Disappearing in Colombia, New York, and Other Places

I’ve been away for a bit. For a moment there, I started my master’s at a particular university in the city in January. After graduating in 2007, a year ahead of my class, living in Spain with my then-Spanish lover in Madrid for about a year, coming back to NYC and then going on our verbally-exploited Eurotrip with Elie (there’s not one time we get together and not talk about it or meet someone new and not tell them), waiting for my then-Spanish lover in Paris, although I know he wasn’t going to come, but I still waited because I believe in fairy tales, I came back to New York to face –no, hide –from my existential crisis. I was getting old, I thought. Now that I’m 23 I realize that one can only get older and 22 now seems young. So I started the master’s with money I didn’t have but somehow I always do it. I juggled –and gosh, I certainly do not know how to juggle –three classes, taught at the university three times a week, worked at a certain big magazine in the city another two times, plus, plus, plus. In the meantime, I booked a plane ticket to Bogotá, Colombia for spring break –yes, my mother asked “Why Colombia?” – after getting mad at Elie for deciding against coming with me to Guatemala, then I bought yet another plane ticket to Madrid. Yes, it’s going there. I went to Bogotá, met some people, hung out, had fun, met with a friend from the master’s at her family’s finca, went horseback riding and kind of learned about corn mixed with scramble eggs from the maid, met up with my then-Spanish lover who is my now-Spanish lover, had a blast and came back to New York. Here I was hated by one of my professors, loved by others, I sewed a book medieval-style that I am still baffled by, finished teaching at the university, went to my office at the magazine one day only to find out it had just closed down, where I got a bottle of Vodka and another of champagne –which I gave to my mother because I do not want to be an alcoholic. I’m jobless. I guess all there’s left to do is go away while I’m on vacation. Central America will never know what hit it.