4/13/21

“My top choices are Nashville, Boston, and Columbia, South Carolina,” Mitchell tells me. His new job requires him to pick from the company’s national office locations; he hasn’t put much thought into it. “I’ll go anywhere that’s not here.”

By “here,” Mitchell refers to Geneva – a place I’ll refrain from calling a small town, located on the northwestern corner of Seneca Lake, in upstate New York. A collection of abandoned broken brick walls of warehouses and factories adorned with overgrown vines of oriental bittersweet framed as quaint wine country. On a map, Geneva is bound on one side by the lakeshore, and on the other by the intersection of Castle and Pre-Emption Roads — the two main roads to take when entering town.

For Mitchell, Geneva is bound by four years at a liberal arts university. In a few months he’ll no longer be a student. He will be a software implementation consultant, as he states his is his official job title. He will leave Geneva. It will all be different, better.

Mitchell grew up in Buffalo, which is just under a two-hour drive west. The weather’s the same as Geneva. They get the same lake effect snow and the same problems with human and drug trafficking. Except darker days. Mitch’s sunken eyes appear to reflect dejection rather than hope.

Something about the frigid lake winds in Buffalo. They’re corroding the old structures named after men that have been long forgotten.

“There’s a camaraderie to it,” Mitch says. “Living in Buffalo. Everyone from Buffalo loves everyone from Buffalo.” It’s as though they have endured it, all of it: the darkness, the cold, and the mediocre sports teams.

“Buffalo is safer than three percent of the cities in the United States.” I read this online. What was once a nineteenth century thriving Rust Belt town, has since fallen into decline.

“But love is hypocritical in buffalo,” Mitchell adds. We ponder this. I’m not even sure he knows what this means. “If you have a problem with someone, you tell them to their face,” Mitch says. There were always fights breaking out on the streets — five on any given night — Mitch boasts. The bouncer always kicks them out. Last time he was in Buffalo, he was involved in a brawl himself. “It’s kind of a bad place,” he says. “Everyone is depressed, so they drink all the time.” I sense sarcasm in his voice, and I know it’s the kind of statement made by a beloved resident. The kind that would be immediately redacted if an outsider attempted to mock one of his own.

There is something about Buffalo. Some say it’s the weather, others say it’s the nuclear radiation sites nearby that seep into the water. “People call it the armpit of America, but it’s not.”

Old houses still remain, like the one Mitch grew up in. Maybe it was the harsh winters or the walls you put up when growing up in a rough city. Mitch ceases to show the slightest bit of emotion or enthusiasm when we talk. He tells me him family never believed in birthday gifts. I tell myself this is why he is like this with me. It’s the way he was brought up; it’s what he was used to. He knows no other way.

Mitch wants to move south. For the promise of warmer weather, of people, and parties. Of cities — proper cities. Places where he can have a fun time. He tells me this with an air of uncertainty.

Dark, cold, wind-struck winters were not ideal. But they’re what Mitchell is used to.

He told me his worst-case scenario destinations: Alaska, Iowa, and Nebraska. He doesn’t even bother to name the cities of the offices where they were located.

“Why?” I ask. “Have you seen Alaska? It’s beautiful.”

“I feel like there’s nothing going on there,” Mitch says.

“And wouldn’t you think the same about a town called Geneva in upstate New York, if you saw it on a map?”

Silence.

“There is nothing going on here.”

I try to imagine Mitchell, who is currently laying back on the futon, in the midst of goings-on. I try to imagine him lifted and plopped, like a pin on a map, onto a mega-metropolis.

There is something he despises about Upstate, yet for more than twenty years, he keeps coming back. I don’t know if its happenstance, or if it’s so hard to leave, or if the net of the area has ensnared him in some way – I imagine an old stately neighbor offering him warm lodging on a cold winter’s night — a place to stay sip on shared misery and drown problems in drink.

There would be no such cabin in the south, and no such neighbor. There is no such winter.

I hear CNBC News playing in the background. Occasionally, it cuts into the audio and Mitch’s voice cuts out. His eyes flicker from far away as he gazes beyond the phone and to the screen beyond me. He tells himself he wants to go somewhere. Maybe he’ll never leave.

I tell him good luck with his placement and I initiate a good bye in hopes of leaving it before too much silence passes.