by Megan Boyle
12–1:08PM: ate an apricot and drank two cups of coffee while talking to mom about the army. i told her about colin and the fancy food student. mom got emotional and cried about the government putting agent orange on people in vietnam and ‘the things they do to those boys, they don’t even know it when they go into it.’ she apologized for being emotional and i said ‘it’s okay, you don’t have to apologize.’
i said ‘maybe i’ll join the navy, then they’ll pay for my school and i can get a physics degree and then i can work for nasa and be an astronaut.’ mom seemed supportive. i told her about chris hadfield (astronaut whose videos i was watching the other day). she knew about him. i said ‘did you see his ‘space oddity’ song? the david bowie song?’ she said ‘i saw a clip but i want to see the whole thing.’ i brought my computer in and sat next to her on the couch and we watched it.
mom cried and laughed a lot. i cried a little i think, feeling affected by her crying. she said ‘he’s just adorable, what a sweet man’ at the end. i told mom about the female astronaut (suni williams) whose videos at the international space station i was also watching for a really long time the other day. she’s logged the most ‘spacewalk’ hours of any woman. she was a jet pilot in the navy. mom said ‘i knew your truck driving thing wasn’t for nothing, and then the other day when you talked about being a flight attendant, oh meggie, i see this happening for you.’ i read from the nasa website about ‘basic requirements for an astronaut pilot:’
‘Bachelor’s degree from an accredited institution in engineering, biological science, physical science, or mathematics. An advanced degree is desirable. Quality of academic preparation is important.’
i said ‘i’d probably need four more years of college, i’m not got at math.’ mom said ‘oh i bet it would be less than that.’ i said ‘no, i only took one astronomy course, and like, qualitative reasoning. that’s my only math. but that’s okay.’ i walked to the bathroom and my room, looking for my e-cigarette. mom said excited things about how she thought i could be an astronaut. i said ‘i’m good at physics but that’s like, the only thing on that list. grad school also.’ i found the e-cigarette. mom said ‘can you hear me?’ i said ‘i think so, can you hear me?’ she said ‘i can hear you.’
i sat on the dining room chair and continued to read from the nasa website:
‘In addition, the pilot may assist in the deployment and retrieval of satellites utilizing the remote manipulator system, in extravehicular activities.’
i said “extravehicular,’ that means doing the spacewalk, getting to repair the ship in space.’
mom said ‘i can see you doing that. all you have to do is try to do that.’
i read the rest of the pilot requirements in a scanning manner, saying like, “must have vision correctable to twenty-twenty’ i got that, ‘must be between sixty-two and seventy-five inches tall’ i got that, blood pressure i think i got that.’ mom said ‘you have all those things.’
mom expressed anxiety about the e-cigarette making things smell, but also that she knew it didn’t smell. she asked if nicotine was bad for you. i said ‘i don’t think so, it’s just the other stuff in cigarettes that’s bad, this is just like, water.’ i said i’d go outside.
1:27PM: sitting on balcony. excited about the astronaut idea. i would go to more college and the government would pay. i would get to fly planes. sweet as hell. how can i not do this. writing is shitty compared to being an astronaut. i’m going to…look into being a navy pilot now…
i should’ve thought more about moving to new york. i could’ve just like, transferred to the naval academy in annapolis and lived at home. shit. what have i done…maybe i can…maybe there is a way…shit…goddamnit…why didn’t i think of this earlier, i’ve always wanted to be an astronaut but i just thought ‘you’re bad at math, you can’t do it’ but if i really worked on it i could do it…goddamnit…thought ‘want to blow all this shit to hell’
1:36PM: walked inside to get refill battery for e-cigarette. i said ‘i’m calling the navy about enlisting’ to mom. she made excited noises and said ‘oh honey i’m so happy for you, this sounds so good.’ i said ‘i feel like i need that, it’ll be good for me. i need someone to tell me to do things.’ she said ‘i just think it sounds so good.’ walked to balcony.
