(i wrote this after i saw the news that a nyc hospital is setting up a temporary morgue in its parking lot. so many flashbacks. too many.)
Hey NYC, I hear the feds won’t help again & it’s like the 1970s all over again but with a pandemic
I moved away a while back because – because I couldn’t afford you anymore & because I was too jumpy to take the train & wasn’t rich enough to take cabs
But I love you, & my heart is in you, & I try very much to represent the best of what you are everywhere I go
It’s been sad watching the old places close and those new terrible people move in but I know you’ve got it & you’ll manage change like you manage a million subway rats
So here’s my love to you, you overeducated overly talkative upfront and confrontational people full of love, all of whom are a little bit irish a little bit jewish a little Italian and a little Puerto Rican, yah:
You all have done all the things before and you will do them again
Only in nyc do they ask doctors to come out of retirement and 1000 people show up overnight
Only in nyc do you have hurricanes and tornados and 9/11 and blackouts and people throw peaceful block parties and people dance in the street – to klezmer, salsa, whatever.
Only you guys understand what it’s like to not know anyone who lives on your block but who will do anything & everything for the bodega guy down the block from Bangladesh
Only you guys know what it means to live in too small a small space for too long a time and have nowhere to hoard motherfucking tp
Only you guys know why you look good even if you’re broke or depressed or feeling fabulous
Only in nyc do straight girls fall in love with gay men and become their best men or best ladies or their surrogates or their beards
Only in nyc are the people who die tony award winners and Oscar nominees and nobel prize mentions because holy shit y’all are talented
In nyc, where even bigots know the differences between the too numerous to mention versions of scarves worn on heads for religious/non religious reasons
You live cheek by jowl, asscheek to asscheek on the train, psychological space miles apart but always right there together
And I don’t know what went wrong but here’s what I know: everything you’re doing, everything you are, is what we all should be: tolerant of everyone but assholes.
I see Fauci and Cuomo trying to do the right thing but seriously and probably failing but still trying.
That is what you do best, nyc: try like nobody ever has before. That city is full of impossible things – just look at it.
I don’t know why it’s always you but it always is: over and over again you come back
But burn that shitty gold building in midtown to the ground already, wouldja? Fuck him.