It had been two years since I last saw Campbell and almost three years since I’d been in Manhattan. I convinced myself it would be good to be home and planned to stay for a while. I decided to fly directly into Manhattan and move back to my apartment in the West Village. The least of the excuses I gave myself was that there would be enough about my new life to, perhaps, inspire a new book. So I went about my last days in Prague, speaking with my few friends about life’s changes and vowing to vacation with them someday in Reykjavik, Iceland.

I packed up my few things and with a rusty pen I filled out the information on the ticket of a direct flight into LaGuardia International Airport. I flew into Queens at three in the morning and arrived on the island of Manhattan soon after. There is nothing as breathtaking as the lights of Manhattan and I was glad I had seen it at night coming in from such a long distance. I had written Nina, my seventy-year-old live-in housekeeper, that I was arriving home and she had written back the preparations for my return. She had been with me for so long now, living on one end of the apartment and handling the necessities while I paid her a small sum.

When I came in the door, the lights were on and the house was warm. Nina got up to greet me and I felt my heart turn red with love as I was truly home. I settled into my room, and am ashamed to say, I quickly settled into many, many things. Nina started a very hot bath with crystal vanilla scents and got me a cup of fresh thyme tea as if I was a queen. I could have said no, but these were the things I settled into quickly.

Everything meant home: pictures of my family and myself on the walls, tones I had chosen and harmony I had forgotten. I sunk into the warm bath like sliding back into my mother’s womb, curled my legs up on the tub side with the tea in one hand and waving out love for all, like a queen, with the other. It was as if I had never been cold and lost, alone or scared on streets with dimming lights.

Nina and I had a laugh when I accidentally turned left into the dining room when we were turning right into the kitchen. She then commented on my hair being messy and I told her of the story of the Milan fashion week and the railway station in Helsinki, but she wasn’t laughing she kept saying, “But seriously when are you going to do something about your hair.” There was not much to say about Milan as she had seen the pictures and heard on television that the designs were terrible. Nina caught me up on many things going on within the industry and with friends and family. She had waited so patiently for me to return keeping the house alive and bright. It was nice to be in a safe atmosphere more familiar than distant.

That night I laid in joy and sadness in the world of all things familiar and loathsome. Having been a minor model with some notoriety, unfortunately, meant I must be cosmopolitan and live like the rest of the city. I simply must walk around with “bones” keeping up my hair and that would put me, and friends, into the best restaurants and clubs well before other people. The conversation with Nina started up that conflict in me that had been around since that last night with Campbell: the struggle of calendars and addresses. I was here in Manhattan to follow the demands of my own calendar, which I now had, and so I could not argue, not tonight. I pulled the covers against a warm, tidy bed located in a bedroom and closed my eyes on the sedentary pillow of my lost wander lust.

I spent three days in a spa getting myself up to cosmopolitan status. Nina was very pleased with the outcome when I returned, she kept saying, “Meja, que hermosa.” I had not been under such scrutiny about my looks in so long. It was a fascinating horror show.

I had agreed too many activities with Pearl including book signings and meetings with other authors. Pearl and Nina sweetly agreed that I could not go wearing my “gypsy” look around glamorous Manhattan. The curls and frizz were gone and the deeply dense natural colors were now on the salon floor. I had come to love my natural beauty, wearing thick eyebrows and uneven hair. It was not “out of fashion” where I had been, but now I had to make “a good presentation.”

After the salon days, I tended to find comfort at the kitchen table with the television blaring CNN. A good cup of thyme tea and the New York Daily News looking for the nonexistent coverage of my book helped me get back to the solace I found in so many countries. Nina had cut several articles and showed me a scrapbook she’d kept. I laughed a lot and denied a lot and Nina lovingly took the compliments as if she’d written the book herself.

I tried to deny that I had written such loathsome words about a world I used to inhabit: civilized and over-socialized New York City. And here I sat laughing with Nina as if I had never criticized it before. I returned home a triumphant lion, the author of a book that could change lives and worlds with it’s brutality towards familiarity in culture. This book had meaning and purpose to me when I wrote it. I was not writing on a whim, some innocent child dreaming up anarchy, I lived what I believed and spoke proudly of what I knew. What I didn’t know was that this lion would shave, and polish, down to a quiet lover of familiarity, conformity and pomposity. I had cut off my own hand, a compromise of bleeding sorts, and I truly was the greatest hypocrite.

As I smiled at Pearl the day of the first book signing, that was how I felt and that was who entered the 92nd Street YMCA, a sheepish hypocrite. Luckily, it was a smattering of interesting people, all as eccentric as the book, now seemed. It was an intimate, indifferent, uninteresting time of nonsensical prose, which I tried to keep light and laugh at some of the more dangerous statements about how people should live. It didn’t matter as people had their own ideas and in some ways, some good, stimulating conversations showed themselves over some of the smallest inclinations I had written about in the book. I felt okay with the first offering – and took away with me, forever, some nice exchanges with some enthusiastic readers.

I walked home that night and thought about permanency. The illusion that we can conquer our world and our existences, I thought maybe I could pretend that my life was permanent too, just for while I was in Manhattan. It felt good to think about roots and plans, the first thing to pop in my mind was how children can grow well with permanency, and maybe I could have one now that I occupied a regular address and bankbook. I turned down Ninth Avenue by the probation department and realized I’d taken a wrong turn, steadied back on course, and said good night to walking home alone and treated myself to a luxurious cab ride instead.

Part VI, of Hello Pressman: Tomorrow!