I Love NY?

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• September 9, 2014

The end of the summer always makes me a little blue, swirled with anxiety about returning to school,  even though I haven’t returned to school in a few years, I’m still conditioned to get stressed out come September.

Alas, the summer’s end is eased by the beauty of the changing leaves, the lack of sweating your balls off waiting for a subway, and of course, pumpkin beer and football (fuck yeah!).

I like the fall.  And I love Christmas.  But Fall means the dreaded Winter is just around the corner.  Flashbacks to last years brutally frigid winter slip into my mind, as I cool down my apartment with AC.  I find myself wondering if I can handle it.  I think not.  Not like last year.  If this winter is like the last, I’m almost certain I’m moving to Los Angeles next year.

I love New York.  I’m more proud to be a New Yorker than an American.  We’re tough.  We work hard.  We work our asses off.  And we know how to party like fucking rock stars.

Sometimes, I think New York is poison.  I’ll blow my nose to find the contents of my nostrils have dirt in them.  It makes me want to vomit.  It makes me feel like not only my lungs, but my brain is being chemically influenced by forces I can’t control.  How I’ll long for fresh air.  Escape to Long Island for a couple days.  Where I can inhale air that isn’t killing me.  Then you ask yourself, “do I really love New York?”

It’s said that New York is one of the unhappiest cities on the planet.  With the little travel I’ve done, I would say this is probably true.  One of my professors said, “New York is not an unhappy city.  You just have lots of people with lots of big dreams.  And they’re not satisfied yet.  It’s a city of dream chasers.”  That always stuck with me.

When I visited my sister when she lived in Hawaii, we were put on the wait list to get into a restaurant.  To kill time, we walked down by Hawaii’s perfect shore.  There were three people, chilling on the wall that divided the street from the beach, passing a bottle of rum.  My sister, very unlike me, likes to start conversations with strangers.  She started talking to these three people.  Two girls, and a dude.  I was avoiding eye contact at all cost, as an introverted, anti-social person would do.  My sister was telling them about her move to Hawaii, and me, her sister from New York, here visiting.

One girl, holding the bottle, a bit pudgy with a ripped t-shirt and lots of tattoos said, “it’s my birthday.  It’s my fucking 27th birthday.”

I tried getting out of there by pretending our table would be ready.  It wouldn’t be.

“What’s your problem?” The pudgy girl asked, “You think you’re fucking better than me because you’re from New York?”

No, I think I’m better than you because I’m not 27 years old, drinking a bottle of rum on a wall on the beach.

Truth is, I did think I was better than her because I’m from New York.  I always think that whenever I leave this state (or even if I go upstate), or talk to a midwesterner.  It’s incredibly narcissistic, and stupid.  Most New Yorkers are guilty of it.

The New York stigma that we’re so proud of stems not from being better, smarter, or tougher (though we’ll argue we’re all the above), it comes from what my professor said, dream chasers.  No matter what it takes.  No matter how hard New York beats us.  New York City has so many people, yet it’s so lonely.  Those awful winters.  The traffic.  The rejection.  The rejection.  The rejection.  Being broke.  I think I speak for most New Yorkers when I say it’s not just a place, it’s a part of who you are.  To hate New York would be to hate myself.  Which I do a little.  But it’s part of my identity.

I’m a fucking New Yorker.  No matter where I go.

When asked by someone out of town what I thought the greatest part about New York City was, I went on a rant about comedy.  It’s history, the great clubs to go to, the great comics people don’t know about.  At some point, during my long winded answer, they said, “Wow, you really know a lot about comedy.”  Yes.  I’m obsessed with it.  Clearly, obsessed.  Sometimes it takes an outsider looking in to realize you’re in the right place.

This hot/cold/love/hate relationship, with New York, with myself, with comedy… it’ll never end.  But that comes with being wildly passionate and obsessed with something (or someone).  It’s that fire, the part of me that still chases the dream, that makes every minute in New York remarkable.