home and home.

At Yankee Stadium Tom bought me a Nathan’s hot dog. Nathan’s hot dogs are my favorite, all salt and snap, and you can’t get them in Boston, where people prefer their hot dogs grey and boiled as a matter of New England pride.

There’s a metaphor there, you understand.

*

In case you are just joining us and/or had any lingering doubt: I am not hard to the streets. I’m an Italian girl from White Plains with J. Crew wearing, PBS-watching parents; we listened to showtunes in the Volvo and took the golden retriever for long walks on Sundays, my hippie-girl Birkenstocks scraping along the sidewalk.

Still, I grew up with Jay-Z the way you grow up with garlic knots, the way you grow up with Z100, the way you grow up in New York: knowing all the words without ever having learned them, spilling out the windows of the cars of every boy I ever knew. Freshman year of college we’d drive down 95 with Tom’s friend Rob and he’d crank it so loud your teeth rattled. That’s how I knew we were home.

*

Before I started dating Tom I had a boyfriend who took great pleasure in acting smarter than me.

“Eminem’s a genius,” he declared with authority, zooming down Mamaroneck Ave in his Volkswagon, elbow out the window. He also took great pleasure in driving too fast. The bass echoed up my spine.

“Eminem’s batshit insane,” I replied. What I meant was: slow down.

*

At 125th street I squinted at a girl across the platform, pink tank top, hoop earrings.  “I think I know that chick,” I said.

Mike looked. “Why, did she used to steal your lunch money?”

“What makes you think I got my lunch money stolen?” I asked. “As opposed to, you know, stealing other people’s?”

He glanced at me, smiled with an expression on his face like: probably the cardigan sweater you are wearing to the Eminem show. “Just a hunch.”

“I think I know that girl,” I repeated, then gazed around some more. “Actually, I think I know all these girls.”

*

I came to Boston seven years ago and I was so cold and I was so miserable and in my hoity-toity honors seminar they gave us each four crayons and said, draw home.

I lived in a high rise on Boylston Street.

I lived in a farmhouse in suburban New York.

I froze.

I drew a greyhound bus.

*

For the record: no one ever stole my lunch money.

I never stole anybody else’s either.

*

In between sets we  chatted about CC Sabathia, who is my second favorite Yankee, because he wears those funny pants.

“Jeter is my favorite,” I said, and of course Tom knows that but I like to say it anyway because it always gets the same eye-rolling reaction. I always like the lead singer in the band. Tom says the Yankees will never put Jeter out to pasture even though he’s old and getting decrepit because it would be a terrible business decision, and plus Derek Jeter could still kick your ass at baseball.

“Jeter’s not old,” I told him. On the field the people with floor seats swarmed around like carpenter ants. A digital clock counted down the minutes until Jay-Z. “I saw Jeter play when he was a rookie.”

“Yeah, well,” Tom said, and put his arm around me. “You’re old, too.”

*

I have been to a lot of concerts.

That was the best concert I’ve ever seen.

They said: “Are you ready, New York?”

I thought: I want to come home.

*

Thanksgiving weekend of my senior year in high school we went and saw 8 Mile at the multiplex in Greenburgh. We bought tickets for the freshmen behind us. We were seventeen, and magnanimous. We thought it was the least we could do.