Analog

Kristin Amico

The year I lived in San Francisco, I fantasized about getting hit by a bus. Specifically, the trolleybus that crawls the city’s length along California Street. For twenty-eight stops on my morning path, I scribbled first sentences for novels I’d never write on the backs of crumpled envelopes at the bottom of my tote bag. Breakfast was a Diet Coke gulped down between the driver’s gas and brake pedal dance. On the reverse journey home, the low-slung Edwardian flats faded into the foggy sunset.
          I visualized points of impact, cool metal colliding with clammy skin. How far could I inch onto the pavement before it struck my arm or shoulder? It needed to be more than a bruise but not too big of a break—just enough to recuperate in bed for a few weeks. I dreamed of childhood sick days, soup, a book, b-movies, and naps under sun-soaked windows. I hadn’t taken an extended vacation in years.
          Insurance fraud is what my boyfriend called it.
          Nine hours a day I sprinted across the office for back-to-back client meetings, weaving between cubicles at the high-tech public relations firm. Black Converse low tops rubbed against my heels. Blood-stained socks. Work was an endurance sport without a trophy. Mostly, I was a referee without a whistle, mediating angry clients and undertrained staff.
          When the streetlights flashed on, I’d be on the couch in sweatpants, finishing everything I couldn’t check off my to-do list during daylight hours. How else could I pay my bills without doing… this?
          Years earlier on the day I graduated college, I was terrified to make a choice. Move to New York or San Francisco? Work in publishing? Become a journalist? At twenty-one, unemployed, I imagined a path free of obstacles, but I’d have to choose wisely. I knew that fresh tracks quickly became permanent grooves. Gathered around the celebratory post-ceremony table, my grandmother answered my stream-of-consciousness question. “You can come back home and work at the grocery store. Be grateful for whatever job you find.”
          At thirty-three, strands of gray hair sprouted like coils around my temples. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, and the markets nose-dived as my debt climbed as high as Telegraph Hill. Too-big-to-fail banks got bailouts while I clipped coupons to shop at Target.
          I chewed on antacid tablets like they were Skittles while I watched my co-workers file down the hall, one by one, to be laid off. A trail of debris marked the exodus path to the front door: paper scraps, spilled coffee, and a branded pen from the days when corporate swag covered every inch of the office.
          We who remained sucked down long drags of organic cigarettes and counted the hours until quitting time. I watched the lunch crowd dodge bicycle messengers and wondered if that was a more upwardly mobile career path.
          In the glass conference room, which once had views down to the Ferry Building, our VP talked about balance sheets and business as usual. I floated in the skyline, now crammed with towers sheltering those who clung to irrational exuberance for a bright future gilded with startup stock options. In the windows, which warped the view like funhouse infinity mirrors, the endless horizon swelled with workers in hoodies hunched over keyboards. We were all reflections of the same person; the only difference was the color of our entry keycards. I didn’t want to be in this office building, doing what I did. The person I wanted to be would have grabbed her bag and walked out. I did not know how to be that person.
          One Saturday, the urge to move—feel pavement, grass, something solid beneath my feet—pulled me out from under the cocoon of covers. I strolled west toward Sutro Heights, sipping bubble tea so sweet the sugar rush powered my legs. My new iPhone, void of email or yet-to-be-invented Instagram, held the soundtrack. No beeps, buzzes, or notifications to interrupt.
          I smelled the ocean before I saw it. That’s when I reached the Camera Obscura on the edge of the cliff, a peculiar throwback to a time when tourists visited amusement parks in tailored dresses and three-piece suits. Less than a month later, I would quit my job and return east. That day, I entered the camera-shaped box, where a small hole in the ceiling projected an upside-down image of the outside world in the center of the darkened room. I watched waves crash against Seal Rock in muted blues and grays.
          Stepping out of the dark chamber and back into the unusually bright afternoon sun, the sea air revived my lungs. My eyes adjusted to the light, and colors intensified. What I had been fantasizing about was living.

Kristin Amico is working on an essay collection about being an anxious overachiever who spent the first half of her life trying and perpetually failing to live up to expectations. Her work has appeared in publications including Off Assignment, HuffPost, and The Boston Globe.