In mid-December 2005, I was calling for a car to Laguardia on the first morning of the transit strike. I was packing a duffel in my boyfriend's ground floor Bushwick bedroom and eating an egg and cheese and making up my mind to never come back (or something). It had been a miserable visit, one of several under the guise of "temporary distance." That autumn, my parents had insisted I move home to Memphis and my education (I had been unenrolled and unemployed and staying up all night for too many months). I believed I would reapply to school in the City, and, in the meantime, fly up (on my parents' dime) as often as I could to "keep my 'LIFE IN NEW YORK' and relationship as whole as possible." I hadn't accounted for seasons, or for growing up. I had left in August, the most fantastically grubby summer, bounding up and down the Avenues, rolling up and down Cedar Hill, feckless, oozing privilege in the form of friends and false hardtimes and false hardtimes outfits. But each visit subsequent to my dramatic departure brought cooler weather and a narrowing of democracy, the openness of Warm New York gave way to the prick of achey, mean-spirited Cold New York, where wandering and smiling are discouraged. And we were falling out of love. The more I took in the tonic of life with my family and schoolwork, the less the messy, party-addled life of my boyfriend and Co. made sense to me. I had, as he had predicted months before (being a good deal older and sort of wiser), begun to read the vast difference between us, where we were, where we would go, where we came from. So I flew South. We broke up a few weeks later. And when my letter of acceptance to that New York school arrived in Spring '06, I joyfully declined.

This "vintage" 2005 Gawker post reposted the other day made me think about my own December 2005. And also how much I despise Gawker, their damn unstylishness, general vileness. And then this little contest. It's endless...their obsession with Paul and a thing that happened (and then also didn't) here in the almost over Aughts. And I've been un poco obsessed too, in so much as I wanted to better understand my past relationship and glimpse at a mean scene and also why it stopped or changed or kept going, why I left up out and Hollywood moved in....whatever. I'm being cryptic and also obvious and boring myself (and likely you) with stuff I've written about before.

Now, it's winter 2009 and I live here all of the time. And I work, which is terrible. I live here because it was inevitable, because I was born here and I have friends and family here and there was nothing for me to do in Memphis. But, you know, I hate it. I hate never being in control of when or how I get home at the end of the day (or night)—not having a car. I hate schlepping (more than ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD). I hate not having a porch or a grill or a decent grocery store or mega-store. I hate how I never see friends who live in 'inconvenient neighborhoods' or in neighborhoods too far from my 'inconvenient neighborhood.' I just hate inconvenience and bad weather and having to schlep in bad weather. But most of all I hate Gawker and their insistence that New York is a place just for drugs and drink and misery and social-climbing and...hate...the kind of hate that's currently spewing out of me. Gosh. It's just winter (the absolute overatedness of seasons!). And how expensive everything is so I think I'll never be able to leave. Hating New York/taking it for granted is utterly normal, and our right. And I will have no problem going someplace else when I'm older.

But of course I love it too. I must. I just haven't viewed the City as a vehicle for luck and power and bright futures so much as I did in that warm part of 2005 (or the preceding 14 years of family trips and luncheons and movies). And how could I when that view was all airy fiction, candied stories with gaping holes, sheer ego? The way I love New York now comes in fits and starts or it's so basic I can't read it clearly.
I love trains, subway and commuter, as long as they're not so full. I love being able to board a train and get out of Town or get back in, fall in love, take a seat, give someone a seat, read an article.
I love the other morning I went to Chinatown and it was sunny and freezing. Canal Street was empty and so I got to look up (at the peaks of the Financial District) and move slowly. It was warm in Big Wong on Mott Street and the fellow behind the counter remembered me and we had a nice chat.
I love parks (actually used by grown-ups, not just teens scamming for homeless folks to buy them booze).
I love America.
I love museums.
I love Brighton Beach, and that it's close to our apartment.
I love cops and firemen.
I love the News.
I love bodegas. SO MUCH.
I love black plastic bags.
I love sandwiches.
I love garbage chutes.
I love cabs (though I can hardly afford them anymore).
I love restaurants, at peak or nearly empty.
I love, though I complain about congestion (and bad manners) bitterly, being around people—strangers—having to look at them and sometimes talk to them, walk beside them or behind them, hear them speak.
I love rivers.
I love the familiar geography, that I know where the water and bridges are, where the ground elevates, what places are called.
I love doormen (I don't have one but I like passing them and nodding, up and down Park Avenue).
I love baseball.
I love hotels.
I love business (or it's men, buildings and papers).
I love roofs.
I love being alone.
I love districts and boroughs.
I love heights.
I love elevators.
I love pigeons.
I love sycamores.
I love ginkgos.
I love Permissions, the big, careless permissiveness (sometimes indifference) of the place.
I love auction houses.
I sort of love department stores.
I love small, uncomfortable movie houses.
I love moldings and masonry.
I love tables on the sidewalk.
I love fountains, marble public spaces.
I love benches.
I love signs.
I love windows.