In a celebratory season, time to go

IN TRANSITION #22

By Benjamin Toff December 25, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Flying down the Mass. Pike last Saturday en route to the North End for dinner, I looked up at the blurry but beautiful Boston skyline. My heart sank: Would this be the last time?

Suddenly nostalgic, I realized how attached I had become. Four years after arriving here as a stranger and all set now to move on in a week, I was struggling with that ever elusive sentiment: closure.

''We must get dinner!" I had written an old high school friend, Ai-ris, who had moved to Boston along with me in the fall of 2001, she for MIT, myself for Harvard. We had been meaning to catch dinner for some time, but now it seemed somehow apt. We had convened periodically over the years to reminisce and reflect on this cold foreign place we'd come to inhabit and explore.

This time, I wrote to tell her that I was leaving. I told her about my new job at The New York Times. Ai-ris, a med student now, had news of her own. She was engaged.

I didn't put a lot of thought into the choice of the North End for the celebratory dinner, yet the selection felt satisfying. When I was a freshman, the North End had been the only place I knew of to ''go into Boston" for a special occasion meal.

As we waited for the valet to return the car late Saturday night, we looked up at the empty space where that other green monster -- the highway version -- used to be. (Speaking of the Sox, the Curse vanished during my time here, too.) Four short years ago, like a conscientious explorer, I had wandered through the maze of construction underneath it, combing the city for surprises, giddy with excitement that for the first time in my life, almost anything I'd ever wanted could be found on foot.

Growing up in Tucson, Ariz., -- a sprawling desert metropolis of strip malls, parking lots, and single-family dwellings -- the notion of walking from one side of the city to the other was exotic. I was enamored with the T, which rumbled every few minutes beneath my dormitory floorboards. I became instantly fond of this place where so much life -- political marches, conversations in dozens of languages, street performances -- kept on at what seemed like all hours, within earshot of my desk.

My college thesis adviser told me that back when she graduated college, Boston was the ''it" city for the post-college 20s. New York, I would argue, has since become the indisputable owner of that distinction. And the longer I've lived in this city, the more I can see why. I've become restless. Every time I've failed to find an open kitchen after 11:30 at night, every time I've been forced to take a cab or decided to stay at home because the T closed down not long after midnight, I've (guiltily) thought of moving. The pace of life I once found so exciting has morphed into sluggishness. It took me months to recognize, but I'm eager for change.

But as I wandered lazily through the Public Garden on my way back to the Charles/MGH T stop Sunday night after a long day of Christmas shopping, with the trees lighted, couples holding hands, a bright moon hanging just above the old buildings lining the Common, Boston seemed, in its own way, idyllic. An ideal setting for a fairy tale wedding proposal; and as Ai-ris had related events of the night before, it had been.

Four-and-a-half years ago, I gathered with high school friends on a cool August night before departing for college. We sat under the stars, discussing where we imagined ourselves in five years. Would we stay in touch? What kind of people would we be? Where would we live?

How much of our lives would be spent transitioning from place to place, lover to lover, friend to friend, change to change? All of it?

In that moment in the Public Garden last week, the range of possibilities seemed endless.

Benjamin Toff, as of late last week, became a New Yorker. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Suddenly, as thunder rolls, a great leap southward

IN TRANSITION #21

By Benjamin Toff | December 18, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

The world is falling apart outside; ice is forming at the base of my window; the six-month mark since my college commencement has come and gone already. (Who knew there could be thunder during a snowstorm?)

I find the stillness inside my work cubicle unsettling -- and the ferocity outside remote. The humid pomp and circumstance of June has never felt more distant. Disappointment has replaced the initial post-grad period of awkward expectancy, and that, too, has given way to a general malaise. It's dark before 5, but I rarely notice the sunshine anyway.

My friends and I distract ourselves by reminiscing about our good ol' college days. To our horror, we've become people who do that. What about the good ol' shapeless days just after college where you felt like nothing in your life was going anywhere and weren't quite sure what you spent the last four years preparing for? Why doesn't anyone talk fondly of those years?

