads, and anyone who's ever read "High Fidelity" knows how excruciating it can be to admit to one's self that real life isn't going to be as heroic and satisfying as it is in film, novels and Vanity Fair. We oversimplify complexities and fixate on finding and maintaining the right partner. We behave defensively when the only way to experience life is to participate, to take ownership of our inner protagonist's destiny without antagonizing her into settling.

While speaking on the phone with my former intern, Jill Feinberg, who is now off at law school at UC Berkeley, she summed my situation up perfectly:

"In the movie he doesn't pick Her. Everyone would be cheering for you! This just isn't ending right."

***

There's a common quality among those of us who thrive in both New York and Los Angeles. We are relentless and restless at once, and that duality allows us to walk wired with caffeine and iPods through gritty city blocks alongside the most ambitious minds in our country, just as it beckons us to recharge in a faux vacation culture amidst its creative life force, simultaneously crashing with and making waves. The differences are stylistic, but in a way negligible. Once you resolve your issues about breast size, real or enhanced, you understand that on the east coast cleavage is crass, but you can still appreciate how liberating it is to push the girls up out west. After all, the plunge of your neckline is a personal preference.

I knew I could be happy in either place, but that if I came to New York I'd have to start over. No one here would care that I was once a Chicago Tribune columnist, that I was miraculously able to close six-figure print classified ad contracts at the LA Times, that I was Arianna Huffington's chief of staff, that I'd started my own company and tirelessly built my own blog audience from nothing. I'd be just like all the other wenches with something to prove, waiting for the day that @juliaallision would follow me back on Twitter.

Jacqueline and I swapped a couple more times, for shorter periods. We debated making a life out of it, but I found it too jarring to continue the arrangement. Paralyzed with indecision, I knew I needed to do something.

Historically, the greatest experiences in my life have occurred when I've taken a leap of faith. Ultimately it wasn't enough to leave New York unconquered. As unappealing as it sounded to leave my gorgeous house, trade my hot wheels in for a MTA pass and worry if I'd run into Him & Her at Starbucks, I packed up for a summer sublet in Carroll Gardens. I hoped that being in a borough would be a bit more spacious, and that having the Brooklyn Bridge between me and Him was probably a good idea. If I hated it, I'd return to Manhattan.

My time in Brooklyn was like what happens after the movie ends and the credits roll. You never see Kate Winslet and Jack Black negotiating a transatlantic relationship: deciding who will move to London, whether it would end his career as a Hollywood composer, their tearful breakup or their devastating reunion at Arthur Abbott's funeral two years later. No, they just clink champagne glasses and sing "This Will Be An Everlasting Love."

At the end of my first week, after a night of sobbing on the phone with my mother and Jax wondering what I'd done, I woke up on Friday morning, went into the kitchen to make some tea, and as I was standing there the shelf above me came unhinged from the wall and about 20 lbs-worth of glass plates fell on top of me. With blood spewing everywhere, I had never felt more defeated. There was no one I felt close enough with to call and Jacqueline was in Montauk surfing. (I know, I know. People surf in New York? Perplexing.)

A very sweet cab driver rushed me to the hospital, and my dad talked to me on the phone from California so that I wouldn't pass out. In the emergency room I sat alone next to a 17-year-old who was handcuffed to his gurney, while his parole officer negotiated with a police officer on his behalf. After the attending doctor finished my stitches, another one pointed out that he hadn't X-rayed me to see if there was still glass in my body. As I waited for two hours wondering how times I'd need to be sewn back up again, I made a promise to myself: This city would not break me.

That night at home alone recovering from the incident, reading 'Twilight' and wishing Edward Cullen would save me, my phone rang at 2am. It was Him, out of the blue. (How do they always know when you're at your most vulnerable point?) He came over, saying he couldn't stand it that we weren't speaking, that we'd made a mess of everything and that he needed me. For a minute I felt like I'd finally gotten him, that all the risk and pain had been worth it. That fate and true love prevailed. Ahhh, yes, but where was Her? Riiiiight. A few weeks later he confessed that she had finally moved here to be with him. Luckily for me, though, he said he would never abandon our friendship unless I asked him to. Talk about anticlimactic. Things had quickly gone from Nancy Meyers to Alexander Payne. I made a tough decision and asked him to not be a part of my life anymore.

I wish I could say that I've kept my promise to myself in the five months that have passed since that night. I have tried valiantly, of course, but there are still days when I'm afraid, when I catch myself wanting to flee for home, when I don't want to compete, when the most densely populated thirteen miles in America could not possibly feel more isolating.

***

No other city tests you like New York does. Everyone I've bonded with here says it takes at least a year to get one's stride, but once you do, a glorious awakening transpires and the benefits to the psyche and self-esteem are astounding and transformational. It's the reason Jacqueline still hasn't mustered the will to leave for LA permanently. As she says, "After New York everything else just feels like amateur hour."

