Payphone Time Machine

Collect calls from 2005

He rolled up to Red Rocks Amphitheater in a vintage, four-door sedan with fogged windows. He stepped out of the car, dressed head-to-toe in black leather. The camera followed his footsteps as he strutted through the backstage of one of the greatest music venues on earth. He emerged onto the main stage. The crowd erupted, the air saturated with the screams of teenage girls.

Sombr had arrived.

The stage was set to represent the 21-year-old’s hometown in New York—specifically, the Lower Bowery at the intersection of Canal and Orchard. Traffic cones and sewer grates flanked his mic. Construction scaffolding glistened behind the drummer. And tucked in the corner of the stage, a relic:

A payphone.

Sombr has likely never watched in horror as this ancient object ate his last quarter. But, I have.

The “Find the Payphone in the Dark” edition of Where’s Waldo

When I was 22, I moved to New York City. Freshly graduated from college, I took an entry-level advertising agency job in Manhattan. I found a roommate on Craigslist and a room in Williamsburg, with a deposit partially paid by the proceeds from the sale of my Subaru Outback. My salary barely paid the bills. I floated myself on dwindling savings and a credit card until I depleted one and maxed out the other.

I donned a black leather jacket on the subway. I listened to Depeche Mode and The Killers. I rolled my own American Spirit cigarettes. I drank beers and did blow until the sun rose across Brooklyn rooftops. I broadcasted badass.

Or at least I tried. Hard.

In reality, my first years in New York were years spent hanging on by a thread—financially, professionally, psychologically, physically. I was barely surviving. I wore that brokenness with pride. Badasses were broken. Those first few years were hard. And in many ways, I made them harder.

As I watched a black-clad Sombr strut across the Bowery at Red Rocks, I transported through the payphone’s wire, backward two decades to a similar intersection in my life. Lovestruck, angsty lyrics washed over me. The fog machine billowed from the designed sewer grate. And for a brief moment, I embodied the feeling of my twenties in New York. The searching. The restlessness. The yearning.

From my vantage point in the eighth row I wondered, “Did I savor it enough when I had it?”

Of course I didn’t.

Nobody does.

When you’re in the midst of your own messiness, it’s impossible to savor its saltiness and sweetness. And as time marches on, new messes arrive, layering onto recently formed foundations. The edges of former selves soften as new ones take shape. Pieces and parts of the past remain. But, the raw, unedited pictures in your mind’s eye blur.

Sometimes, the unexpected ring of a payphone jolts you briefly backwards, offering an unexpected memory of what it sounded like and felt like in the palm of your hand.

As I danced to the music, a teenage girl stood beside me, belting out every lyric, pouring her heart out towards the stage. She sang and danced through every big feeling oozing from the notes and the words. Her forty-something mom stood behind her. Mom took pictures of her daughter, capturing the moment.

Eventually, I turned to them both. “Do you want me to take a picture of the two of you together?”

Daughter rolled her eyes. Mom beamed, offering a wholehearted, “Thank you!”

They put their arms around each other and smiled for the camera.

I took as many pictures as I could.

Who knows what they’ll edit and what they’ll keep.