A decade in NYC

Next month will be the tenth anniversary of the big move. We flew an airline that has since fallen bankrupt from Austin to New York City on a crisp day in mid-October. My little sister and her boyfriend moved up from Dallas last week and while watching them navigate the torturous process of what we call acclimating to the city I can't help but think of our own first weeks here, their age and even less prepared with no family here, just a couple of friends and a mere pittance to live on while we interviewed at job after job, rented ourselves out as waiters and bartenders, were bumped from crosswalks by cabbies, schelpped books for a certain behemoth chain, lived in a tenement apartment on the lower east side with a toilet in a closet a bathtub in the kitchen and a nonworking oven with a warning tag from the gas company. Much less glamorous down there than it is these days: the pellet gun to the window I received as payback for a flip remark to a teenage neighbor I threw my Collected Auden at him but he only laughed oh and the heroine hooker on the doorstep. Yes. New York. I hated you then you made me cry and I hated you worse when you began to snow and snow and snow and the blizzard of nintey five covered everything with white until the dogs came to make their golden pissholes.

Oh city. Oh decade! Oh me.