Nashville to NYC

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When I first saw New York, I was twenty and briefly exchanged dollars with a Joe Pesci toll booth operator. It was September and I was looking for instant metropolitan and instead found construction and traffic and Connecticut. The second time I saw New York, I was twenty-two and it was barely Spring. I had just finished my first job freelancing as a receptionist in reality-tv.

It was the flying that did it. I had been living with my parents for the past seven months, saving money. The past seven months all gearing up to one BIG MOMENT. And then, that moment seemed too big to be actually happening and twenty-four hours later, that’s exactly what I was thinking about in my hotel room. It seems like many people consider going to NYC a BIG MOMENT, and it's definitely one that belongs in all-caps to substitute for all the wide eyes and queries about your safety.

That first day, I walked maybe ten miles. I accidently took the subway uptown instead of downtown, walked from 72nd to 59th and took the subway to 34th. (Sidenote: 34th Street!) I finally met a few friends on 26th at Cafe Fuego in St Marks, a really low-key Cuban restaurant (owned by Gabriel Aubry) and ate mojitos and drank sangria for a while. We spent the rest of the night walking up and down empty streets in Chelsea, looking for art galleries (closed, of course) but mostly enjoying the brightest of the bright lights.

Late that night, I finally got back to my tiny room at the Paramount Hotel, a really neat post-modern hotel (Sidenote: No 13th floor!) with giant gilt-framed Vermeers in every room (mine was "The Girl With a Pearl Earring"). Unfortunately, I got sick that night and booked a return flight around 7:30 the next morning. The next day, I walked several miles, bought I-Heart-NY shirts and postcards and ate at Cafe Duke near Rockefeller Center. My friend Travis and I met at some point, traversing Times Square, taking the subway to the World Trade site, and stopping into no less than three H&Ms.

By the end of the day, when I nearly collapsed into the window seat of the same Embraer-190 I’d arrived on, at 9:45 and despite having not eaten more than two bites of food in two days, and no sleep, I still couldn’t fall asleep until the moment I threw my suitcases into the back of my parents’ car and went right back to the life I’d just left.

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