Back to New York
New York New York, Las Vegas NV, 2012.
For my 60th birthday, I'm going back to New York.
I haven't been there since I lived there, 1988 to 1989. There's a reason for that. I have never been so alone as I was when surrounded by 7 million people.
I tried to be social. Even succeeded a few times. The best was when I crashed a party at Columbia, met a pretty French girl who was taking English classes there, and we dated until she went home six months later.
That was the good part. The bad part is much, much bigger.
At my first job, I got death threats; we'd published something the Ayatollah didn't like. The admin who worked next to me jumped off the George Washington Bridge. Not because of the Ayatollah; she was just unwell. She'd come out from Iowa, couldn't admit to her parents that she'd made a mistake, and couldn't cope with the city. She drew pictures of herself as a ballerina and thumbtacked them to the cubicle wall between us. The church where they held the service was cavernous. Her parents looked tired and numb.
There were lighter moments. I bummed a cigarette off a very, very drunk Nick Nolte. I startled Andie MacDowell — she was walking with her kids — when I said, maybe a little too loud: "Hey! I just saw you in Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Liked it." I was drunk. I said hi to a very tall Christopher Reeve at an outdoor market. Eric Clapton smiled at me on my birthday.
But mostly it was just the grind of the city. Half my net income went to rent. I was surrounded by cool things I couldn't afford to do. The best meal I had was a pizza on the roof of my apartment, watching ships come in to Brooklyn Harbor.
This time, I'm going with my wife, enough money to actually enjoy a few days, and my camera gear. I did end up buying a new lens: wide angle, because you have to go wide to capture that city, in all its splendor and despair.