Mythical New York

I drove there from the Boston area for a quick weekend trip, just one night. An old friend turned 40 and threw a party at a huge Lower Manhattan bar called Fat Cat, with pool tables, ping-pong, and shuffleboard. There was also a live jazz band and enough NYU students to queue up the stairs and into the street. I drank some Harpoon IPA, ate chocolate birthday cake, got killed at table tennis, laughed, shot the breeze, and occasionally walked out of the bar to take in some New York air.

New York is a planet of its own. So many people! They crawl over and around each other like insects. But the word insect has too negative of a connotation. New Yorkers have a grace that is hard to describe. They are so used to crowds, that their awareness is desensitized, caring so little of what strangers do around them, that they become courteous, and enabling, of your privacy bubble.

As a writer, New York is a sucker punch to the gut. If I want to be a major success, I’ll have to win this town over, and watching the uncaring masses scramble around makes me feel like this may be impossible, but it’s not, it’s already been done a million times. New York can be touched-- the dream is real. The Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, Central Park, it all exists. I saw it live, walked there, breathed it in. It wasn’t that special, another town, no big deal. Success is lurking there, waiting to be brushed against on the subway, eaten at a shawarma stand, or picked up like a penny in Times Square.

New York is a romantic place. The setting of so many films and television shows. The multitudes of beauty deftly dressed, the money displayed, and dispensed, the unmatched diversity and depth affording anyone a place to find, or hide. Garbage always litters the streets, as do people roaming, clustering at any hour, so that there’s never any rest or peace, but the constancy of noise, its energy, its hum is consumed by the numbers, barely noticeable. I don’t want to live in New York, but I’m glad it’s there, so close by.

I remember flashes of night, the lights, with thousands of faces I’ll never see again. New York reminds me I’m just a speck, or a spark in a sea of fuel. Then, back home to the Boston suburbs I go, to the silent trees, dark nights, lawns, leaves, lakes and horse trail streets, and talk of weather and sports. I walk my dog, we’re all alone, breathing in the crisp clean air, and I’m finally unwound.