Back to the City

I really didn’t want to go back to Manhattan today; in fact, I was all but resolute in staying home, taking a break from work, from working out, from writing. My body was loudly demanding it: maybe allergies was partly the cause, but a solid eight hours of sleep just didn’t feel like enough.

It was the prospect of a hot date (which I had suspected was nothing but the promise of a fake Tinder account) that got me out of bed, shaking the sick fatigue, to prepare for the outing. I got a fresh haircut, made my way for the train station, bought my ticket and was on my way. The sluggishness was hard to shake on the hour-and-a-half ride in, and my phone of course ran out of data.

It hardly mattered: I was glad when I got there, even though I didn’t want to go. I may never get over that feeling of rising out from Penn Station- whichever side- immersed in the embrace of those buildings.

The weather was precarious, as it so often is on those lucky days I choose to go in, but it didn’t rain. The clear skies on my arrival made way for a misty overcast as I reached Central Park on foot. A few of the much taller buildings on the south side of the park disappeared into the gray, cultivating the ambiance of a dreary dystopia, as though the hand of Orwell himself had come down to wrap his fingers around the peaks of Manhattan.

I planned on meeting my date in Brooklyn at eight that evening (I was glad when I got the message that eight would do instead of nine), so I went for some food in the mall of the Time Warner Center, then went for a quick walk through the west side of the park.

I struggled just a little as I made my way out of the park, but that was a pre-planned augment to the journey; I know I rush way too much, always having to be thirty-minutes early everywhere. But in my departure from the park, I strolled, relaxed, and enjoyed every enjoyable sight around me, which in Central Park is never in short supply.

I started to notice the people around me. They’re kind of hard to miss in Manhattan, I know, but I started looking at them individually. I noticed their clothes, their faces, their walks; some had places to go, some were just wandering and watching. It was like my brain was straining to find intrinsic differences between the people here and the dullards back home. But I was realizing there weren’t any. Little things perhaps: it was easier to find assertiveness on the streets, and extroverts were just a little more frequent, but I don’t know if I would have noticed a difference if you threw a couple swaths of these people into the suburbs of Long Island.

Maybe it sounds childish, and as I write it, it’s not like I’m shocked by my discovery. I don’t know, maybe there was a fantasy in the back of my mind that there was some magic to the people of the city. Maybe that fantasy is fading.

Anyway, a little after seven in the evening, when the misty clouds grew just a little more prominent in their darkness, I took the Columbus Circle station bound to Brooklyn.

And of course, in my wide-eyed, introverted ignorance, I boarded the wrong train. Fortunately, I had been keeping up with where I was through my barely-useable phone, so I wasn’t utterly confused, just frustrated.

I got off the subway early, hoping to only have to walk a block for the other line. What was written on my map wasn’t matching up to what I was seeing, and my frustration grew as I bounced from block to block on the streets of Brooklyn.

I had texted my date earlier, saying I had gotten on the wrong line.

The only response was, “Are you on your way?”

I suggested I could walk to my destination, the reply to which was, dryly, “That will take an hour.”

Again, we had already agreed to meet an hour earlier than originally planned, so I figured an hour wouldn’t be a big deal. Still, I could sense the displeasure coming through the shortness of the responses.

So there I was, stuck in Brooklyn, looking for a taxi or one of these metro stations that was showing up on my phone but not in real life.

As I was explaining that I was a little lost and was just going to call a taxi (which I did not want to pay for), I got a text saying, simply, “I need to cancel. Something came up.”

I texted back, “Seriously?” (We had been planning to meet for a few days.)

“Yea sorry.”

Next thing I know, our connection on Tinder is gone. My number’s probably blocked as well, I don’t know. I just deleted it all.

So yeah. That sucked. Not the first time this kind of thing had happened either. Ugh.

Shake it off.

Thankfully, I did manage to find one of these illusive metro stations and got back to Manhattan. I was parched and spent way too much money on a tiny milkshake in Penn Station. Then I started collecting my thoughts and writing this down in a notebook as I waited for the train back to Long Island.

Come to think of it, I’ve had some bad luck trying to make friends in Manhattan... in the past week alone, in fact... I won’t go into it now; maybe I’ll just save it for a future work of fiction. My cutting room floor is loaded with hidden treasures, but until I find a use for them, it’s all just scrap.

I have to say, it really is great that I have a forum to talk about this, even if only a miniscule few are reading in these early stages of my career. To those few, thank you for being patient with me, and I’ll have happier things to write about very soon, I promise.

But I’m glad I went to the city today.

I’m glad I got to see those dreary clouds descend on the building tops, and feel the scene descend on my imagination. Every experience is precious, and gives light to that new story reaching up from my subconscious.

The air was just as wet, and the clouds were just as misty, when I got off the train back in the heart of Long Island. I was greeted by the sight of the distant airport lighting the horizon, forming a thin strip of lighter clouds under a veil of black. I stood by my car in the parking lot and stared over the sprawling field, watching the tower over the airport swing its light in slow circles, and the blinking lights of the airport show that there was important activity going on in that heavy dark in the dead of night.

I’ve been told before that I’m a stubborn man. Considering how I respond to discouragement, I would say that stubbornness is one of my virtues. Maybe the best of them.

I’ll have to tighten my belt a while, but I’ll be back in that city I love. In the meantime, maybe I should start to see my own home for the adventures it has to offer, and the people around me as no different than those of the big city. People have a lot to offer, wherever they are. If you can’t see it in one place, you won’t see it anywhere.