1:48PM: called two naval recruitment offices in queens and ‘garden city.’ the first one didn’t have an option to leave a message. the second one had a recording that said to call back during normal office hours, from 9AM-4PM (which i was calling in). the third one was on flatbush avenue and allowed me to leave a message. i said ‘hi my name is margaret boyle, i’m interested in enlisting in the navy and pursuing a career in aviation. i don’t have my full bachelor’s, but i’m interested in asking you questions about that, and more questions in general [laugh laugh]. please give me a call back.’ i sounded ‘professional as hell,’ i feel.
2:05PM: dad called to see about eating dinner together tonight. he said construction was moving fast and he’d be able to rent the offices by june 1, then said something like ‘i want to set you up with an apartment building to rent out to people so you can have passive income, so you don’t always have to be working.’ i said ‘that’d be cool and all,’ then told him about my plan to join the navy and finish school and be an astronaut, that the places weren’t picking up their phones, and that i was just going to go to a recruitment office in-person when i get back to NYC. he seemed really excited. i said ‘they’ll probably be happy because you were in the navy too, what did you do, were you an officer?’ he said ‘well in four years i went up to an e-six officer, a ‘petty officer,’ i don’t like that name—but you can tell them your dad was a radar technician on the joseph p. kennedy, which is the ship that stopped the cuban blockade.’ i forgot he did that. i was smiling a lot. dad told me things about ROTC and that there were tests to be an officer that he was ‘sure i would pass’ and then i could fly jets or ‘nuclear submarines.’ i said ‘jets, i want to fly jets.’ he laughed like ‘ah-hahaha!’ and said he was happy for me. i said ‘plus since i have my CDL they’ll know i can drive trucks so that must be good.’ he said ‘that’s right, they’ll see that you have your CDL.’ i said ‘even if i don’t get to be an astronaut i could probably get a job at nasa.’ dad said ‘there’ll be more opportunities for you to go to space, in your lifetime.’ i told him about applying to callahead for the secretary position the other day and knowing i didn’t get it, and how i’ve just been thinking about all the shitty jobs i could do, not really wanting to do any of them, then i just had this idea. dad said ‘maybe you’ll take me for a ride in your jet one day.’ i said ‘yeah, they’d probably let me, since you were in the navy.’ he was laughing really happily and i was too. i said ‘i figured it out i think.’ we said things about meeting at 8PM for dinner and hung up.
2:38PM: mom has been filling a pitcher of water and taking it to the balcony to water plants. she said ‘you could be like fred astaire and gene kelly: ‘on the town.”
2:40PM: mom said ‘you want a half a bagel?’ i said ‘no thank you.’
2:58PM: mom said ‘you know what else? you might be going to mars in your lifetime.’ i said ‘y-eah’ unfocusedly while typing ‘yeah’ in a tweet response. mom said ‘or other cool places. as-yet-undefined.’
4:10PM: paid all my parking tickets. i had five. bad news. mom just said ‘plus! you’re so good with a gun! you could be a sniper,’ laughing like ‘just kidding.’ tried to pay ticket online from april 22, for using cell phone while driving, but website isn’t letting me, i think because the ticket looks like ‘LAST NAME: Matlock FIRST NAME: Margaret MIDDLE INITIAL: Megan Boyle [‘Boyle’ is ‘scrunched’ above box that says ‘LOCAL POLICE CODE 088’].
tried all combinations/variations of my name that i could think of. seems like they either didn’t enter the ticket yet or she…i don’t know what they could’ve thought my name was. my PA license says ‘MARGARETMEGAN MATLOCK BOYLE’ because there wasn’t enough spa
ce to write ‘MARGARET MEGAN.’ i also tried ‘MARGARETMEGAN.’ i don’t know why the cop wrote ‘MATLOCK’ for my last name. i simply. don’t. know. can’t believe my parents named me ‘margaret megan.’ that’s like naming someone ‘william bill’ or ‘richard dick.’ but they always called me ‘megan.’
