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I get a coffee from a stand in Astor Place whose cashier is a kind-faced man. He calls me dear. He gets a bigger tip. I cross the street behind a woman. She waves to a falafel stand vendor. He calls out, good morning, sweetheart, good to see you. I’m jealous. She’s known, she owns this corner. This is her commute, I’m just living it. I clock her pants as from Everlane. This is my commute for the week. A 30 minute walk to the office, or a 20 minute train ride. I’m dressed totally wrong for the day in old Everlane jeans and a black tank top I bought 3 years ago in Boston at Primark. I’d often stop at the fast fashion store at Downtown Crossing and replace my outfit, that was also frequently wrong, with something worse. To keep this tradition, just upgraded, I buy a dress from Aritzia. The sales assistant and I talk about astrology. She’s a Pisces, I tell her I’m a Libra. She sensed that I was balanced before I told her. This is actually because I buy only one dress instead of the three I try on. Balanced being derogatory in this case. Later I’m told my tank top is inside out.
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I promise you I didn’t wistfully lean my forehead against the Uber’s window as we drove over the bridge from LaGuardia into the city. It took some restraint, but I didn’t.
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Christian says to me on my first night there, now you don’t have to write about not being in New York when you’re not in New York. Because you’re here now. That carries me back to my Airbnb in the East Village. I am here now. Even if feels a little bit like I’m stealing someone’s identity. I’m Dorothy in Oz. This I repeat throughout the week because I can’t figure out if anything is truer. Look down instead of up. Otherwise risk outing myself as tourist. I see a man on St. Mark’s leaning against a street sign in ruby red glitter loafers. Where I need to be. When I look down, I’m standing in a pile of vomit.
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I log an average of 18,000 steps a day. I overload my Metro card, then decide most days it’s nicer to walk. I want to walk around with me. I walk from Soho to Washington Square Park. Chinatown to Alphabet City. Park Slope to Clinton Hill. Dimes Square to Dumbo. Mostly, I hang close to where I will be sleeping.
When did you stop walking in circles, I ask a friend as we walk into a Greenwich Village Italian restaurant. The Aperol Spritzes are basically water. She says, I still haven’t. Thinks again. Maybe three months. I count on my fingers. Everything has its own time here. The city hasn’t started to smell bad yet. There’s always less trash than you think there will be, another friend says. I tell everyone I talk to that I actually think the city smells good. Everything smells good. They smile at me sadly. Like just you wait.
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Someone says I know a lot about the scene having never lived here. I tell them I have more time than they do to know these things. I walk down to Dimes Square past dinnertime on Tuesday. I walk in circles looking for a Greek restaurant Christian recommended. I’m distracted and starving. The answer is a French wine bar I spend the next two days refusing to name because its name is so ridiculous. I order a martini with dill liqueur. You can’t make this up. I eat the olive though I usually wouldn’t. This is what it is to Be Metropolitan. I am pleasantly surprised it is $16. This seems to be the nationally agreed upon price for craft cocktails.
As I look around, I start to get the sense no one really works. Or so I’ve heard. If they do work, it’s method acting. They pantomime by sitting in desks and sending emails. I learn from example. I play someone who isn’t self-conscious about being alone. Everyone else plays someone with a real life. Their faces are mutable like real actors. Easy to mold into a new face if you look away for a second. There’s a woman talking loudly next to me about an argument she got into with a friend who complained that she was being tokenized. There’s the grown up skater boys with their wan girlfriends. The two men next to me discuss their crypto options. NYU kids pass for adults because they carry an adult’s (their parent’s) credit card. A man leaves because his server is crashing. I suspect he’s on Urbit.
This is what I’m thinking: here, I’m another girl with a blog and bangs. Another small town romantic transplant. Back in the city just another girl in a sweater. I look two seats down and see myself. There are mirrors behind the bar, on the side walls unless the martini is stronger than I think, which it is. The next night, a co-worker sings “Dancing in the Dark” a few doors down at a karaoke bar. Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face.
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I’m bored and a little drunk after my solo night in Dimes Square. I download Tinder as an experiment. I have no intention of meeting up with anyone. My profile is Spartan. I consider using a fake picture, but imagine it’s easy to get banned. The picture I choose is blurry, my face mostly obscured. I pair it with a short bio: I have bad opinions. Every message I get asks me what is my worst opinion. One person says he’s DYING to know. Are you? I decide it’s more fun to not tell them. It’s even more fun to make some up. Some are non-controversial as a test. I don’t believe fibromyalgia is real. Heath Ledger only got the Oscar because he died. Sweet potato fries are bad. Texas doesn’t exist. Boston is a great city. Pepsi over Coke. Most celebrities are illiterate. No one pushes me on any of them.
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There are moments when the costume slips. I sweat through one of my eight rotating shirts. I didn’t pack enough black. I mistake clams for mussels at a beautiful seafood restaurant. Thankfully I mix them up in conversation with my friend, not to the server who refers to his co-worker—who is an uncanny double for Emilia Clark—as the “Chenin Boss” because she loves Chenin Blanc. When I do sample the wine, I have to keep from coughing because it tastes like apple cider vinegar going down the wrong pipe. In other words, it’s very good. Even when I am this close to blowing my cover at any moment. I conflate Cobble Hill and Clinton Hill. I believe for a whole evening they neighbor each other. My pronunciation of words with a long o-sound gives me away as from somewhere south. Go to the wrong location of a coffee shop to meet Christian. Say I’ll order a taxi in Brooklyn when it can’t be done. I can’t stop looking up.