We remain thick as thieves, she and I. When she visits California, she drives my car, which will be stashed in my parents' garage until I let go of my auto-dependent, native San Diegan ways. I still pop by to feed Millie and Lillie when she's working late. I crashed on her couch after my stint with the B & T Crowd (a term she just taught me last week). She DVRs my segments on FOX news and does my hair before I go on camera. When I get down, she reminds me of her first year here, a nobody fresh out of the Aveda Institute, when she broke her foot, scraped by as an extra in films and ignored all the cynics who said she was too young and inexperienced to be a stylist to the stars.

Like every good story, though, this one has a surprise ending. I guess it's really a tale of three cities, but then I couldn't have made a clever Dickens reference. For all that personal fortitude I promised in the ER, I ultimately felt haunted by Him's presence and realized that I'd outgrown my childish fantasy of New York. Releasing myself from the plot I'd built up in my head that wasn't adding up, I saw a deeply patriotic woman who might thrive best in the epicenter of political action, renewed by a clean romantic slate and a chance at living my 30s a bit more grounded than I did in my 20s. So, I passed up job opportunities in New York in favor of an awesome position with a group of young activists in DC, where I hope to pursue my passion, hold out for what I deserve and make a difference. Naturally, Him came knocking when he heard the news. He has a built-in Destroy Maegan Sonar of some sort. While it was a tough exchange, I'm still on to better things.

Fortunately if I need a Manhattan fix, I can always count on Jax to welcome me "home." She had a similar discovery about herself, opting to open her heart to the unexpected. Since she returned to Gramercy Park in March to continue working with her amazing client roster, she met a gorgeous woman in that crazy Surf Meetup group and they've been together for four months. (Leave it to me to make friends with the only surfers in New York. How they cart their stuff to Montauk every weekend remains an inspiring mystery to me.) The relationship, like most of the valuable ones, happened when Jacqueline didn't expect it, and is also her first time dating a woman. While the LA bug isn't entirely out of her system, I know none of us would trade the long nights we've stayed up in the apartment watching trashy reality TV shows while, bizarrely!, having deep conversations about coming out and gay rights and what society expects of women. After much consideration, I think the consensus is that traditional gender roles have confused all of us to the point that we might as well be content to be ambiguous.

Jax and I both miss LA, but we make it work. Her Roxy shower curtain is more of a comfort now, a reminder of our shared connection to the sprawling freedom, sunny attitude and reckless abandon of our time there. My parents visited us in New York in the summer, and while we couldn't enjoy killer tacos with fresh guacamole, we did concede that Shake Shack is better than In-N-Out.

We discuss the measure of satisfaction in our lives, and we're proud of ourselves even though everything isn't perfect. It's been a tumultuous, transitional year, but we are no longer faced with the prospect of regrets. I don't have a "one who got away" now. I won't ask myself what would have happened if I'd had the guts to compete with the best in my business on the east coast. That little freckle-faced pasty girl reading books at the beach was, for a moment, finally dressed all in black in the sexiest, limitless city in the world with nothing but possibility in her path, equipped with her own prose to write the rest of the story. While I'll be doing that somewhere else, that place in my heart is satiated.

There are many excuses to make, especially in this economy and in our bombastic culture, for not following one's dreams or leading with one's heart. It's beautiful when you realize that you have a choice, that you can be industrious and brazen and maybe a bit reckless to feel really alive.

If this were a movie, I'd tie up the lose ends. I'd have published a book, found a JFK Jr. lookalike to snuggle with the Sunday papers, and I'd be following Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. Fortunately it doesn't matter, because I've learned that it's okay to move seamlessly between reality and your Parallel Life. You savor the parts that come true, and marvel at the bits that don't.

I visited LA in September for a couple weeks, and this time when I arrived at the Virgin America counter I was glowing for a much better reason. I'd received a text message from my friend Adam that said: "Remember that home is the feeling of knowing you're surrounded by love, wherever you are."

Better than luck, I had faith in myself.

 

Follow Maegan Carberry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/maegancarberry

Comments

[Elizabeth Blackney]

Thank you Maegan. I wish, wish, wish that more young women were as passionate - as committed to truth - and as hard-working as you. You are a tribute to your generation. Your parents must be so proud!!!! What a spectacular role model you are, can't wait to share this with my 14 yo daughter. Poise under fire. You go girl!!!! I have a feeling your movie will end better than any fantasy.

[kjparis]

Incredible Maegan!

Thank you for this.

[2morrowknight - Huffpost Blogger]

That's a great post! Soul-stirring, emotionally-raw, and rich. I absolutely love it. Has to be your best post to date. Yes, I've read everything you've ever written (professionally speaking) so I can say "maegan's best post to date" with both authority and confidence. And you'll have many more great posts I'm sure.

Very proud of your honesty Maegan. There is a lot in your post that will inspire other young women and...yes...young men. I'm inspired by what you do, so this post is literally icing on the cake. Simply put, "you rock!".

[aryssabrooke]

If you inspire even one other woman with this tale, you'll have made both yourself, and me, proud. It's so rewarding being your friend, Maegan. Your adventure this year has constantly reminded me that being friends with someone is so much more than meeting for coffee or catching a film together. I'm so glad you've decided to continue living on the East Coast. Personally, it makes our lives so much richer, your being here. And Ms. O'Hara sends her best "I promise I'm not getting into mischief" regards!