An Affair with the City

You had just turned thirteen the first time you laid eyes on New York city and it was an immediate infatuation. You had never seen such beauty as that of its be-speckled dusk skyline from the view of your airplane window as it descended into the concrete jungle. There was a twisting in your stomach as your smile reached from ear to ear just thinking about the adventures ahead. Somehow the long and tiring journey spent from Manila to Los Angeles and finally to New York was all worth it and meant close to nothing if you could only spend a minute in this city. Yes, you were quite infatuated. However, truly falling in love with New York happens slowly at first, and then all at once.

Abruptly after you stepped out of John F. Kennedy airport, you had begun to realize that the city of lights you only watched from above was now beneath your feet, above you, surrounding you. Initially, you were afraid of the proud swarm of locals dressed from head to toe in monochrome and who had no time to stop and apologize if they set you off step or startled you with their booming voices. You are from the city but not the city, and simply being in the Big Apple made you feel smaller than ever before underneath the shade of hundred-storey buildings and in-between lengthy blocks that seemed to never end. And despite its chopsuey of races you felt almost alien amidst the sea of diverse culture. You felt as though you stuck out like a sore thumb; you were just not chic, confident or comfortable enough to survive in this dynamic city. It was all too much to handle. You should have hated it here, you really should have, with its loud and unforgiving nature. But you had a huge crush on the place so you could never seem to get enough of it. After all, people are meanest to the one they love most. Which lead you to believe that soon enough, New York may like you back. Patience, you told yourself.

Around two weeks in, you'd begun to adjust to one another, you and the city of dreams. New York began to open its heart and take you in deeper through all the little things it revealed to you. The first way it started etching itself into your heart was, of course, through your stomach. It took you through its vast and glorious Central Park with such greenery you never thought could thrive in the center of a great metropolis. Here was where you took your first and last bite of a Central Park hotdog, which was admittedly altogether overpriced and underwhelming. But hey, it was novelty enough that you could complain about it. Besides, you fed the bread to the pigeons and decided that must be the intended purpose anyway. Later, you stumbled upon the most glorious one-dollar pizza just around the corner and the bad first impression is forgotten. In the course of your stay, it took you through several other dining experiences like tasting black sesame ice cream from the famous hole in the wall ice creamery, the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Next, it took you to Jamaica where you ate your first real Jamaican patty, to Korea Way for some delicious grilled pork belly and to Miss Saigon for the best pho noodle soup you'd ever had; for which you are most grateful for when years later you find out that the restaurant no longer exists. Of course, it also gave you a taste of home when you experienced a legitimate New York bagel - tough, stout and brimming with rich cream cheese. With that, New York had crept further into your heart, right through your happy belly.

Nearly a month after your arrival, as you routinely ate your cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese while looking out at gray Spring mornings from your window, you started to realize that you were beginning to really get comfortable here. The people no longer frightened you as they once did. And you did meet quite the eccentric set of people. There was the apocalyptic prophet, all covered in news clippings and telling of an impending doom, the two little boys selling candy aboard the R train around 32nd street, there was even a Filipino priest. He was quite the bored old man, and he took you and your mother out to dinners at peculiar restaurants like a steakhouse atop a grocery just to discuss literature with you. It was not hard to love its people - from the subway dance performers, lonely musicians and street artists to NYU students lounging about Union Square. And it was not hard to hate them as well, from the prissy private school girls, and "too cool for you" teenagers to the grumpy old whinos lurking about. You could tell that New York had at least a few hundred more handfuls of characters for you to meet, the nearly naked cowboy for one, but you'd grown accustomed at that point.

You had even begun to turn into one as you picked up their rushed, purposeful manner of speech, their grayscale fashion, their brisk movements. You had started to adapt to the clockwork. You were no longer such a strange thing wandering about. You were no longer lost as you finally made sense of the subway map in your hands that you had initially seen as foreign jargon. You had at least evolved to simply wandering about - not that anyone truly minded for everyone was busy chasing their own dreams in this city. You were just happy enough to be running around it; and that you did. This was also when your feelings started to grow for the brusque yet charming city. You took long walks along stretches of downtown Manhattan. You ventured into obscure book shops and couture dress shops. You shopped at the larger-than-life department store sales and you went to art galleries along 44th and your first short film showing. You fell deeper for this city as it revealed its emotion, its person to you. And it was then that you knew that New York had really begun to like you back.

The adventures that ensued between the both of you became more bold as you lost all traces of fear. You sat in the middle of Time Square to revel at the lights and the sights, rode train number 7 that gave you a sky view above Queens' spray-painted buildings, snuck into an Atlantic City casino just to have a cone of Ben and Jerry's, saw the people of the streets diminish into ants from the top of the Empire State building, and even took a nine-hour car ride all the way out to Buffalo to see the great Niagara Falls in all of its misty and deep glory. You were having the time of your life and knew that nothing could ever compare to the things you had experienced, the person you had become in the last month and a half.

There came the point when you felt that you would never want to leave the wondrous city of tough character and great passion. Something had changed in you. Though, you could not define the exact moment or thing that triggered it, it was then you knew for certain that you were, and would continue to be, in love with New York for the rest of your life. Eventually, as reality would have it, the map you grasped in your hands wore at the joints and the can of cream cheese in your fridge depleted as the days passed. Your adventure would soon come to an end. A temporary end, you knew. For how could you ever truly leave New York if it never left you? You knew then that aside from being head-over-heels for the city, this fling you had been having was an awfully addictive sort of affair.

You come back almost every year and each time there is still something new for you. And though Time Square will never sparkle as bright, the blocks never stretch out as far, the need to consume cream cheese and bagels never seem as urgent, it's love. And New York would change you each time, little things at a time. You witness ground zero's memorial before & after. And you still keep the first subway map you ever had, despite its handwritten routes being inaccurate and now outdated but it's nostalgic. You come to humor the idea that this strange city is your own somehow and then again it is not. That is the beauty of this city, it lends you pieces of itself but never everything so it always keeps you guessing, it keeps you falling in love with it slowly and then all at once, over and again.

You were thirteen when you first fell in love with New York city, and you will always love this maddening city of dreams.