There is a togetherness in the low-grade annoyances, the permission to share that fleeting intolerance, the striving for something better, the simultaneous ungratefulness and optimism of, “Eh, could be better.
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I Will Die in This Beautiful Place
It seems like being from here is the most obnoxious thing I could have done, but also it’s probably that I can’t walk down Second Avenue without mentioning my first kiss, when I sneaked into Lit Lounge at 14.
The permission to be fed up with each other is the highest mark, to me, of intimacy and trust.
There is always something pulling you back during those brief stints elsewhere: the energy, the pacing of time, family, the golden handcuffs of a good deal on an apartment.
The casual anonymity is another facet, the adjacent face of the diamond of intimacy, the way small talk and cute sayings on mugs of coffee are joyously cynical, like how standard it is for spouses to joke about hating each other, or for parents to mockingly roll their eyes about their kids.
In the vast mythology of New York, it’s the place you go to become who you always wanted to be.
I began to fetishize how unhealthy that isolation was to the point of asceticism.
There’s something so freeing about abandoning it all, or maybe just the urge to.
To be a true New Yorker, one must love and hate the city in equal measure, and always come back.