"New Yorkers"

A kaleidoscope of the transplant world

New York. I just laid roots a month ago. My feet are pretty blistered from walking around in off-brand Doc Martens all day, but still, let’s go arm-in-arm for a minute.

I’ve been going to these writers’ circles around Greenwich, where no one can agree on what’s literate. It’s a total boys’ club, and they all have a lot of opinions about each other’s work. I may chime in when a woman’s touch is necessary–adding her perspective or throwing charity around words the others smeared–but only at the end, once everything else that needed to be said was already said. Before that, there isn’t a break in the discourse. They wait their turns patiently, and as soon as one guy stops, another one rolls in. It’s as if only A-roll was strung together.

Leonard is one of the guys. He has long, greasy blond hair parted down the middle, a thin mustache–not the thick pornographic one all the other guys like–and a goatee around his pointed chin. He is squirrelly; when he talks, his whole body shakes as if you just told a joke. But when he reads, which he does every week, the same exact vignette, he sheds out of his erratic state. He becomes his story–mind, body, and spirit. He is the clairvoyant cow of the 1850s who goes round and round with her owner, Jon, a farmer and traveling circus-master. Jon picks their next destination by flipping a coin at every split in the road. Leonard is my Tennessee Williams, here live from the gay nightclub that lets us use their basement.

There’s another guy in the circle named Victor. He’s Russian, and last week, he asked what I was working on. “It’s about my experience as a woman travel-“ “Wow, we have so much in common. That reminds me exactly of what I’m working on, too. It’s this deeply introspective piece where I…”

Then, there’s another guy who looks just like Jared Leto. He shows up drunk and says he hasn’t written a word since we saw him last, but he revels in the inspiration we all provide him, and surely he’ll put it to use soon.

I like my writing clubs and that there is a scene for anything else you could be into.

For example, I would go to these Sapphic parties at Madame X. And, from there, I got adopted by a bunch of lesbians. They started inviting me to everything. More Sapphic Nights. Sapphic Supper Club. Sapphic Open Mic. Sapphic Story Time. Sapphic Talent Show. Leather parties. Witches vs. Vampires. Lesbian Literary Club, Lesbian Book Club, Lesbian Pool League, Lesbian Raves, GAYme Nights.

I have gotten particularly close with one of the lesbians, Emma. The weekend after Sapphic Night One, we went to a park in Greenpoint where they were screening Hocus Pocus, and we spent the whole movie debating who the bigger icon was. Is Sarah Jessica Parker’s batty character or Alison more worthy of the “I knew I liked women because of…” title? I chose Allison. And then we went out to dinner with four strangers we met, and I didn’t get home until well after midnight.

Emma knows the insider language. I don’t have a problem meeting people, but then they ask me things like, “Well, what’s the vibe like? More Techno? House? Ambient?”, and I blurt “House!” out on a whim. Emma, on the other hand, knows it’s actually more techno instead. And, matter of fact, she’s on her way to see someone headlining from Berlin at a warehouse in Flushing, if we want to swing by.

I’m living in Bushwick, so I get asked questions like that a lot. I like living here. I got two roommates that I don’t ever see. So much so that in my first two weeks, we were all sharing the same set of utensils. One fork, one spoon, one knife between the three of us, 14 days, countless meals. I haven’t had time to settle in. I keep my calendar jam-full. Any time I go to relax, I sprout up and remind myself I didn’t come to New York to sleep.

I like living in Bushwick because I’ve got a Dominican neighbor upstairs, a Puerto Rican one next door, and a guy from Ecuador down the street. They bring me platters of food, stories of Bushwick from a decade ago, stories of home from two decades ago. There’s an Iraqi guy at my corner store who stays stocked on Camel Crushes just for me, and a family from Trinidad who invites me to their cookouts every Sunday night that start at 9 PM promptly. They’re the only types of neighbors I have who pull me under their umbrella in a downpour and ask how family members they’ve never met are doing.

I like living in Bushwick because everyone is always hosting their own themed parties. I get texts from Partiful twice a day. Everyone is into jazz and film, but listening parties and movie nights are often a bust. Themed parties are cool, though. And the host knows a drag queen who might come by if he’s available. Just like their friends. No one will commit till the day gets closer.

I like living in Bushwick and the cafe culture around there. They don’t always let you bring your laptop inside because it doesn’t “fit the vibe.” But they do plaster signs demoting ICE, calling to subjugate the ruling class, and making land acknowledgements. They all sell some new kind of coffee called Chagaccino that’s made from mushrooms, and I have to guess it will catch on like Matcha.

I got talking to a performative man over a Chagaccino recently. “Yeah, so we split because I told him I wasn’t interested in casual sex right now”, I sat and complained to someone interested in casual sex right now.

“And you don’t owe him that, you know? It’s shitty that men can’t have any sort of relationship with women they aren’t sleeping with. My gender is disgusting.” Not long after, a guy walked in with a shirt that said Tax the Rich, Not the Pretty. The performative men, they’re everywhere around here!

They read Dostoevsky in public, and they cut off relationships because of “intellectual power dynamics” (he went to college, and she didn’t). He hated to do it because she was drop-dead gorgeous, and he realizes that being drop-dead gorgeous shouldn’t even be a requirement for the women he dates. But unfortunately, it is, and he is working on it.

