Ryan vs. New York City: A Story of Trash, Bingo, and Self-Assuredness

(No, I’m not in the photo. I’m taking the photo. Stop creepin’)

I spent the past few days in New York and I wasn’t in complete agony!

Now, before I go further, I want to reject the notion that I blindly despise NYC because I went to school in Boston. Honestly, I’m shocked you’d even go and make that assumption. It really makes me questions how comfortable I am talking with you. What other prejudices are you projecting onto me? You, my reader, are probably a very paranoid and miserable person.

Besides, comparing Boston and NYC is a ridiculous thing to do. If you took a swath from each, sure, you’d have a handful of tall buildings and swarms of congestion and the occasional cloud of poisonous vapor, but aside from that there’s not much holding them together. Boston is a cute little jewel with racist geography while NYC is some accidental scrap metal galvanized and made lovely, in a harsh, untrue way, by years and years of industrial romanticism.

That sentence totally makes sense.

Usually, when I’m in NYC, I feel like I’ve somehow wandered through a hellish threshold into some interminable purgatory, like you’d find on the twilight zone. It’s because I’ve only ever taken day trips, and on day trips you don’t have a home. You can’t rest. There’s no place to orient yourself with. There’s no chance to grow familiar, to recognize a skyline from your window, to get emotionally acquainted.

On a day trip to NYC, the predominant feeling is one of waning resilience. You endure the city. It washes over you in a pulpy tide of people and trash as you fumble from one Starbucks to another, hoping the Guggenheim is just around the corner but knowing it isn’t, because the increments of NYC are regular and dependably lengthy, and there’s very little to discover between them. The people, the chill, the mysterious, heady vapors, the creeping notion that the buildings are all empty. All of this combines in one low-grade anxiety that sort of saturates your muscles and makes you feel fused with your clothes, and somewhere after lunch you realize just how far away your bed is, and that you didn’t wear the right shoes, and that no, you are not going to be discovered on the steps of the MET, and that no, that pretzel you purchased from the man with the pushcart is not going to save the day.

But this trip actually wasn’t like that at all. We were lucky enough to stay with some friends in Hell’s Kitchen, and that made a huge difference. Also, for probably the first time since forever, I was able to navigate. This is a big deal for me. I am a very talented navigator, but for whatever reason the grid of NYC has mystified me for centuries. Centuries. Rome? No problem. Bosnia? Simple. Boston? It depends if I’m on rollerblades, but usually I’m all good. But not NYC. Never NYC. Until now. And–this I admit sheepishly, hoping it’s cute–it has to do with counting, a capacity I suddenly lack when I’m flustered.

I’ll skip over the actual events of the weekend, because they’re too depraved and don’t make for a flattering narrative, but I will confide this: Monday night found us watching RuPaul’s Drag Race in–get this–the Stonewall, with accompanying commentary by a queen who highly resembled the lady from The Fifth Element, which is possibly my second favorite movie. It was magic. Then the show ended and we meekly participated in bingo, which was actually the most stressful portion of the weekend thanks to the drag queen running it (imagine Ursula but a little less cunning).

The best part of the weekend was by far meeting up with some old friends. Classics! Y’know? It’s always funny seeing people you love in a new context, because you discover how much you adore them for who they are, who they always are in the sustained sense, without all the ornaments of scenery and setting. I suppose that’s what reunions are all about.

Drag queens. Historical bars. Bingo. Reunions. I like a city that has these things. I don’t think you get to encounter them if you’re just glancing through shop windows. I get why people love NYC, and I understand that I might love it one day too, but so far I’ve managed to shield myself from the blithe adoration showered upon what is actually a very grungy, uncomfortably harsh place.

But I’m grungy and harsh, and people seem to like me (contestable), so maybe there’s hope? I’m certainly just as caffeinated as NYC (adjusting for proportions). I’m sing-songy and sort of grumpy and do a great Statue of Liberty impression. So, in a way, I’m pretty much New York City personified. Right? Now all I have to do is name my hair ‘The Mousseum of Modern Art” (get it????) and I’ll be the focus of every broadway kid’s dreams, ages 15 to 30.