JFK was a bright hallway after a dim flight. I came through customs with one suitcase and a laptop bag. The officer asked what I was here for. I said to work. He asked at what. I said I was still figuring that out. He stamped the passport anyway.
I took the AirTrain, then the A, then the 1, then walked fifteen blocks in the wrong direction trying to find the sublet. The cold wasn't the cold I grew up with. It was drier. It tightened the skin on my face in a specific way. I remember standing on the corner of 14th and 8th with my hands buried in my coat pockets looking up at nothing.
Nobody in New York looks up. I haven't seen a New Yorker look up once since I arrived. They are all doing something. Walking somewhere. Already late.
The sublet was a room with a mattress on the floor and a single window that looked at another window. The first night I couldn't sleep because the heating clanked like someone was hammering. It was a relief. It meant the building was alive, and as long as the building was alive, I was in New York.
I had come here to become someone. The first morning I wasn't anyone yet. I lay on the mattress and listened to the pipes and thought: OK. Start.
The First Four Months
What nobody tells you about starting from zero in New York City.
The Math of Rent
$1,850 on the first. I can count the hours from here. This is what the hustle actually looks like — arithmetic under fluorescent light.
Times Square at 3 AM
People think Times Square empties at night. It doesn't. It molts. I've come to love the silence it has under all that light.