here’s a story about my name: somehow i didn’t end up with a social security card until i was eight or nine years old. at that time i had been spelling my name ‘meghan.’ that’s how my parents showed me it was spelled. my birth certificate says ‘margaret megan matlock boyle,’ though. i think i didn’t like it that my middle name was ‘matlock’ and nobody was paying attention or…i don’t know. they let me write ‘margaret megan (no ‘h’ for some reason) boyle’ on the social security card and i ended up with a social security number that didn’t correspond with the name on my birth certificate. it was 1993 or 1994 so things like that mattered less, i guess. pre-9/11 style. in 1997 my family went on a carribean cruise and i needed a passport. i went with my dad to a place where they took passport photos. i’m assuming he brought my birth certificate, and maybe there was some kind of conversation between the photographer and my dad about how ‘margaret’ and ‘megan’ are essentially the same name, so i ended up with a passport that said ‘megan matlock boyle,’
when i got my driver’s license in 2004, the maryland DMV required the name on the license to say the same thing as my social security card.
so the names on my forms of identification as of 2004 are:
• birth certificate: margaret megan matlock boyle
• baptismal certificate: margaret meghan matlock boyle (this one doesn’t really matter but why the ‘h’)
• social security card: margaret megan boyle
• passport: megan matlock boyle
• driver’s license: margaret megan boyle
i sublet a room in brooklyn from december 2011 to march 2012. as i was walking to the train one of the first days i was there, i saw a storefront covered in ‘CDL license, driving school, truck driving lessons’ and other words. i signed up for a CDL preparation class with a mostly polish-speaking man. i liked him. we met for one-on-one lessons for about two weeks. he said he would teach me how to pass the written CDL test, but before i could get behind the wheel of a truck for driving lessons, i would need to transfer my maryland driver’s license to a new york driver’s license.
i brought my maryland driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate, and passport to the new york DMV. they wouldn’t give me a new york state license because of a ‘four-point system.’ i needed one ‘proof of date of birth’ (birth certificate = zero points) and four points of ‘proofs of name’ (u.s. citizens usually use their social security card [two points] and passport [two points]). they all have to say the same name.
the first time i went to the NYC social security office i was drunk and had brought whiskey in a flask and saw a sign that said ‘no liquids permitted’ so i went home. the second time i was sober. i waited in a holding tank area, downstairs in a belted maze-like line at the front of which was a security gate, guarded by police. the police would periodically point to heads near the front of the line. these were the heads permitted to pass through the security device to another waiting area upstairs. when i reached the second waiting area i was instructed to get a number from piece of paper by a device. then i stood behind the person i had stood behind in the first line, in a similar but tenser-feeling belted maze-line. the room’s perimeter was comprised of people sitting at desks behind bulletproof glass. the line-waiting mass stood in the center of the room, about twenty feet from the wall of desk stations.
when my number was called, i handed a tired-seeming woman my driver’s license, social security card, baptismal certificate, and birth certificate. there was some kind of las vegas souvenir on her desk. i tried to exude apologetic ‘i understand’ mental waves to her. she looked at my papers and typed into a computer, making ‘something is wrong’ faces. she said ‘you got a double name?’ i said ‘i don’t know, what is that?’ she said ‘why they give you a double name?’ i said ‘i don’t know, i’m just trying to get all my IDs to say the same thing as my birth certificate.’ she continued making ‘something is wrong’ faces at the computer. she tore up my old social security card and said i would receive a new card in the mail in two weeks. i said ‘will it say the name on my birth certificate?’ she exhaled audibly and looked me in the eye and said ‘no m’am. you have a double name. your social card is going to say the same name as your driver’s license. if you want us to change the name on your social you need your driver’s license to say the name you want us to change it to.’ i said ‘so wait, my new card will say the same name as my old card?’ she said ‘that’s right’ and something about how i had given her the right to tear up my old card, by applying for a new card.
