I was lying on the bed in my hotel room, listening to the drone of the street below. The sound was loud and overpowering, like nothing I had heard before. It was the sound of New York. I grew up believing that Oslo, the capital of Norway, my home country, was large. Turned out I was wrong. Anyway, I was lying on a hotel bed in New York next to a beautiful girl whose name I’d forgotten. I was happy, happy like I had never been before. I was never really happy during my teenage years; I guess I was always waiting to grow up. I was always different than the people my age; I was waiting to meet people like me. Now I was older and I was going to a university in Spain, life turned out like I had hoped. I had friends whom I enjoyed spending time with.
This girl lying next to me was great. I had met her while we were looking for a place to eat, and we wound up in a hotel room together. It didn’t really matter that I didn’t know her name, I never cared for small embarrassments like that; you can always just ask later and seem funny and cute in the process. We had just had sex, twice, and I think she was sleeping. I can never sleep well. I guess I don’t let myself sleep. I have too much to think about, or maybe I just enjoy thinking too much.
We had been out all night, more or less. My friends and I always went out all night. We were students, we were on vacation in America and we had such interesting conversations. I never understood why so many people chose not to study; I wish I could exist in a perpetual state of being a student.

Her name was Eliza. She didn’t mind me asking; just like I had predicted, she laughed and thought it funny that I had forgotten. We were sitting in the hotel lobby, having breakfast. Thomas, one of my companions, was with us.
‘Say, what about taking a plane to California?’ ‘We could rent a car and drive around the coast’. Thomas was saying. ‘We really ought to see more of the country’.
‘Oh, yeah, you have to do that. Everybody has to take a road trip along the West Coast at some point’. Eliza exclaimed. I smiled to myself. No one saw it. This girl had turned out to be pretty boring in the light of day. I found the idea intriguing though; I had been to California before and I loved it. It’s so American, and at the same time, so un-American.
Someone was coming down the stairs to the lobby. It was Camilla and Lily. They were the female part of our little gang. Lily and Thomas were together. In addition there was a third man, Liam. I guess he was still in his room at the time. I had gathered that Liam had brought a girl with him also. It brought a smile to my face; Liam was such a ladies man. Every one of my companions were British, except Camilla who was from Spain. We all studied together in Madrid.

I was sitting on the balcony outside my room. Eliza had left. The sun was bearing down on me. I was reading a book by Thomas Wolfe. I was still reading classics at the time; I always believed that one should get through all the important classics before one starts reading contemporary works. Thomas Wolfe both intrigued and inspired me me. He was a true academic, completely dedicated to his art; I found him to have a very admirable character.
I looked down on the street below and observed the people. The thing I like about New York is the grittiness. The city is crude and unshaven, and it doesn’t try to hide it. It has a very definite personality. For a city to be truly great, it needs a personality like New York. Paris has it, London has it and Rome has it. It is the reason I’ve never been to Miami, it lacks the personality.
A sharp knock on the door startled me. I walked across the room and opened. Liam entered.
‘How’d it go last night?’ He was grinning at me. I smiled back.
‘Oh, you know, business as usual’. I replied. ‘It went fine, but the girl turned out to be a real bore.’
Liam grinned again and walked past me into the room. ‘Yeah. That often happens… Say, did Thomas talk to you about going down to the West Coast?’
‘Yes.’ I replied. ‘He mentioned that. I think it sounds like a splendid idea, we’d get a car and drive to San Francisco’.
Liam nodded. ‘Not Las Vegas though.’
‘No.’ I said. ‘We wouldn’t go to Las Vegas. It’s not what they make it out to be anyway, I’ve been there. It just makes you depressed.’
‘You really like to cry for the human race, don’t you?’ Liam said, and laughed. I laughed too.

We had gotten plane tickets and we were to leave early the next day. Some clouds had gathered in the sky while we were having lunch in Central Park. Thomas had brought his camera with him. He said that the light clouding made for good photography. He enjoyed taking photographs and he was getting to be quite good at it.
The girls had gone off somewhere, so Liam took the opportunity to talk about Camilla. We all had a bit of a crush on her, even Thomas did. She was tall, tanned and had a wonderful accent when she spoke English. She was always very radiant and would often seem to light up an otherwise dull event. She was intelligent too, though she would never boast about it, it is one of those rare and beautiful traits that some women have, and we loved her for it.
We finished our lunch and began walking towards the nearest subway station. Thomas insisted on calling it “The Tube”, for a while, but it just contributed to confusing and humoring the natives. One of us, or perhaps all of us collectively, had gotten the idea that we would travel to Brooklyn and have dinner there. We had arranged to meet up with the girls and walk around for a while and then have dinner. Although none of us knew very much about Brooklyn, we had all romanticized it in our own way through various books and films.
We got off at the station we had agreed upon and walked up into the sunlight. I spotted Camilla and waved. She waved back. The lot of us walked off together in search of a café. We were thirsty and we didn’t have a care in the world.

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