I always knew that I would eventually leave New York or that New York would leave me, though I never knew when. When I was 28 years old, over coffee with a neighborhood friend, I announced that “If you told me that in five years I will be living in Japan with a Japanese lover I met in the streets, I would believe it. I have no idea what comes next.” At this point anything could happen; I could end up anywhere with anyone or somewhere with only myself. My life was in continual motion without an agenda, following the wind or the cheapest flight to Mexico City, where I often frequented on solo trips to find weekend lovers and awaken my spirit. But Mexico is not the point of this story—New York is, at least for this moment in time when she doesn’t feel so terribly, awfully hard and concrete and fast-paced. Then again, I am still young, and Joan Didion has taught us that New York is a city only for the very young.
I was even younger when I moved here for the first time; It was almost a decade ago. My God I was wide-eyed and eager and I loved those bright lights and those taxi horns that sound like they do in the movies and the cobblestone steps leading up to West Village apartments, especially in the fall, and the fact that every bar was so damn cool (at least if only for their novelty), and the fact that no doorman really cared that my ID was totally fake because I was cuter then—19 and always smiling—and not yet worn down by the persistence of life.
My parents paid for me to live in a one bedroom studio in Murray Hill. It had peach-colored walls and no windows. I rented it with a girlfriend I had traveled abroad with in Paris who also had a summer internship. For $1200/month, she slept on the bed and for $1100, I got the couch. I rarely pulled it out into a full-size bed because it was easier not to deal with the hassle of setting it up each night and packing it in every morning. The Rodeo Bar on 3rd Avenue is my only reference point of the apartment’s whereabouts because it was always our last stop on the way home to eat free peanuts around 3AM. Which is all to say I had the best summer of my life outside of that apartment, meeting new people six nights a week, sleeping very little and living very much.
After the summer, I returned back to California to graduate from college and set off traveling, but New York lived within me. Her energy had made its way into my veins and found my soul. I landed in Australia for some time, but remember intense waves of homesickness for the city flooding my subconscious so I flew for nearly two days to find my way into her arms once again. This time, a wealthy person from my hometown who had a cat and own West Village apartment (unheard of for her age) invited me to stay while she left town for six weeks. I committed to another summer in New York. I was older and wiser. 23 years old then, and full of possibility.
My memories of that summer are fragments; snippets from the places I frequented with my sister and her friends and the people I met out in the streets. The subterranean dance bar on Kenmare Street that was very cool for a very short time, Fig 19 and on occasion downstairs at Home Sweet Home, fancy restaurants with my Uncle who was a successful lawyer and loved a strong G&T at the end of the workday, sitting on the 2nd floor at Barnes and Nobles in Union Square reading a tall stack of magazines (though I still do this now). Of course there are a couple of memories that stand out vibrantly, like seeing mom’s cousin Lou give a book reading at The Strand for his book The Raven, or the night I locked myself out of the six story walk-up and had to climb through a stranger’s window to reach the fire escape to break into the house I was watching. The stranger was a neighbor in the building and the one who recommended this, of course, because despite what they tell you, the people here are mostly good and they will have your back when the world has you down.
The final time I traveled to New York, I flew from California for a 10-day vacation and never left. That was five years ago. I brought a small suitcase to my sister’s apartment and she offered to let me crash in her room while I figured it out. We shared a space about the size of a large walk-in closet for over a month, but we both loved the coziness of her room: the way the magazines stacked up on the floor and the morning light flooded in to wake us up. She lived on 7th Avenue between 8th and 9th Street in Park Slope, directly above a wine shop and the 24-hour diner. I was 24 years old at the time which would have made her my age now (28); I assumed because she was older and had a job and have lived on the East Coast for over a decade that she had everything figured out. Being 28, I know that time and money does not necessarily equate to figuring it out. But she took me in because that’s what sisters do, and because she knew that New York can be tough even for the toughest people. Plus, I still only had a little money at the time and no real plan.