the card that came in the mail said ‘margaret megan boyle.’ i drove to the maryland DMV where i got my license. the DMV is out in the country and i thought they’d maybe be more lenient than the new york people. the woman behind the desk looked at my IDs with her eyebrows close together. i explained i was trying to get my IDs to all say the same thing, and that the social security office had told me i needed my driver’s license to be changed first. the woman said ‘i don’t know why they’d tell you that, we need your social first. we use whatever your social security card says.’ i said ‘what about my birth certificate, does that matter?’ she said ‘why does your social security card say a different name than your birth certificate?’ i said ‘i guess i got it with my dad, i don’t know, a long time ago, i don’t know why no one checked to see if they said the same thing.’ she said ‘now why does your passport say ‘megan matlock boyle?” i said ‘i don’t know, no one checked.’ she said ‘you at least need your passport. you need at least two things to say the same thing. but really, they all need to say the same thing.’
it had been over a month since i had stopped CDL lessons with the polish guy. near the end, we had started studying the license requirements list and ‘conspiring’ about how i could get a new york license without getting a new social security card or passport: i find my marriage certificate [worth 2 points, knew it said ‘margaret megan matlock boyle’], high school diploma [worth two points, pretty sure it said ‘megan margaret matlock boyle’], and ‘something else, you figure it out, two more points.’ he said the only new york DMV that issued immediate temporary licenses was in coney island. he would say ‘so you go to coney island, hm? with your papers, hm? then they give you new license, then you say ‘can i take CDL test’ and they say yes, you get it the same day. coney island is the only place. you gotta wake up early.’ i would say ‘that’s fine, i’ll wake up early that day.’ he would ask me when i thought i’d have everything straightened out and i would lie and he would nod and say ‘good, you straighten it out’ with a wary but not hopeless facial expression.
around the time i visited the maryland DMV the truck man left me a voicemail asking if i had gotten my name straightened out yet. i called him back and said not yet, it was taking forever, waiting for things to get mailed to me. zachary and i had started looking for apartments in philadelphia. we were hoping to move in together by april or may, i think. there would be no reason for me to have a new york driver’s license (commercial or standard) anymore. didn’t tell the truck man.
i looked online at passport things. i printed out an application for a new passport and wrote ‘margaret megan matlock boyle’ as my name. i checked a box that said ‘name correction’ and wrote ‘it has never said the same thing as my birth certificate’ next to it on a line. i got a new passport photo at a UPS store and mailed a package with the photos, the application, and my birth certificate to the passport offices. i knew i wouldn’t be living in brooklyn much longer and i never ‘officially’ lived there in the first place so i listed my mom’s apartment as my permanent address. it seemed likely that the passport offices would return my application with an ‘INVALID
’ stamp, maybe an ‘INVALID’ stamp on my birth certificate if it hadn’t already been ‘confiscated.’
a few weeks later my mom called and said a package from the passport offices had arrived. i drove to maryland and opened the package containing my birth certificate, a ‘leftover bonus keepsake photo,’ and a new passport which said ‘first name: ‘margaret megan,’ middle: ‘matlock,’ last name: ‘boyle.’
felt like the happiest day of my life.
i went to a social security office in maryland with my passport and birth certificate. there was only one ‘waiting area’ in the maryland office. only a few people were there. the woman who helped me didn’t notice the blank space under ‘father’s social security number.’ she said ‘so wait, is ‘margaret megan’ your first name?’ i’ve never been sure if ‘megan’ is my first or middle name. i said ‘yeah, it’s my first name. double name.’
i forget what address my new social security card was mailed to, but it said ‘margaret megan matlock boyle.’ i went to the maryland DMV with my new social security card and passport. they changed my license so easily i don’t remember what was said.
i think i had a maryand driver’s license that said ‘margaret megan matlock boyle’ for less than a week.
this is when i did something i don’t understand fully. i know i did it on march 28, 2012, when zachary and i had already signed the lease (effective april 1, 2012) for the philadelphia apartment.
i went to the coney island DMV and had them give me a temporary new york state driver’s license. a permanent license, which i still have, would be mailed to me. i didn’t ask to take the CDL test, i just left with a paper license that would expire in a few weeks. i took pictures of the coney island boardwalk. the sun was bright. only a few people were walking around. i had never been there. i think i was thinking i would live in philadelphia but occasionally drive to new york for truck driving lessons with the polish man.