One Day You'll Know

 I pulled my film camera out as the J train pulled into the Myrtle Ave station in Bushwick and snapped a photo of it. Frank Ocean played in my headphones. I got the film developed and printed that same day, and hung the crystal clear image, oozing with nostalgia for a simple moment that meant nothing to anyone else besides me, on the wall in my room. I wanted to keep that moment to myself, just like all the other moments I’ve captured on film that hang above my bed frame in the basement of my depressingly dark apartment. The only window in my room looks out onto a cement wall, only there because a window is legally necessary for a room in this city to be considered a bedroom. 

To everyone on the train I captured on film, and everyone else who unknowingly stands in photos I’ve taken, it’s just another brutal day in a city that teaches us everything we know about being alive but rewards us for our efforts to make it through another day with very little. I’ll take a $6 iced latte with oat milk, please. In Denver, I tell them to keep the change. Here, I put all the leftover quarters, pennies, dimes and singles in a Powerpuff Girls lunchbox in case I need them for a pack of cigarettes I can get for $10 instead of the usual $15 because they’re stolen. 

Next to the photo of the J train is a photo of a pile of bikes still chained to the bike stand, still hanging on even though someone has run off with their tires, handlebars and seats. I look at that photo often, reminded of the things I’ve had stolen from me in the three years that I’ve lived in this city. I’ve only been robbed once, and it happened while I was inside of my apartment. Someone walked right through the basement door while I was folding laundry and took $300 from my roommate’s dresser and my other roommate's wallet. They walked right out and I didn’t even know it happened until my roommate came home the next day. Close call. 

Besides that, I had my dignity stolen for the first time when I went to a club notorious for having a hot tub on the roof. I was wearing a pair of lightly tinted square-framed sunglasses and a fur coat. Someone pulled out a wad of cash and told me they had a hotel room for the night. I didn’t understand what they wanted from me until I got on the L train back to Brooklyn. A week later, I showed up to a club for adventurous and curious partiers, wearing nothing but a thong, pasties, and studded choker. My money belt was so long it looked like an iridescent tail and someone grabbed it and said they knew exactly what it was for. Festivals! I said innocently. So no one steals my shit, and my friends can grab onto it and follow me through the crowd. He thought I was into puppy play. I did not need to contemplate what that meant when I walked home. When I went out for my morning coffee the next day I snapped a photo of the club’s slogan YES, spelled out in massive letters on top of the building covered in graffiti art. It’s been on my wall for years. 

It is here, on this train platform, at that club, in front of that bike stand, that I formed a new morning routine. Go out for coffee and a walk around the block, taking photos and lazily sipping my coffee. The pulse of the city comes up from underground where the train rumbles, carrying exhausted humans from a diner in Bushwick where they spent the morning eating away a hangover, still in last night's makeup and an outfit inappropriate for the light of day, to work and back home again. Maybe that’s just me. The energy seeps up through the concrete and carries my legs from one destination to another. I’ve got nothing but time and too many places to be. I am overwhelmed by the blessing of too much free time on my hands and a willingness to do something interesting with it, but the inability to decide what that interesting thing is. Do I dare eat a peach? I would hop on the train to Chinatown to get one, but someone jumped in front of the tracks earlier. Besides, I would probably take one bite and throw it out onto the street. At that point in my life I was so averse to anything healthy just the thought of quitting smoking made me want to vomit. I don’t wanna grow old so I smoke just in case. 

That’s what I love the most about my film camera. It opened my eyes to the possibilities that come with living in a city some say is one of the greatest in the world. I don’t have to decide what to do with my time because the city makes those decisions for me. The train is delayed, making me late to work. The line to get into my favorite thrift store is down the block and around the corner, forcing me to do productive things like check my email and answer missed calls from people who care about me. In the meantime, I see an overflowing garbage can with a plastic bag that says I <3 NY placed perfectly on top, reminding me that this city is trash just as much as it is treasure. I see someone crying in front of the club where I did cocaine until they turned the lights on. I’m not the first person here who has seen too much, but I might be one of the few who takes delight in it. I see weirdos sitting on the stoop of Search and Destroy in the East Village, smoking cigarettes and selling weed. I contemplate asking them if they sell anything they’re not specifically advertising, and decide against it as images of me overdosing on cocaine alone in my Williamsburg apartment flash in my mind. I’ll keep it moving towards the church a few blocks away with a disco ball in the basement, keeping the young people of the AA community entertained as they battle the demons that come with being 26 and sober. 

I left New York City with my film camera in hand on May 4th. Unbeknownst to me, I would be leaving it for good. I went from an island vacation that ended with me having such bad withdrawals from cocaine and alcohol that I tried to drive my car off a cliff, to a psych ward in New York City where I got stabilized and safely detoxed, to a residential rehab program in Princeton, Massachusetts, to a sober living home outside of Boston all in the span of a month. One of the last photos I took was of the bookstore where I was introduced to downtown literary legends Rachel Rabbit White and Liara Roux. Another one was of the diner in Bushwick where I spent many a morning sipping coffee in my comically large fur coat, feeling the existential dread that comes with being alive at an hour when most people are still asleep, and I’ve been partying since 3PM the day before. I took photos of the thrift store where I found a Marvin the Martian bomber jacket from the 90’s, and a Harley Davidson tank top from the 80’s, and a Coach bag from the early 2000’s. I shot a massive statue of a Buddha chilling on Wyckoff Ave. I hung photos on my wall of all the clubs I’ve walked in and out of wearing lingerie. When I left it was still all there, all the moments I’ve captured in the city that only sleeps when you’re faced with the decision to get healthy or die young. 

Everyone falls in love with New York City if they live there long enough. I don’t think I ever recovered when I found out it will never love me back. I had my mom take photos of my empty room when she packed up my shit the week before I got out of rehab. She asked where my vacuum was so she could clean up. Don’t worry about it, I typed back. That room, and everyone who came in and out of it while I lived there, was born out of dust. To dust it shall return.