I <3 NY

By Adam Kuhn
Posted Friday, October 12, 2007

Manhattan is an interesting place. It’s a place where the people are somehow comfortable with constantly moving. New York City never slows down. There are very few things that can slow the pace of a New Yorker, but last week, the passing of my grandfather put the brakes on things.

As if my life weren’t already a mess, with moving into my new apartment, holding down a job, and making tons of movies for school, now I had to put everything on hold to say goodbye to someone who I once considered one of my closest friends in the world.

Ironically, the night before this happened, I was replaying the events of my grandmother’s passing in my mind. A few years ago, my strong and healthy grandmother suffered a heart attack out of the blue. Everyone was shocked, and no one was more devastated than my grandfather. His greatest love had suddenly left him and nobody knew why. Shortly after her death, his health began to fall.

It’s a strange phenomenon: the correlation between the passing of a long-term lover and one’s health. It’s as if your reason for living no longer exists. After retirement, after the kids are all onto bigger and better things, after you’ve reached the point you’ve been trying to reach all your life, and all you have left is each other, what else is there?

In addition, I also had to cope with the loss of someone else I loved. My grandfather’s death came roughly a week before my boyfriend flew back home. Although it didn’t affect my health, it did affect my love for the city.

I’ve come to find that one can only love New York if he has certain things already going for him. It’s a given that if you have money, the city is infinitely more enjoyable. With tons of cash, you can actually enjoy the restaurants and shopping and Broadway shows that everyone always talks about. But for someone who has to ride the subway and work through school, the city can get a little irritating. Luckily, having someone I loved waiting at home for me was all it took to make things better.

Life in New York is expensive, noisy, crowded, and dirty. Homeless people sleep on trains and people pee in the streets at night. It’s no wonder all the people wearing “I <3 N Y” shirts are oblivious tourists who infest places like Times Square and Canal Street. You can only truly know a place once you’ve lived there, and had I known the New York I know now before I moved, or had the means to live in a pre-war brownstone on the Upper East Side, I probably would’ve settled for somewhere else.

Somehow, my relationship with my boyfriend made all the unpleasantness of Manhattan life seem insignificant. Our relationship was simple. We had a strong companionship with none of the silly little mind games people play before they get off the ground. He was my port in the storm in New York, much like how my grandfather was my port in the storm in every other facet of life. Somehow I had to go on without them.

Summer was officially over, and my life was officially shit. All of the things about Manhattan that I once found endearing had now become simply intolerable. It felt like there was nowhere for me to stand still anymore.

I found myself one afternoon at the Brooklyn Diner on 57th Street trying to slow down, and while my 13-dollar sandwich was on its way out of the kitchen, I started thinking about how long I would be able to put up with this rocketing city, or more realistically, how long I would be able to afford this rocketing city.

My life had changed so drastically this past week. My grandfather could no longer console me when I needed him, my boyfriend is now 4,000 miles away from me, and the city I had always dreamed of living in was really beginning to piss me off.

My new life was steaming forward in all its glory… minus three great loves.

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