I miss the left turn and curse at the next street possessing a red circle with a red line through the black left arrow. One more street passed that and I circle back. The car inched against the others, bumper to bumper on asphalt mirrored by pedestrian to pedestrian on concrete. I lean to my left and rest my head on the window.  Straining my eyes up towards the buildings, I notice in my peripheral the vehicle in front of me has crawled forward in unison with the pack. After my next right turn, I cut quick right into the parking structure after taking my ticket.

The car door opens when I push it slight ajar and the exterior rush of the hustle and bustle outside floods into the car. It soaks me in it, the noise of movement of progress of commotion of activity of humanity. They combine and the noise rises like tall buildings nearby. Sprawled script, the graffiti tags written in haste juxtaposed to equally difficult to read Chinese and familiar Spanish. I know half of what I look at and I jockey for position on the sidewalk towards my caffeinated destination.

When I walk into the downtown coffee shop to finish my drawing: I know I’m out of place. I'm not a city kid. My shirt is regular length and I notice I would have had the correct fashion years ago. The same people who wore what I wear now shifted, they’ve evolved and I’ve been slow to do the same. Not in an overt manner, nor in a way that leaves me isolated, but one that forces me to remember the brand names on the tags of the shirts, the long ones, the ones that go past the waist. The same ones I’d tried on a few months back at a store in the mall in my town and felt that the fabric was too long and my torso too short. Now, I second guessed the mirror as social proof worked against my memory to understand what occurred in that dressing room. I ordered my coffee and the barista cracked a small joke that I didn’t get and I smiled regardless because I don’t want to offend her. Something about my name and I don’t care, I don’t think about it as I turn to find my seat.

I found one in the back corner, near the glass panes divided to haze the contents, to hide them in a way you can’t see the insides. I’m near the wall and I position my view forward. To my left a couple sits perpendicular to each other, interviewed by a  woman with a planner and papers strewn everywhere. The planner-woman asks questions and the woman in the relationship answers, the man looks between both parties and nods his head. He begins to answer a question and his partner interrupts him. I remember this process with my own wedding, not adding anything but trying to catch up with a vision I didn’t have. A brief smile creeps onto my face as I think of my wife's concerned face when I told her not to worry about our wedding years back. My wife didn’t join me on the trip to the downtown shop today; she was more vocal on not tolerating the outside feeling in the city.

I knew this feeling and my wife wouldn't call it this, but I will: it was a feeling of phoniness, this Catcher in the Rye personality that sat within you. When you spoke with others you wondered if they cared and they didn’t but you didn’t care either. You’d be around more people than you’d ever been around, yet you'd be alone. Maybe we all took turns looking over our shoulders, wondering why we chose the colors we did and why we didn’t know the correct fashion and why our computers didn’t light up with apples on the back or why our shoes had no socks in them or straps or sandals or pants cuffed at 2 inches instead of one roll or wished our tattoos had more significance. We wondered all these things and then tried to hide them as natural. This was the city: a strategic game of hide and seek, we wanted to be apart of the city but we wanted to also other to look at us, to desire us and to make us the leader.

I couldn’t turn off my chameleon brain here. I wrote down the brands I wasn’t wearing and would note to research them later.  I drank the coffee and sat near the window but I wasn’t content. I was insecure in my thoughts and I wondered if those next to me were. If they wondered about their life choice, to plan here in a shop under the potted plants that hung like the gardens of Babylon and near the voices mumbled together in the ruins of the tower of Babel. Maybe I wished that scattering never happened. Maybe I wished that I chose to live in the city and maybe I wished my wife would like it, too. But these were just wishes and they would drown out among the roar and rising tide of people in the shop.