When I began this series in August, I was undergoing more life adjustments than I could process. Every day it seemed a new reality of post-college life set in. So many changes and discoveries -- the puberty of professional life.

But unlike puberty, it's been more difficult to figure out exactly what's so exciting about being grown up. Sure, life since college has been a series of firsts -- a first apartment, a first office job, a first coworker's holiday party. But invariably these firsts have let me down.

The edgy uncertainty that marked the frantic weeks directly after the diploma ceremony has morphed, in half a year, into complacency. I anticipate my alarm clock -- I reach for the snooze button before it even goes off. I've developed a standard list of items for my supermarket shopping list. And I hardly ever waste away any hours fretting about what I'm doing with my life. Angst over choosing a life path seems so . . . college.

The most oft-repeated feedback I've received on this series is that the disorienting feeling of post-graduation letdown never fully goes away. It may dull over time, but the sensation of the bottom having fallen out stays with you.

''You have to get past realizing that you're blind and basically throw yourself headfirst in one direction or another," a friend who graduated a couple years ahead of me told me. He was a fantastic actor who had taken a job in investment banking. ''You'll inevitably hit a wall since you don't have a clue where you're heading. You'll fall down. Get hurt. But then pick yourself up, pick another direction, and get going again."

Here I go. I got a phone call. A new (dream) job offer: I'm becoming an assistant and researcher to a columnist at The New York Times. So much for the post-college letdown.

Suddenly I'm giving notice to my employers (a new first), subletting my room (yet another), and packing up books that I'm pretty sure I haven't touched since I unpacked back in September.

I suppose looking back on this period, it will come to fit inside some broader narrative with a trajectory and a plot. (I can see it now: a suspenseful gap for dramatic effect.) It might even be neat and organized -- something akin to a ninth semester of college; a coda. Introduction to Life. Syllabus: TBA.

One thing college did teach me? How to cram. Good thing, too; my final exam (or midterm?) is daunting: Say goodbye to Boston in a week.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville, briefly. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

At my own pace, I'm following suit

IN TRANSITION #20

By Benjamin Toff | December 11, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

Along with what seemed like the rest of America, I took to the shopping malls last weekend. It was, in retrospect, an inopportune time to go looking for clothes -- I may have been the only person who wasn't consulting a gift list -- but as a full-fledged working adult (white-collar, anyhow) the time had come to take my wardrobe to the next level. I needed a suit, and no enormous mass of waddling Christmas shoppers could get in my way.

Partly for financial reasons and partly for psychological ones, I had put off the experience of buying my first suit as long as possible. It was a rite of passage I had, if not dreaded, at least felt especially unenthusiastic about.

And for good reason. Suits are what fathers -- and some mothers, too -- wear to work. That and bar mitzvahs have been my only associations with suits: Torah portions and my dad rushing out the door to the garage, a cup of coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. Even when my brother got married, suits were the exception at the wedding, not the rule.

My conception of formal wear has been forced to mature a very long way in just a couple of years. I grew up in southern Arizona; before Boston, my idea of formality meant tucking in a shirt with buttons on it -- and maybe for a really special occasion, a tie.

''When you start working here full time, I'm going to need you to wear nicer clothes," my boss told me this summer after we decided I'd transition from part-time student assistant to full-time temp. She added, ''Not jeans!" when it occurred to her, after seeing me in sandals and shorts for months, that I might not know what ''nicer clothes" meant.

College was a fashion awakening. Apparently, here in sophisticated Boston ''black-tie" means ''full tux." My roommates snickered the first time I wore a suit to a formal dance -- a suit my parents had purchased for me back in high school. Yet I held out despite the glares and wore that suit all four years of college, through black-tie dinners, theater openings, and fund-raising balls. (Perhaps simply to play out the stereotype to its extreme, Harvard students find an inordinate number of excuses to get dressed up.)

