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VISIT NEW YORK CITY.
It's another day and I'm in New York City for work. This place
is the type of shithole that would frustrate me into an early grave
granted I couldn't find the words to describe it. A small job contract
led me here, not desire. Looking out the window of this cafe makes
me nauseous. The entire city makes me nauseous. I can feel my skin
crawling with the germs of not just any kind of people, but New
Yorkers — a special level of bad. I space out. Thrown into my own
head, I'm searching for anything else to feel.
I'd like to live in the 1990s. Not the actual 1990s, but the one
that my generation and others have made up. We imagined this version of it, so heavily romanticized for decades in conversation and movies; music and art. Many of us were born just short of experiencing it, and because of that, we rebuilt it in our heads
forever onwards. Capitalism was a friend, Kurt Cobain fueled
already mounting angst among high school kids, and the racial
divide just didn't seem to exist. Honestly, I don't give a shit about
that last part. Whether or not any of what! said is true is irrelevant,
because it's our vision, and so it becomes true. It's our recollection of
"back then," and you couldn't change it even if you tried. People do
try, all the time. Bitter children of the true 90s always twitching to
correct the vision, like schoolmarms or war veterans or something.
They never win. Our vision, not theirs. We'll push on, tying flannels around our waists, ripping holes
into pairs of ill-fitting jeans. We'll knock things down in the mall
and listen to the new Smashing Pumpkins record in someone's
father's car. Our parents will shoot us looks of disgust when we
come home for dinner, smelling faintly of cigarettes and fast food.
We'll sleep like angels to the sound of leaves blowing down crimefree suburban streets. There's nothing that can touch us; we live our lives like an old Disney Channel movie. Not even Columbine could happen here. We'll make out in public parks, steal some candy bars,
and run like someone actually cares. We'll skate past the girls
tanning on the beach. Our hair styled perfectly by saltwater and sun.
Blonde and brown bangs in our eyes. Bodies chiseled from marble, a
result of paddling out into head-high waves and pushing steel around
after school. Sun children with sun skin from sun worship, skin dear
from the same. It's like this forever because those visions replay
forever. It's like this for as long as we want this. Forever. Well graduate high school, go to university, and marry super pretty girls. We'll try drugs, and experience those Lifetime movie
hardships. Some of us won't stop trying drugs and die in gas stations
like pathetic deadbeats. Those people simply dissolve from the
vision. The rest of us die of old age, some with grandchildren who
ask us about what the 1990s were like. Some with grandchildren that
know we're excited to tell them. There was a time when me and all my friends lived in
something like this. It wasn't too close, but just close enough to
where our minds could fill any blanks. That romanticized surrogate
world would leak dreamily into the real. The result was wholesome,
something I think back on whenever reminded. I feel bad for people
who didn't walk away with the same feeling, the same kind of
memories, the same sense of nothing left undone. Especially since
it's not particularly hard to have achieved. Someone I must have met before walks into the cafe I'm
daydreaming in. I say this because she keeps glancing at me with
what I perceive as hopeful eyes. She's made a gesture towards me
that I haven't yet accepted, and so she floats in that sea of
uncomfortable doubt. Everyone around her watches. I put my
glasses on, realizing now that I do actually know her. I wave back to
signal her over. Her name is Dolores and I've always wondered why she didn't
use Dorothy, a much prettier name, instead. She sits across from me
and I push down the screen of my computer to see her better. She
smiles, asks me why I'm in the city with a gentle, interested tone.
She has a voice that doesn't belong to New York City because when
she speaks, you aren't suddenly coated in poison acid. You don't
flinch and dodge reptilian projectiles throughout your conversation. "Just work. Couldn't do it from home, sadly." She tells me about an internship she started; about how
stressful city life is, about how much she drinks. About how the
drinking is no longer confined to the weekends but now includes
weeknights too; sometimes even mornings to alleviate the
aforementioned. She tells me about her roommate who she just can't
get along with. I nod. She talks about student loans and the political
climate. I nod again. She talks. I nod. I'm not disinterested by her, I'm just recovering from a rich
daydream of another life. The more she goes on, the deeper I fall
into my own liquid images, more so than usual. This fantasy is
fermented; it digests slowly and without any strain on the system.
You look forward to it throughout not just days, but an entire
lifetime. It's a dessert, dense in both texture and nutrition. A lot of
my recent daydreams have felt like this. Anything can make you feel
full, but few things can fill you without regret. I pull the conversation to a close. I shut my computer,
signaling departure, and she understands the reason why. I don't
want to make it seem as if I'm in a rush, because I'm not. I just prefer
not to be here, specifically here, any longer. I walk down 48th and
Madison and stop inside a hotel lobby to check flight reservations.
I'm leaving the city because it's disgusting. Did I mention I'm now
crawling with alien germs. I am fucking sick of this place and again
left wondering why I bother coming at all. No amount of money is
worth the visit. There's something sinister about New York City that I've never
felt in any other place on Earth. It goes beyond the resting heart rate
of panic, and beyond the general disgust. New York City reeks of more than just hot homeless garbage piss — it reeks of guilt and fear and so much else. It's a city that dove too deeply, too quickly into the world of technology and the idea of a melting pot, then realized
how empty that future felt. Occasionally, they'll try to claw their
way back to former days, but can only poorly mimic them. Burger
shacks that rely solely on iPads as cash registers, that cook their
food using intentionally-dated stoves and tools. Manic NYU
students in ugly H&M sweatpants, staring into their twenty-dollar
minimalist salads, sitting uncomfortably at rustic wood tables
(artificially banged up by crafty Chinatown merchants). Every new
dent is another twenty-five dollars onto the asking price. Not a
single smoothie shop CEO bothers to argue. They love the look and
even write pridefully about it in their Moleskine day journals. What
fucking faggots. A city of queers buying anything that looks like it
came from a tree because they haven't actually seen one in a
lifetime. Did you know the trees in Central Park are made of ultradense recycled plastics? That's why they don't break, even when some sand creature sets off explosives on passing joggers.
Everyone in New York will rave for hours about how much
they love it. Their favorite clubs, their favorite musicals, their
favorite streets to avoid because a friend got stabbed and raped there
last March. If you listen long enough, they start to whittle down into
a much truer form, a kind of terror hidden under giddiness. New
York City's native population and veteran residents are a bunch of
neurootic slimy rodents, one giant gang of life's rejects.