howlongihavebeeninnewyorkfor

[howlongihavebeeninnewyorkfor]

Two Days

I still haven't seen the Statue of Liberty or a single yellow taxi. I got a window seat on my flight from Houston specifically to live the “flying into New York fantasy.” I figured I would look down at tall buildings and little people eating hotdogs and buying tee-shirts. But it turns out flying into LaGuardia doesn’t do much to assist in this fantasy.

I still cried though, I put on a song that I knew would make me. I thought I would cry for my family and friends, for the days I would be spending without them, but I cried for my cat. She had to stay behind at my parents house in Houston. I cried for her until we landed and I got signal, a text message popping up from my mom.

“We just listened to Welcome to New York and I told her that you were there to make a better life for her.”

A picture of my cat was attached. She’s black and has big yellow eyes that look like headlights.

I stopped crying after reading this, because I found it to be very funny.

The “moving to a big city to make a better life for my cat” fantasy replaced the failed flying into New York one, and I smiled.

I figured out the car from the airport situation relatively quickly and felt like the smartest person in the city. All I had to do was follow signs, but some of them were small, and some of them had weird fonts.

My ride to the Brooklyn apartment I would be staying in for the month of May was thirty-six minutes, and my only task was to curate the perfect “driving into New York for the first time” playlist. I didn't call this one a fantasy. I wanted to, but I thought tying the previous two together was a nice way to end the pattern. Adding this in kind of destroys that, which I’m okay with.

When I got to the apartment I had to lug two fifty pound suitcases up eight flights of stairs. It was hard, and my arms still hurt. 

The Woman I would be staying with opened the door and took in my post-airplane post-suitcase lugging scent. Despite my stench being her first impression of me, she invited me to get drinks with her and her boyfriend later.

I said maybe, and she went to work. I was alone then, with my huge suitcases and my worn off deodorant.

During my walk up the stairs, I thought about when I was alone for the first time in my freshman year dorm room, and wondered if that’s what this would feel like.

It didn't though. When I was left alone I felt happy, I didn't feel scared.

But dorms are dark and disgusting, and I think anyone would be sad and scared in one.

My room for May doesn't have a bed, but it has an air mattress. The pump was left in the corner, plugged into an outlet, so that I can refill it whenever it gets low enough to where my ass is touching the hardwood floor.

I unzipped my suitcases and stuck them in the corner, then walked to the nearest drugstore. I got a water bottle, frozen mac and cheese, and cotton swabs. Everything a 22 year old girl in Brooklyn needs, really. I had my Maps app open for the entire duration of the walk, which made me feel silly.

I’m not confident enough to walk around with my headphones on yet. Which also makes me feel silly.

At 9:23PM I got a text from The Woman asking me to meet them at a bar a couple minutes from the apartment.

I got nervous, so I drank half a bottle of wine then responded:

“Ok!”

The bar was called Turtles all the Way Down, which, is an objectively funny name. I walked until I saw a logo that I thought correlated with the name of the bar I was looking for. It was a silhouette of a turtle with a drink. The blue and red open sign was turned on, blinking, so I walked in.

I had never walked into a bar alone. I wasn't sure if I should find The Woman and her boyfriend first, or order a drink. I scanned the area and didn't see a familiar face, so I decided that I wanted a drink.

There was a small fridge behind the pretty bartender stocked with Lone Star beers. It would only take seven words to order, and I had just flown in from Texas, I thought it would be an appropriate choice.

“Could I just do a Lone Star?”

I kept my tab open.

The Woman and her boyfriend were sat at the bar when I finally saw them, three sips into my cheap Texas beer, two drags into my cigarette.

I didn't know the boyfriend’s name, I still don’t. He’s a fisherman in Montauk, so his name in my head was, and still is, The Fisherman.

When I was eleven I won a fishing contest. I got both first and second place, catching the two biggest fish of the day. They only gave me the first place trophy though. I thought about telling The Fisherman this, thinking it might impress him, or make him laugh. I decided to stick it in the back of my head, keeping it to myself until I was drunk enough to regurgitate it to him.

The Fisherman was standing behind me, and would intermittently put his hand on my shoulders. I would note this touch as creepy if my shoulders would have been exposed, but I was in a chunky knitted sweater. It looked like something a fisherman might wear on the water, maybe he was just trying to get a feel of the material. Maybe he wanted to get one for himself. Maybe men are just prone to putting their hands on whatever surface calls to them.

Half a bottle of wine from my solo pregame and three Lone Stars in.

There was a lone turtle swimming around a tank in one of the back corners. The titular turtle.

The tank was near where the unofficial bathroom line organically formed, which allowed for me to get to know the turtle well. I have a small bladder, especially if cheap beer from Texas is flowing into it’s tiny perimeter at a constant rate.

Another drunk girl in line grew close to the turtle with me, both of us making constant bathroom trips, running into him during the process. The turtle came to the side of the glass that we were looking in from, which was read by us as a cry for help. We both decided that it was inhumane and cruel for him to be the only turtle in the tank. This entire bar was an homage to his kind, shouldn’t he be living like a god. The back side of the tank was a mirror, we wondered if he ever saw himself and grew sad by this reminder of his solitude. We mourned his lack of friends.

The girl and I started talking about rolling up our sleeves and scooping him out, rescuing him from his tortured state. I was joking, I'm not sure if she was.

The bathroom door opened then, she went in. The turtle would not be rescued tonight.

The Woman and The Fisherman went back to his apartment, so I walked home alone, which I was grateful for.

The four flights of stairs went by quicker while drunk. I got to my room and blew twenty dollars on a DoorDash order from McDonalds.

It came, I ate, I curled up on my air mattress. It was still firm, no need for a refill yet.

The next day I went to go see my high school friend who lives in Manhattan. I rode the subway in the wrong direction for thirty minutes, so it took me a while to get to him. When I walked inside his apartment I got jealous, he had his own bathroom and an actual bed. We ate pizza and watched reality TV.

I was too scared to take the subway home, so I took an Uber.

When I got home I flopped on my air mattress and my ass sunk to the floor, time for a refill.