I remember laying awake the first night that I was crashing at my uncle’s penthouse in lower Manhattan. I couldn’t sleep, I was too excited. My cousin Wigberto (Wiggs for short) and I were in my other cousin Gaspar’s old room. (Bare with me, I have a lot of cousins, a fraction of whom will be mentioned in this piece) The walls were white washed with posters of Mos Def, Beastie Boys and, what I didn’t know at the time, a marijuana leaf. Wiggs was snoring, something I’ve never been able to sleep through—nasal noise pollution, the fan in the living room was still on, Gaspar must have been hot or forgot to turn it off, and despite the late hour, the streets outside were alive with more noise pollution. The cool air from the open window filled the flat with a sweet scent, somehow Tia Paula’s doing.
My bed was located next to the window from which I could clearly see the rooftops of the buildings across the street and out onto the dark street below. Gaspar’s bedroom window has a view of Robert De Niro’s apartment, which has a beautiful lush garden on his rooftop patio where vines spill over the edge. I couldn’t help but imagine there was a jungle inside what I thought to be a green house that was trying to escape like too much water being poured into a box.
De Niro’s jungle was on the left hand side of the view the window painted. The middle and centerpiece was occupied by a dirty, grungy water tower that was supported by lanky steel pillars. It wasn’t very large, I remember the size it came through the window was no larger than my head, which may speak more of the distance to which we were separated than the actual size, but I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been close enough to a water tower to know how big they are.
New York has a lot of light pollution, even at 3am. None of the apartments that I could see had lights turned on but from behind the water tower, it looked like the sun was rising. Never have I seen anything like it since, not even real sun rises. The longer I stared at the spectacle in front of me—the jungle rooftop, the dark brick buildings, the grungy water tower being illuminated from behind like a delirious dream of a savior descending from heaven—the more I could feel the city sucking me into itself. Embracing me with its hot, sticky heat, its sweet aroma of Tia’s Glade Plug-in, its lingering taste of car exhaust, its clean floors and dirty room corners, its old modern, its millions of children, all begging me to relax and accept the environment I suddenly found myself in.
It’s worth mentioning that I have germ issues, Krystal says I’m a germaphobe, but, “you have very specific stipulations to your condition.” In New York, I have no germ issues. I don’t care if I touch the subway station walls, I don’t care if I eat a hot dog from a street vendor; just short of licking a telephone pole, I’m fine. I believe this to be because I spent my first night away from my parents in the city with that water tower, I felt so comfortable sitting, observing, and pondering it that nothing fazes me in the big apple.
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Excerpt from my writing portfolio. Enjoy