Every morning she would travel by bicycle into the city for work and I would walk aimlessly around 5th Avenue and 7th Avenue and sit in coffee shops and write and write and write—and I’m sure the writing was terrible as it often is when you are very young. And at night, she would cook a feast of vegetables from Mr. Lime, the neighborhood bodega across the street, and tell me about her day. I envied the life she already had, not knowing that my own New York story was just beginning. Sometimes during those dinners I would cry or have panic attacks wondering out loud what the hell am I doing with my life? And she would comfort me all the same, telling me it was going to be okay. I was going to land on my feet. I would figure it out because this city had always been a part of me, and I had friends and I had family and part of the magic is that when you stay open to it, New York will shape you into the person you are.
All of my relatives who live in New York were ecstatic about the official news of my move. “Welcome, darling!” “We can’t wait to have you with us at Thanksgiving!” “We all knew you’d be back for good.” Almost all of them wished me luck, which I didn’t understand then like I do now. The city requires some intelligence, a decent sum of money, a warm wardrobe, but mostly a lot of luck on your side.
And now half a decade has done by. I’ve done a few things I’m proud of, and many I’m not. I have a home that is also my sanctuary with eleven plants, a colorful rug, a large kitchen for hosting, and a set of ceramic bowls that I love deeply. But nothing compares to my ever-growing library of books which I could once name on two hands and is now surely close to 100. These are small emblems of my material life that would make it hard to get up and move away. Though I am emotionally and spiritually connected to the city, too; My favorite memories are not necessarily memories at all, but the rituals that make up my life. Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving at my Aunt and Uncles, bike rides with good friends, watching the snowfall from my coffee shop windows, monthly book club, walks through Greenpoint on the weekend, long and intimate conversation with my Grandpa. And then there is the ritual of possibility that someone could walk into your life at a single, random moment and change the course of it.
So would I tell people to move to New York? If you are 20 or 21, maybe. If you want to expand your mind to the curiosities that live within the human spirit, and if you are okay with the occasional outburst of tears (your own) on a crowded subway and if you are also okay with not sleeping too much and eating very little. Or if you never really felt like you could be your true, strange self growing up in a suburban neighborhood, then yes, New York is inviting you into her arms. But if you are my age, perhaps I would recommend you learn French and move to Paris or go somewhere close to the beach or to the mountains or somewhere that one day — if children are in your future — you can have a backyard and a garden and an alleyway for them to dream and play. Somewhere you can teach them to ride a bicycle in the streets, instead of how to fill up their metro card.
But here I am. All these years later, with pages and pages filled with handwritten notes trying to figure out the person I want to become. Dozens of boarding passes (now bookmarks) with return flights to LGA or JFK. Sometimes it seems the map of my life all point back to New York, even when I am tearing out my hair trying to get back to nature, to my true essence. In many senses, these handwritten notes are a window to my soul; The observations I wrote down must have felt important or significant to me at that time (3 pages about a coffee shop conversation with my friend, Alexi; a portrait of a random Sunday logged with timestamps; the people I dated; the people I slept with; the friends I loved; the city scene at 7:38PM from the 8th floor window of a building at 38th Street and 7th Avenue in Manhattan).
There’s also a note about new strangers who came into my life one weekend at a festival upstate. We all rode the train back to the city, bought bodega beers and sat in the backyard of Saturdays surf shop. And for those in the know, Saturdays was once SoHo’s best-kept outdoor secrets. I don’t remember how tired I was, or the type of beers we were drinking, but I recall with great clarity the peacefulness we all felt in the company of strangers. We were all just trying our best. Trying to be someone who embodied New York: effortless, creative, indefinitely curious, slightly irresistible, unforgettable. But with these people, none of that really mattered. What mattered is that we were slightly hungover and had come across this quiet oasis in the middle of the city and these beers tasted so good under the shade of the trees and the conversation was flowing and fluid, and mostly that I felt home. And in that moment I realized this was no longer a life that I wanted; it was my life.