If I haven’t been writing about the city recently, it’s because grief is still too close.
It’s been easier to move away from it, often back to the past, than it has been to stay here, in the present where things feel better yet still uncertain. The sense of normalcy is trembling, its hands shaking, and its eyes bloodshot. It’s perched on the roof of a building, and none of us know if it’s going to jump.
Going back in time while staying in New York isn’t as hard. The basement below Burp Castle still brings back memories along with the patio at Madam X, the bathroom at Doc Holidays, and the balcony at the Campbell Apartment. But they only exist before. Even the ones that are still open.
Maybe you know someone who could use this today….
However, there was a night not too long ago where I sat at a nearby bar, a bit too drunk for my own good but happy all the same. A seat opened up after two drinks I didn’t need, but leaving was impossible now that I could become a part of the furniture.
As I settled in, a gorgeous blonde sat down next to me, and we started up a brief and friendly conversation that felt like a dream from another time.
Her smile was honest and her laughter comforting. I was fully aware of my extra years, my state of mind, and the possibility that I had become the drunk old man at the end of the bar that I remembered so well from my youth. But even when she moved on, she returned briefly to say how nice it was to meet me, and I felt a hint of something normal that might stick around.
Walking the streets doesn’t offer the same feeling. It’s enjoyable on occasion, and the people wearing masks feel as much a part of the landscape as the pigeons and the lampposts. But there’s a wariness that’s always been here but now holds itself tighter. There’s a lingering sense of trauma and concern that, while buried deeper in some than in others, is persistent and awake.
There might have been a time when I would have told you that the blonde girl kissed me. That somehow, we talked longer, laughed louder, and ended up in the restroom with my hands under her skirt and her tongue down my throat. We’d fuck sweetly but with passion, and if someone bothered to interrupt us, it would be with a hand in their pants as our lust overtook them.
She might tell me she has a boyfriend once we finished. I’d tell her I was married. She’d be shy, and I’d be awkward, but our fingers would touch, and the connection would linger until guilt and regret vanished in the night air.
But New York isn’t incredibly sexy right now.
With the coming cold comes memories of last year and the realization that some things won’t be okay. And as we contemplate being inside, anxiety and grief return as old friends asking us if we truly let ourselves believe they had left.
If there’s a point to winter in the city, it’s to find light in the darkness.
Not the light of windows or even the golden strings hanging outside bars and cafes, but the light that comes from something unexpected. A warming of the heart that comes from a shared smile or the touch of a hand.
And, on occasion, that light arrives in the form of a sticky, tender kiss on a snowy corner which might last forever until the silence is broken by the sounding of a horn and the wailing of a siren.
But in those few seconds of bliss and warmth, we remember that in a fleeting life, especially one that teeters so visibly on the sharp edge of hope and dread, the kiss is what gives us life. The city is teeming with it when we stop to notice, and even the breaking of the silence is as much an indicator as the empty space before.
And in the middle of the noise, the worry, and the insatiable hunger to connect, we find a warmth that might last until spring.
Beautiful ❤