The City resonated with me in a way I felt deep my fucking bones. It was October of 1999. The feel of cool, crisp air in my nose and the memory of the brilliant white sunshine starkly contrasted with the long, dark shadows of the New York City autumn fixed themselves seemingly in both body and soul. This was before the everything changed. Before 19 bored kids cum jihadists broke the world in an craven act that was seemingly done for the lulz and ultimately led to another bored kid killing a half-million people.
I was there with my girlfriend who was interviewing for grad school internships. And things just felt really perfect for me with both her and the City. We made it through Y2K and she left for The City shortly thereafter. I drove a bunch of her stuff up to her from Bloomington that week. She was getting settled in a hostel, but the last night I was there, we stayed in a hotel overlooking the Hudson. We were about 20 stories up, and there was a balcony, almost a deck, with a small table with a green umbrella and chairs. We had sex and she drifted off to sleep. Letterman was on. I walked naked out onto the balcony and looked out over the river from midtown at what I later would find out was Hoboken. I turned to look back at her, naked in bed, illuminated by the TV, and I knew somehow that was the last time. The moment froze. I felt this tremendous sense of future loss that seemed both premature and disproportionate.
I leaned against the railing and took a swig out of a bottle. I’ve always had trouble staying in the moment. My mind doesn’t work that way. This was one of the rare times I did. The lights of New Jersey reflecting on the shimmering glass of the river, the bitter taste of the beer, the freezing air shrinking my balls, and an empty, fearful sense that I’d never be here again.
I kissed her as she got into a cab the following morning with the same feeling, and headed to meet up with my best friend who was staying in the Westside YMCA. I was headed home to Indiana. I dropped him in Baltimore and drove the 10 hours with an inchoate plan to wrap up what I was doing and move to the City be with her, and I think more than that, to be with the City. I was drinking quite a bit at the time, and it just got worse after I got back to Bloomington without her. I was really fucked up in my head at the time and feeling this existential loneliness, both like some piece of me had been taken away, and that a new hole had been opened in my soul.
I went to a townie bar in Bloomington, got fucked up, and picked up a girl if not the same night I got home, the next night. I don’t know what I was thinking. I think I felt invalidated and I just needed something to make me feel whole. Or maybe I’m just an invariant manwhore and that’s what whores do. It’s probably both, really. But, after that, I went into a flat spin of alcohol and self-loathing. I think I started my first real bender. I drank heavily. Every night. And I’d drink even more on weekends. On the weekends I’d try to wait until noon, but I’d basically drink from 5 PM on Friday until I passed out on Sunday. I was starting to get the shakes at work, and it was a race between quitting time and their onset so that I could get a drink. At some point my friend Tom said, “if you want to kill yourself, I’ll bring you a pistol. But, I’m not going to watch this.”
By early spring, I was a wreck. Tom finally pulled me out of it by asking, no, demanding that I go help him with a side gig. I think he would have dragged me out of my apartment if I wouldn’t have gone voluntarily. I was so miserable doing that work. I was one of the few people in town who could do it, but that wasn’t why I was there. He was literally trying to save my life. I couldn’t think straight and I was so shaky that I could barely type. But, I made it through and managed to quit drinking for a little while.
My girlfriend and I had this ambiguous plan for me to join her in New York City. But, my job had grown out of a project that I’d gotten involved in 6 years earlier. I was only 27. It was literally my life’s work, and I had a serious emotional attachment to it. We were in the middle of being acquired, and I figured that I needed a few months to wrap up my role, and find some closure with it. She said that I was never going to leave Indiana, and she refused to move back to a state where basketball is a religion. The guilt from the girl I’d picked up at the bar was eating at me. I’d convinced myself I’d contracted an STD and that’s why I had to come clean with her about it. I was supposed to visit for Valentines Day, and didn’t. I sent flowers. They arrived twice. The following month I told her what I’d done. The drinking that, even at the level before the bender, had bothered her had made her tired, and that was the final straw. I’d expected crying or yelling or something when I told her over the phone. But, all she said was, “that’s it. I’m done.”