I thought I had avoided the relentlessness by landing on the first of September. It seems New York saved one last summer cough for my unguarded face. I dropped my bags and roved for pizza. I folded my slice as I walked two paces behind a man with his cell phone to his ear: I would never pay money to live in the East Village. It’s so dirty down here. Full of hobos and migrants. Homos and weirdos. I walked to the park, my ankles recalibrating to the pockmarks and sinkholes. Pairs of young people discussed all their extraordinary progress, physical, spiritual, relaxational, and career-wise. I sent jetlagged voice memos to the people I left in London, with the ethos of a cartoonish stoner from the 70s: this is so trippy, man!
I felt like such a cliché. New York hadn’t changed a bit. But, going away and coming back changed my perspective. Suddenly, I had a clear vision of how I used to walk around in it. Constantly searching for recognition, in both a specific and generic sense. Looking in every window for a friend, acquaintance, or known barista. I craved serendipitous run-ins. I shunned coincidences. Everything was evidence. I noticed everything, nothing escaped me. I absorbed the city and asked for acceptance. It swallowed me and I was grateful. In what other world could I see 100 people before breakfast? In what other world could I date two men living on E 4th Street?
I forgot that life wasn’t like that before I lived here. I hadn’t noticed that the bathwater had started boiling around me. Overwhelmed for years. Searching for years. Fighting for years. I’ve called it by many names: tunnel vision, the weeds, the hamster wheel. Perhaps Thoreau put it best: a life of quiet desperation.
I guess that I’m burned out after all,1 in the words of another sage.
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Since my return, New York has sucked egregiously to drive the point home. A cockroach strolled across the bartop where Alex and I had just eaten. We were offered an apology and no discount. Within a week, there was a mouse in my house. Work was hell and my stress reached a level where I had to remind myself to breathe to slow my pounding heart. One morning, I woke up with quarter-sized hives on my face. The doctors had no theories, but I had a few: a mold spore? An adult cashew allergy? I waited on a bench in Stuy Town for my prescription to be ready, behind a baseball cap and large sunglasses, an amalgam of Anna Wintour, Quasimodo, and the Invisible Man. I researched the steroid’s potential side effects—mental illness, acne, weight gain. I bumped my funny bone and cried like a child. It’s brutal out here.2
One night, I caught up with an old friend. I told him about my summer elsewhere. How I did all the things that I said I wouldn’t. How I liked their yogurt better and became an even more insufferable snob in my stubborn, American worldliness. How I didn’t really work and I didn’t really write. How they ate me up over there, how I got entangled in a romance that most gamblers wouldn’t bet on. All the umbrellas in London couldn’t stop this rain. And all the dope in New York couldn’t kill this pain.3
My heart is still five time zones away. I can’t tell if my life now is doubled or split. The best things in life are too good for words, but I’m still turning, turning at 2 am every night. Was any of it real? Retracting sweaty palms unabashedly. Constant translation. So much cinnamon. So bitter, so sweet. Glittering expat bullets. Wine before work, working wine. Oh, to have a rare glamorous friend! Reluctant partycrashers. Who do you know here? I do not know anyone here. I am just staying for a bit. Limoncello suitcase with a geriatric pug placeholder for goodbye. What came first? The egg or the flood? The bite or the scar? The day we met, we got bitten in the grass. By the day I left, we were both marked. Remembered values. Frequent solitude and constant togetherness.
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I’m sick of having minor variations on the same revelations. I’m sick of telling the same story. Over and over and over and over again.4 I wish I could write a song. I wish I could sew. I wish I had the energy to run. I want to throw all my stuff out the window. I banned myself from making a decision or a purchase greater than $30 for 2 weeks. The only promises I break are the ones I make to myself. I don’t hate you or even New York City. I just need a little space. It's so goddamn easy to lose touch. I’m sorry I haven't been around it's always just too much.5 We all hide secret histories under our beds. I will repair my broken plates with seams of golden glue. I will burn my candle from one end only. I will learn to say no. I will learn to say yes.
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xx Charlotte
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“The greatest,” Lana Del Rey
“brutal,” Olivia Rodrigo
“All the Umbrellas in London,” The Magnetic Fields
“Honey in the Sun,” Camera Obscura
“Losing Touch (NYC),” thanks for coming
love this!
I will never not stop everything I'm doing to read these. Thanks for sharing with us Charlotte