The winter night I moved to New York, I sat in the back of a cab, two bulging suitcases stuffed into the boot by the driver who rolled his eyes at my excess. When I told him that I was moving here, though, he lit up.
“Today?” he asked, “You’re moving here today?” I nodded, jittery and wild eyed. I was sick with nerves and the lunatic sensation of a thing I had dreamed of in vague cinematic terms for my whole life actually taking place. Now he was pleased, the taxi driver. Now he had something he needed to say.
“New York,” he pronounced, with great relish, “New York is the worst place on planet Earth to live. You could not choose a worse place than this.”
I was used to this, expected it. When I moved to London nine years before, I was surrounded by people falling over themselves to tell me why it was a huge mistake and why I was crazy not to go to Berlin, or Lisbon, or the Hebrides. I happily listened to the driver articulate all the reasons why I was going to hate New York, some plausible (money, healthcare), others less so (I would struggle to find a strong Catholic community). I knew I would hate it here sometimes, and I also knew I couldn’t be anywhere else.
It was snowing, and I was an hour too early to be let into the apartment I was subletting for my first month, so I had the driver let me out at the nearest bar and shuffled my things in past the stray smokers grinning at my exertion, and the sceptical doorman who eventually allowed me to stash all my worldly belongings beneath a staircase in exchange for $20. I sat at the bar and ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey, which I promptly went and threw up into the toilet seconds after ingesting it, my body letting me know it was not accepting any further stimulants than continental relocation at this time.
I walked the 10 blocks to the apartment, enjoying the absurdity of being able to physically drag everything I owned, enjoying the way it hurt my arms to do so and the way the frost gathered on my eyelashes. The owner of the place I was staying in had let me know they would be there one final night before they took off in the morning for their trip. Although I was welcome to stay in the bedroom I was renting that night, and the owner was perfectly amiable, I didn’t want to be around a new person, to make conversation. I could have gone to stay with the man I loved and was then in a relationship with, ready to receive me in his warm Park Slope studio, but I didn’t want that either. I didn’t know what I wanted except to be alone, so I deposited my suitcases, made my excuses and left.
I recalled then that I had once booked a cell-like cubicle room in a weird hostel in Williamsburg for less than $100 while locked out one night during a previous New York visit, and did so again now, the idea of a blank space without characteristics the only thing that seemed appropriate in this moment of total emotional saturation. When I arrived, I stood outside for a few minutes, regarding this unlovely and overpriced Brooklyn street. The night security guard took over, and the other clocked off, standing beside me where I leaned against the wall in my inadequate, sodden wool coat. Wordlessly he offered me some of his joint and I nodded gratefully. We stood there smoking, then bid each other goodnight.
I walked awhile, the snow having eased off, until I came to the water and looked over at Manhattan. I wasn’t trying to summon all the grandiosity it is so easy to summon in New York, the stuff I had felt in the past, which had led me to love it in the first place. I was looking at it and thinking, I live here, trying to disintegrate its glory so it could seem possible for a person like me to exist in it. I thought about people I could call, people I knew. It wasn’t so late, I could find a friend to come to a bar. I’m lucky like that, or good at friendship, depending on how flattering I want to be to myself. But I stood there alone for a long time that night instead, thinking: I’m here, thank you, I’m home.
Megan Nolan is an Irish writer based in New York. Her latest novel is Ordinary Human Failings
