New York Minute

Maybe the city will grow on me when I visit again

I once dreamt of being a struggling writer in New York. I was young, and I romanticized poverty.

I’m older now, and I think there’s nothing romantic about being poor. It reminds me of that line from the series “Beef”: “The Buddha is only the Buddha because he was a prince first, right? He had stuff to renounce.”

Not that I had a lot to renounce to begin with, coming from a middle-class family with no trust fund to serve as my safety net.

I went to New York around my birthday last year. It was the first time I visited the US.

I remember the first time I applied for a US visa a few years back. My then-boss wanted to send me to the SXSW conference in Texas. I was in my twenties, with hardly any money in my bank account and no property under my name. I was also barely six months into my new job.

I can imagine how that would have seemed to the immigration officer. Maybe he thought I was planning to immigrate illegally.

I got denied.

When I applied again years later, I didn’t have my hopes up. Sure, I had to pay a significant price for the application, but I had planned to visit my brother and his family, who had recently moved to the US. It was worth the risk.

During the interview, the immigration officer asked me why I wanted to go to the US. I said I wanted to see my family. When she asked where they lived, I replied: “Hazard, Kentucky”. I think that convinced her to approve my application. I mean, who dreams of visiting Hazard on their first visit? Of all places?

But then the pandemic happened, and I never made it to Hazard. My brother now lives in Las Vegas.

Over drinks, I recently told a friend who visited me here in Rome that I didn’t like New York that much. The New York in my imagination was starkly different from the reality I experienced.

Perhaps I should’ve stayed longer. I didn’t even get to see the Statue of Liberty. That would’ve probably made me appreciate the city more. Something about the energy of the city just felt off. It felt too restless, like on steroids or coke. The billboards were oppressively everywhere, and it seemed like everyone was out to sell you something. It was all hustle and grit and grift and a mad rush to be somewhere and be somebody.

My friend said he loved it. Though he did admit that he liked cities where there were a lot of guys on Grindr who fawned over him.

I did get to meet some friends I’ve not seen for a long time, immigrants who have built new lives in this city. That was nice.

Maybe the city will grow on me when I visit again. They told me that I should see Brooklyn or Queens, that there was more to the city than Manhattan.

Culture and communities – a life beyond the celebration of capitalism.