razzle dazzle

In ninth grade, I wrote a poem about New York City; a tiny snapshot of the city on a quiet wintry evening-dark and chilly but bathed in a warm glow with references to an old Christmas wreaf left up from the holidays and the touch of clanging champagne glasses from neighboring windows. I think there was a cat in one of the stanzas too. It surely wasn’t anything to brag about (although it did make the rounds between the parents and various overzealous relatives) but that poem, amateur as it was, represented a testament- an ode- a truce to a city that I often felt estranged toward-enveloped in a sea of cold anonymity-fast and furious-pitiless and unforgiving. Even as a resident of New York my whole life, already at the age of 14, we seemed to be at war.

Me and it.

Me versus the great city that never sleeps.

Maybe it was my repressed frustration harbored in the fact that I did not truly live in the city..I was on the outskirts..thereby, at the mercy of the clanking subway transporting me back and forth between school and home. I don’t think that the city-life atmosphere of high school and adolescence quite agreed with me either. After all, I craved what the city could not give me-trees, open space, pep rallies (hey, I was young and impressionable.) All if I know is that during senior year, my college search consisted of me getting away from the city and the subway and the litter and the crowds and all the other components making up the daily life of countless New Yorkers.
So, I guess in regard to my duel with the city, the city won because I backed out. I left.

And the funny thing is that I’m back. What is it they say about New York..even if you leave, you always come back? Or, maybe that is what my dad says. Probably the latter.
But, it’s true. For whatever reason, I am back home. And I must say..things do look different now viewing the world with my twenty something year old eyes. New York has an added mystique..a regal charm of glitz and glamour-a beat-a rhythm-a storyline. It’s a place where friends draped in glittering sequins and plunging necklines gather to throw away hundreds of dollars on dry martinis and mouthfuls of brushetta and crablegs and oysters and steak. So, where do I fit into this razzle dazzle crowd like equation? Well, I don’t really. Although, I sometimes feel like I do, or can, depending on my current alcohol consumption. Take last night for instance-me and several friends nestled in a square table at one of the hottest spot restaurants in town..or so I’ve been told. A gorgeous Cuban restaurant, seated up close to the phenomenal mariachi band and salsa dancing elitist New Yorkers who might have had one too many. We sipped our sangria under the shimmering chandeliers and savored our exquisite entrees before ogling the bill. We then proceeded to hightail it to a nearby exclusive bar/Japanese sheik wonderland of a restaurant where the patrons dressed in suits and ties and kept their blackberries close to their wine glases. Ah. The life. The life I could never have known in high school.

My ninth grade poem ended up on a high note. It was something about New York being my home through thick and thin. I think the cat was there for comedic effect. Almost ten years later, I have to admit little has changed. I do go through phases where I look at the dirt and grime on the ground, where I grow sickened by the overwhelming amounts of bodies in Times Square, but then there are those moments like last night. When New York transforms into a fairy land of the rich and famous in all their finery and glory and I feel like a privileged guest on the private party list.

So, I think in the fight between New York and me..New York will always come out victorious. It has too many faces, too much vigor-it’s boisterous and rowdy-elegant and full of grace. I can't compete. Whether I’m stuffed inside the A train or lounging at the wine bar, it’s my home no matter how much I might not fit in. And, I have to admit..the glitz and glamour part of the city ain’t so bad after all:)

So, once again, I forfeit to your majesty New York City.

You win.