19 Years Ago Today
What nearly 19 years in New York City looks like
When I moved to New York City on 23 December 2000 I made a promise to myself that I would stay three semesters no matter what.
I’d been accepted into Columbia University’s School of General Studies (was there ever a more vague and meaningless name for a college?) and had arrived with the bed, the cat, the computer and $1700.
To my surprise, even with three moves in less than six weeks after arriving, I discovered that New York City is the first place I’ve ever felt completely at home. I adjusted quickly to the pace, the rhythms, the demands, and the unexpected joys of a charging-ahead city that barely notices its inhabitants. Just the way I like it.
Not what my great-grandfather had in mind, however, when he arrived in 1914 from Italy with $14 in his pocket, not speaking English.
I’m glad I grew up in small towns but I’m even more relieved and happy that I escaped that strangling, know-your-place energy of small towns. As Lou Reed and John Cale, channeling Andy Warhol, sang: “You don’t grow up in a small town, you grow down in a small town”. This isn’t to say that small towns are all some kind of nightmare because they’re genuinely nurturing, safe places….for anyone who wants to go along with the program, get married, have kids, and complain about their lives for the next thirty years.
In the small town I grew up in I had a reputation as a slut.
That’s not going to happen in New York City because people have their own lives to lead and don’t care who I’m fucking. I love this city!
However, I’m also not going to say it’s all been smooth sailing here because, well, New York. It’s fast-paced, indifferent, expensive, dangerous, and skewed significantly towards the ultra-rich. From where I live, two blocks north of Central Park, the entire skyline of the city is changing with shocking speed. A crop of “cigarette buildings”, skinny enough to get past community zoning boards concerned about shadows cast over their neighborhoods, is shooting into the sky down in mid-town.
This past year:
- I was hired and then laid off from the best-paying job I’ve ever had.
- I got beat up in the downstairs foyer of the building I’ve lived in for nearly 18 years by a woman who just wanted to smoke her crack and drink her nips in out of the rain in our front hallway.
- I found Medium and have earned some pin money and made some amazing connections with some seriously great writers.
- My partner and I went to Spain, Portugal, and Burning Man in one year.
- I’m ready to sign another two-year lease on this place in June.
Yeah, I’m home.
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