But it’s all alright. New York is the place to date, not the place to marry. It’s the apps on a live playing field. You hit decision fatigue. There are an endless amount of options here, each unique and therefore enticing in its own way. And the more opportunities you have, the less enticing any specific one sounds. Instead, the stream of opportunities is what becomes enticing. Each week, you can get an invite to an expensive happy hour from FiDi, an exclusive party from Upper East Side, and a local spot you would have never found on your own from Astoria, and they’re all just as happy to move nothing along.

Nothing but sex, of course, but dater-to-dater, my recommendation is once they start asking, you dip out and start new. Move someone up from Tuesdays to Fridays. Clear your roster and focus on yourself. Do anything to keep your head on that swivel and not get your heart broken. Because everyone here is too distracted to be serious. We’re all so busy with anything else but the person in front of us.

At one point, I thought I found something good off the apps, Dev, so I tried to con him into being my friend instead of a romantic or sexual partner. My plan got off to a good start, it seemed. We went out to a speakeasy hidden behind a door inside a Five Guys, and he tried to hold my hand, so I said I didn’t do any physical contact on the first date.

But then we went on a second date, and I blew it. He asked if I was seeing anyone else, and it was okay to answer honestly because he would never presume he was the only one I would be seeing. So I did answer honestly—I had been on four dates since I last saw him—and then he was honest—the recent election really occupied a lot of his time, he had a lot of deadlines as of late, and hadn’t had time for anything else. And we weren’t any better for exchanging that information! Why did he ask? Afterwards, we took turns going outside to smoke. We didn’t want to lose our table at Terra Blues.

I went out with another guy who called himself “Daddy” in completely unsexual situations–“Great you go to the gym”, “Yeah, well, Daddy has to take care of his fitness, you know,” and another guy who failed to mention he was looking to expand his polycule. (And, I didn’t mind the idea in theory, but his seemed like drama.) I wasn’t even sure what I would do when I found someone I liked. What do you do when they’re 45 minutes north and you’re an hour east? Kiss in the cab? Brave the subway together?

Everyone else is faring, not necessarily better or worse than I was, when it comes to dating. I went to a book bar alone in the East Village on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Next to me, the old man was letting his 20-year-old girlfriend sniff his fingers. An hour later, a couple came in on the other side and told me that they met through a matchmaking service at a Jewish sandwich shop in Williamsburg that was recommending pairs based on their orders.

Another time, I went out for drinks in Chelsea with such a beautiful friend of mine named Sophia. Sophia is so beautiful that when we go out, I only have her to myself for a few minutes. On this particular evening, the guy stayed close to an hour. We got on the topic of people and places and things with misappropriated names. I said I thought Starbucks could be used for something sexier, and he said, “Yeah, we should call her Starbucks”, gesturing to Sophia. Sophia responded by saying she’d like to spend his star bucks. He grabbed an $100 out of his wallet.

One time, I caught her reading at an outdoor cafe we both liked in Bed-Stuy. I approached making a joke, “Why, it’s the most beautiful girl in the whole world.” A lot of girls would have brushed it off and said, “Oh, stop,” but she just looked up with her big brown eyes and said, “Here in the flesh.”

And I love her for it. She resonates with me. Because I do things like ride over the Williamsburg Bridge, be offered a view of something as remarkable as the Manhattan skyline glistening at night, and sit and stare at a photo I took of myself in the bar bathroom an hour prior.

I am just trying to make it, like everybody else. Everyone I meet is looking for a job. Arts, humanities, non-profit, they’ll take anything, even a bartending gig if I know someone who’s hiring. And if you have a job, you’ve probably got two. One you want and one that pays. But, the beauty of New York–its electricity, really–is that you’re surrounded by all these Don Quixotical sort of characters who like to work on their dreams, beat odds, close the gap between realities. Take Zohran, for example. His uphill battle was that he was wanted by everyone but his own party. But then he got the New York Fairy Tale: a success story.

Learning to be successful here is like learning to walk down its sidewalks. At first, I was trying to dip out of everyone else’s way. It seemed like they all had an agenda. But I quickly saw that you can’t let anyone else shape your path. Think of your own, and walk like your life depends on it.

My first week here, I also developed a fear of falling onto the tracks. Then, I saw a little boy take a tumble down the stairwell off the J train at Halsey. He rode his scooter right off the edge. There must have been the same terror in him that I had in me; his plunge and impact more proportionate to his size, a subway barreling at me more proportionate to mine. His dad picked him and his Spider-Man backpack up from about halfway down the flight of steps. And I make sure to never steer too close to the side, especially when I am in my heels, and especially when I am drinking.

One thing I did stumble into once, in my heels and after I had been drinking, was the guy at the door granting clearance into Village Vanguard. I patted his shoulder and told him to stay out of trouble as I was leaving for the night. He looked up and said to make sure I come back soon. We got talking the hour prior when I went out for a smoke. Earlier that night, he told me that he came from the Midwest, too. And as soulful as can be, he said I reminded him of something he left behind a long time ago.

But we’re New Yorkers now. Except hardly anyone really is.