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I’m already becoming a better person—I’ve drank more water (not seltzer) in the last few days than I have all year.
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At karaoke, I perform my one party trick: sing the entirety of “American Pie” without looking at the lyrics. A man—what someone more generous would call a short king—joins in a friend’s place when I decide I want backup. It’s a mistake. He drags me down. The song’s karaoke track is a live version, and my partner’s pacing is off. In the early verses, I could put my hand over the mic and tell him, please sit down and watch the pro. But I don’t. Instead I inform him Don McLean played at the most recent NRA convention, hoping that’ll be enough to make him stop singing altogether.
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It must be my face. It’s not that I have a particularly friendly one. It’s my searching eyes as I walk up a block, then retrace my steps because I’m going in the wrong direction. In Park Slope, a college-aged boy stops me and asks how far down the street I’m going. He’s surrounded by full Whole Foods grocery bags. Just up one block, I say confidently, though I’m not confident. I’m not even sure where I’m going is on this street. He asks, will you help me carry this ripped grocery bag to my door? It’s down the block, not far out of your way. It’s true—one paper bag is threatening to puke out the organic bananas and trail mix. I agree to help him, remembering on the walk over Bundy also looked like a harmless teenager. He just moved here (Bag Boy, not Bundy), and I tell him I will be here soon, too. He’s only here for a summer internship he clarifies as if he doesn’t want to give me any ideas about a potential friendship. Playing adult, I say. He doesn’t respond. Now that I’ve practically Door Dashed for him, he can cut the niceties. See you around.
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The woman seated next to me on the F smiles at the Snapple bottle rolling back and forth on the train floor. We catch each other’s eye, smile then go back to our phones. Any time someone under the age of 40 smiles at me, I think do you want to be friends? In the way the little bird asks the dog are you my mother?
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In a pop-up market in Cobble Hill, there’s a vendor who sells activist-themed onesies. I briefly consider pretending to shop for my own child. The night before, a friend and I talk about the baby fever we never thought we’d feel. The fact of genetics, of growing older than seventeen and thinking our life’s purpose was to do everything our mothers didn’t. There’s a onesie that announces, my first protest! A classic: Little Feminist. What if the baby grows up to be a misogynist? Presumptive. Only seventeen more years til I can vote or join the military! Not as snappy. And the obligatory future speaker of the house. Sadly, there’s no Chucky-sized Pelosi mannequin to model the fit.
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A friend says, you’re having such a New York time. I run into people I know, or know of. I’m 90 percent sure I see Ray from Girls biking down Vanderbilt Avenue. We’ve tried to figure out a name for this summer—not hot girl summer, vaxx summer. Dorothy in Oz summer.
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I wake up and think, huh, I want to play a Wes Anderson character today. So I decide to go to the Wes Anderson-designed theater on the Lower East Side. Wes directs someone to play the Stones on a xylophone in the 5th Avenue station. The sun comes back once I exit near Seward Park. The sky is not quite Margot’s glove pink yet, but that’ll come later in the movie. I wait at the corner with two people who look like 100 Gecs impersonators.
The theater is 96-point Futura personified. They don’t sell popcorn that’s popped onsite. One of the box office attendants runs across the street to an undisclosed location and returns with an armful of Grand Budapest Hotel-packaged popcorn. Everyone’s annoyed at the woman at the front of the line buying tickets for a showing three weeks from now with a gift card she also wants to reload. She would be played by Frances McDormand. Splendidly oblivious to the mounting line. Grumpy because of the inconvenience she alone causes. I have a ticket for Zabriskie Point, I tell the attendant with a very sweet face. He would be played by Jaden Smith. I get nervous and end up mispronouncing Zabriskie. He’s unfazed as he rings up my three dollar mini glass bottle of Diet Coke. I don’t try to make small talk, lest I extend the wait time and cause a riot in the twee lobby. I walk away, and can’t quite hear his parting words. Both box office attendants spoke in whispers like they don’t want to be seen here. This is also by design. I wonder if I have a long-lost tennis star sibling who just so happens to be sitting at G7, two seats down. No, it’s a well-known poet from the Workshop whom I introduce myself to.
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Cosplay: a real New Yorker. Cosplay: someone who arrives five minutes late (cute) rather than fifteen minutes early (embarrassing). Cosplay: someone who can navigate the subway without checking Google maps every 2 minutes. Cosplay: someone who knows east from west. Cosplay: someone who heeds the warning that moving to a new city won’t make your problems go away. Cosplay: someone who is not going to be depressed in another city and paying higher rent to be.
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On the N crossing the Manhattan Bridge at 11 PM the first night, I press my forehead to the window. I picked the right side for once. Some nice couple helped me find a train that was actually running. The man asks me if I’m sure where I’m going. I say yes, then no. I can see the whole city over the body of water I don’t know the name of.