Don't get me wrong; I appreciate nice clothes. I just typically feel an excessive amount of buyer's remorse the moment the receipt gets rung up. The bottom line just never feels justified, and as a result, I tend to draw out the purchasing process until it becomes excruciating for whoever has agreed to go shopping with me. These days I shop alone.

(My college friends can testify that at spring break in my sophomore year, it took me several hours of traipsing around downtown San Francisco before I could settle on a single pair of shoes. By the way, Brian and Sophie, I'm still wearing them. But for nearly a hundred bucks, why shouldn't I?)

All of this is to explain the shock I felt when my suit shopping Saturday went off without a hitch -- aside from the lines and hordes. I might even say the purchase brought me a significant amount of pleasure. It helps that the buy was reasonably priced, and Eric, the teenage employee who waited on me (itself an unfamiliar luxury), successfully distracted me from talking myself out of it.

(I did, however, call several friends from inside the dressing room on my cellphone to do just that. But none would. ''Buy it!! Buy it NOW!!" one friend replied in a text message.)

My new suit is navy blue with three buttons down the front. When I wear it with the tie that Eric picked out for me, I think I look pretty grown up but not so grown up that I feel old.

And best of all, it fit directly off the rack; I don't even have to get it tailored.

One step at a time.

Benjamin Toff lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.

Post red-eye blues: A wimp now, I once did all-nighters

IN TRANSITION #19

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | December 4, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

High up in the sky somewhere over Western Massachusetts, I listened to the hum of the airplane mixed with snores of the passenger in 36D, and tried unsuccessfully not to think about the cramp in my right leg. Between the many pesky thoughts about work and school, family and turkey bouncing around my head was the sad realization: It was going to be a very long Monday.

I just didn't know how long.

''Use the breathing method," my mother had instructed me on our way to the San Francisco airport. ''When you sleep, you exhale for longer. You can fool your brain into sleep mode by doing that." (Where do moms pick up these things?)

But it hadn't worked. There was so much turbulence on my flight home after Thanksgiving I kept getting jarred awake. My starchy synthetic blanket -- useless. I'd be going to work, for the first time, on no sleep.

As I watched the sun come up, I was reminded of the last time I took the red-eye from SFO to Logan. It was early September 2001, flying East to college for the first time. I had squandered that night of slumber, too. It didn't matter. On my move-in day, I fed on the adrenaline. My cheeks were pressed to the windows of the cab as we pulled up to the campus gates. I woke up one roommate by knocking wildly on the door of my new dorm room. I threw down my bags and accompanied him to CVS, where I wandered up and down the aisles too antsy to think about what I might need to actually buy.

This time, the adrenaline was painfully absent.

Over Thanksgiving dinner, I had dealt with a barrage of questions from my family: ''What are you doing now?" ''How does it feel to be done?" ''Do you like your apartment?" ''Where do you see yourself in a few years?"

They assured me that everyone goes from job to job in their 20s. Everyone feels aimless. For a while. It's a rite of passage.

I tried to keep it all in perspective as I quietly and sleepily slid back into my daily routine. Typing. Photocopying. Researching.

Everything so thoroughly uninspiring.

My stamina wasn't quite what it used to be, either. I once considered myself an academic athlete. Among other things, college trained me to push through on no-sleep days. I used to handle them with zest. (Then again, as a student, I could crash after trekking across campus, bleary-eyed, to turn in a last-minute paper.)

''Sorry, could you go through that once more?" I floated through e-mails and telephone calls. I barely made it through my first hazy post-all-nighter work day, sucking down coffee, espresso, diet soda, and more coffee. You can't take naps at work, but at least you can take stimulants.

By the time I got home that day, jittery, my bed had never looked more inviting. I made my lunch for Tuesday. Ironed. (OK, no, but at least I thought about how I should iron.) How grown-up I pretend to be. How far I've come.

I went to bed dreaming of that view from the plane, descending through the clouds -- that glimpse of the whole of Boston from the harbor. So beautiful. How promising it had once looked. Still does. I think.

Benjamin Toff, a recent grad making (and resisting) the transition from college student to working stiff, lives in Somerville. Reach him at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.