My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City is the perfect book to read as new New Yorker. It starts in 1933 with former mayor David Dinkins tale and ends with an aspiring actress' hopes of a bright future in end of the first decade of the 2000s. The stories are fresh and youthful, full of promise and fear, excitement and humor. The editor's preface sums it up like this, "...one's arrival in this city [is] a memory as primal, potent and private (yet begging to be shared) as that other First Time."
While I won't share that awkward story with you, I will share this: I'm seven months deep in my life in New York, and I'm deeply in love. Fuck Virginia, this is the place that is made for lovers.
It is Sunday, 74 degrees in the last days of Summer, and I have been 31 for a week. I live in the East Village in a cozy little spot (that I pay far to much for), where I can sit on my fire escape and dream. I am listening to a mix of Motown greats like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke and the fabulous Aretha Franklin. I have had a beautiful weekend filled with sarcasm and sex, light and love, rain and rock stars. I have seen the second of five shows that I will see in eight days, 4 of which are nearly back to back. Come Friday I will be exhausted, with only a few precious hours to catch up on my sleep before I host friends for the weekend. I couldn't be happier. My heart is open, and my ears are too. They say to keep your eyes on the prize? Well, that prize is you.
