You know how people sometimes say things with such conviction, and then later it turns out that they were completely full of **** and they look like complete dicks? Well, let's hope this isn't one of those times.
I ain't leavin'. I love NYC, and I ain't f*ckin' leaving, no matter how much money I have to spend to stay here and find another job.
As some of you know, even though the truck was reserved, and half of my stuff was already packed for the trip to Rochester, NY, I decided at the last minute not to leave New York. Since that decision, I have had what might have been the most stressful and aggravating week of my life, but somehow I made it through it, and managed to get myself a new place in Queens. I am now sharing a one bedroom apartment with a friend's sister-in-law, and paying half of what I used to in rent. I signed up with a bunch of staffing agencies, and on Monday, I will be starting a three-day trial at a very big ad agency. If that goes okay, I should be well on my way to getting back on my feet.
I really feel like I have turned a corner here. Somehow everything here seems more...
mine than it used to be. Like, for the first time, I really live here, and it really is
my city.
Tonight, after going out and watching some greatness at the Bitter End, in the person of
Frank McComb, who burned the place up one side and down the other, and checking out the cute waitress who I've had a crush on forever--the one who I've also never had the courage to ever even talk to, incidentally--I got a slice of pizza at the Pizza Booth on Bleecker Street, and for the first time in my life, in some sort of symbolic rite of passage that I guess some part of me had unconsciously decided that I'm finally ready for, I actually folded my pizza while I ate it, like a real New Yorker. How cool is that.
Ever since I made my decision last week to stay here, the city has looked brighter, the smell of the filthy, unbathed homeless people has seemed just a little less pungent and offensive...even the little river of polluted gunk that flows down the subway tracks on the 6 train line at the 34th Street station looks like I could actually cup my hands and take a drink from it. Not that I'm going to do that, mind you.
Anyway, all I wanted to say, really, is that I ain't leavin'. I ain't leavin' my city, no matter what.
Maybe next weekend I'll even grow a pair and actually talk to that cute waitress at the Bitter End. Lately, anything seems possible.