Friday Afternoons in New York

I've never been a part of anything like it. During Friday morning rush hour is the same, with one difference. People dragging suitcases and duffels along with their purses and laptops. Friday at noon, it is a madhouse downtown, people hailing cabs, sweaty from dragging suitcases and duffels, trying desperately to do one thing- escape from New York.

While I escaped to New York, I have quickly learned that on Fridays there is a desperate rush to escape from the city, to get out to Connecticutt or Rhode Island or the Hamptons, leaving behind the urban life in an attempt to give life meaning, spend time with neglected children, or just sleep somewhere with fewer police sirens going, going, going all night long. I can't say I blame them. I'm another working American female who can feel the tug of Monday before Thursday afternoon is finished. Who tries desperately to finish things up before the weekend, to prevent the dreaded Saturday morning at the office. Fortunately I work with a company that isn't open to working on the weekends. But it's only because it's foreign-based, I believe. My boyfriend seems to spend a lot of time at work on weekends.

I love to sleep Friday nights. When I was younger, in high school and college, Friday nights held a completely different meaning. They gave me the opportunity to -FINALLY- ignore homework and school related activities, rush home, shower, change, put on make-up and prepare for some activity. Even if I was just going to the movies, I would put on mascara and lipstick if only for the change of pace.

Now I spend Friday nights relaxing. I do my laundry, running up and down to the basement during commercials in whatever show I happen to choose. Sometimes it's something on CBS, often Dateline. I really like their mysteries. My boyfriend comes over, we cook dinner, talk about our weeks and are usually asleep before 1 a.m. This would never have happened during my teenage years. Those were spent trying to talk on the phone all night and not wake up my parents when I snuck out.

Friday nights in New York are also significantly less crowded down town. If you took away the weekend tourists, I think half the city's population would have disappeared with the sun. One woman I work with seems to do nothing but take weekend trips- skiing during the winter, to the beach or lake almost every weekend of the summer. I look forward to the days when I'll finally have enough extra money to do that! Things just change around here. I like the empty feeling, the way the halls in my building feel when everyone is gone but me and the old lady who lives in apartment H. Solitude appeals to me in a way a lot of people have a hard time understanding but makes perfect sense to me. Writers don't mind being alone, for the most part. We enjoy the ability to think out loud and write read without having someone look over our shoulder while we're doing it.

I crave the beginning of the weekend. Feeling all your accomplishments for the week make it okay to relax and take a long bath, rent a movie, TURN OFF THE CELL PHONE. My friends hate when I do that, but inevitably, when Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night turn into dinner, drinks, and a club after nights, I'll eventually become tired and just cut the phone off, letting voice mail pick up for messages like "Where ARE you? Are you trying to avoid me?" and "I knew this was going to happen. Something fun is going on and you're..." What am I doing? I can't even remember most of my activities.

Tonight I'm heading out, uptown to a friend's apartment. But it's only because he's desperate for some people to help him finish a large amount of beer he somehow ended up with.