Twenty Years in NYC

January 3, 2007

"I was like, you should put that on your Myspace," said the girl with hair lacquered into curls to her friend with intricately painted fluorescent fingernails as they swaggered down the subway stairs. "And he was all like, 'No way,' he was like, 'If my girl sees that, she'll kill me.' And I was all like, 'Eww. You're like my cousin-in-law and shit."

I tried to listen more, but when the girl with the curls looked over her shoulder and sensed me eavesdropping, her volume dropped below the clatter of the approaching train.

"This is a Manhattan-bound L train. Next stop is First Avenue," said the pre-recorded woman's voice, followed by the pre-recorded man warning the riders to "Stand clear of the closing doors, please." I always wonder why there are two voices.

The girls got on the train, while I walked further down the platform and crossed over to the tracks heading in the opposite direction.

2007 marks my 20th year of living in New York City — the first thirteen in Manhattan, and the second seven in Brooklyn. I wonder if I'll ever leave.

I grew up on a cul-de-sac in a small town roughly twenty miles from Manhattan. It straddled the line between rural farmland and swank suburbia. Despite the relative proximity to New York City, it goes without saying that it was worlds away. I don't think there was a building anywhere in the entire town more than three stories high. No bars, no movie theater. As a kid, it was much easier and more enjoyable to ride my bicycle to Watchung Reservation or The Great Swamp and spend the day roaming the woods than it was to hop the Erie Lackawanna train to Hoboken, connect to the Path train, and ride under the Hudson River to Midtown Manhattan. As a twelve-year-old Boy Scout, I went on dozens of camping trips in the opposite direction of New York — to wooded lakes and secluded rivers — but on one occasion, to fulfill a merit badge requirement, I think, our troop (Troop 666, believe it or not) took a train to New York City for a tour of the town. My ears popped as I rode the elevator to the top of the newly built World Trade Center along with my fellow Scouts, one of whom would die years later when the towers collapsed. Looking out over the stony expanse of asphalt and cement, I remember thinking, "Ugh, how does anyone live here?"

Now that I know the answer to that question, I often ask myself, "How does anyone escape?"