New York is the worst place in the world, my cab driver told me. Not that night, not for me | Megan Nolan

On By Littum

TLast winter night I moved to New York, I sat in the back of a cab with two bulging suitcases stuffed in the trunk by the driver who rolled his eyes at my excess. When I told him I was moving here, though, he lit up.

“Today?” he asked, “You’re moving here today?” I nodded, nervous and wild eyed. I was sick with nerves and the crazy feeling that something I had dreamed about in vague cinematic terms all my life was actually happening. Now he was happy, the taxi driver. Now he had something to say.

“New York,” he stated with great gusto, “New York is the worst place on planet Earth to live. You couldn’t pick 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 who fell over themselves to tell me why it was a huge mistake and why I was crazy not to go to Berlin, Lisbon or the Hebrides. I happily listened to the driver articulate all the reasons why I would hate New York, some plausible (money, health care), 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 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 stuff past the stray smokers who laughed at my effort. , and the skeptical doorman who eventually allowed me to stash all my worldly possessions under 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 in the toilet seconds after consuming it, my body telling me it was not accepting any further stimulants than continental drift at this point.

I walked the 10 blocks to the apartment, enjoying the absurdity of being able to physically haul everything I owned, enjoying the way it hurt my arms to do so, and the way the frost pooled on my eyelashes. The owner of the place I was staying at had let me know that they would be there one last night before they left in the morning for their journey. Although I was welcome to stay in the bedroom I rented that night and the owner was perfectly friendly, I didn’t want to be around a new person to talk to. I could have gone to live with the man I loved and was in a relationship with, ready to welcome me into his warm Park Slope studio, but I didn’t want to either. I didn’t know what I wanted except to be alone, so I deposited my bags, made my excuses, and left.

I remembered then that I had once booked a cell-like cubicle room at a weird hostel in Williamsburg for less than $100 while locked out one night during a previous visit to New York, and did so again now, the idea of ​​an empty 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 ugly and overpriced Brooklyn street. The night watchman took over, and the other clocked out and stood beside me, where I leaned against the wall in my inadequate, soaked wool coat. Wordlessly he offered me some of his joint and I nodded gratefully. We stood there smoking, and then bid each other good night.

I walked for a while as the snow eased until I got to the water and looked over at Manhattan. I wasn’t trying to evoke all the grandeur it’s so easy to summon in New York, the things I’d felt before that had made me love it in the first place. I looked at it and thought, I live here and tried to dissolve its glory so that it might seem possible for someone like me to exist in it. I thought of people I could call, people I knew. It wasn’t that late that 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.