Newsletters From Manhattan — Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village, Part 1

I made myself go out today. I mean I made myself. I felt like I was covered in tar, in a pool of tar trying to stretch myself out onto a sidewalk made of tar.

Anxiety hit me in the gut as I was trying to leave the apartment again and I recognized the edges of panic. I thought back to a time I had a full blown panic attack and how it felt, mentally measuring how far away this one was. It sucked. I didn’t want to stay inside and freak out in my room while Mo and Eliot were out there yucking it up. I had a valium I had stolen and I broke it in half and then in half again and ate that tiny slice of the pie. It’s so weird how I have to take the maximum dosage of adderall to function but give me more than a sliver of a downer and I’ll pass the fuck out like Sleeping Beauty. Or barf. Or both.

So I slipped out the door leaving bits of tar on the door handle. I struggled to unstick my hands and drudged my feet along the tar painted hallway to the elevator doors. I was going to the Village. I had been trying to get myself there for days.

I had to reload my metrocard at the station because it read insufficient funds on my first swipe. The subway keeps eating my money. The very first time I rode the train I hopped the gates. I had swiped my card over and over and kept pushing the metal turnstyle at the wrong time so I kept being stuck on the wrong side. Luckily nobody saw me. There’s no How to Ride The Subway 101 and I didn’t have anyone to ask what the skinny was when I got here. I had finally figured out where to buy the flimsy card you use to pay the fare but apparently when you slide your card you sometimes have to slide it again. But not at all of the stations so don’t do it everytime or you’ll go broke quick. After you swipe it displays how much you just paid and what your balance is in front of the strip. You have to know where to look fast because the metal structure is very undistinguished and the readout is displayed in little green robot letters and numbers like on an old Apple II E computer. There’s no big screen or flashing light. The turnstyle doesn’t start moving to clue you in that your payment went through and welcome to the underground. And actually you can only push the inner metal rung if you want to rotate through to the other side. It’s not like the automatic doors at the airport, they don’t keep revolving. You get one chance and if you fuck it up you have to swipe your metro card again. It’s 2.75 each time. I used the vending machine once to reload it for 11 bucks and I lost that like the unlucky gambler in two train rides. At least I still had the fare left to take the second one home. Another way to lose a fortune is to accidentally take the express train to 148th street and you meant to get off at 110th. But the train didn’t stop. So you have to crawl out from one dark subway hole and down into another and swipe your metrocard again.

I got off the train at Union Station and promptly headed in the wrong direction then walked around the block so no one would notice I was actually lost. Eventually I made my way past Union Square and kept going towards the Hudson River. A lukewarm rainy mist began to fall. Then the valium kicked in. I was suddenly and somewhat pleasantly wading through sidewalks made of tar soup. I looked around and around wondering where all the parts of Greenwich Village were that were supposed to be so cool. There were a lot of trees, that’s always cool. A lot of color. Old red brownstone buildings. The big gay ice cream shop with a giant rainbow swirl cone in the window. Fancy lettering named all of the awnings. I wanted to find someplace to sit down. Someplace with caffeine. I passed a coffee shop whose entrance went down steps lower than the sidewalk to underneath the world. Joe’s something, maybe? I could hide in a dark corner booth and drink tea to clear my tar filled head. I already loved it. But for some reason I just kept walking. I didn’t have a whole lot of time and I thought I should dive deeper into the coolness of this historically famous neighborhood and I couldn’t tell if I was there yet. I passed thrift shops that I promised myself I’d go into. The creatively covid outdoor dining areas were hogging up the sidewalks on every block. I kept peering inside of the enclosed seating areas looking for just the right one I could hide in and maybe order a pastry and some tea and sit and gaze sleepily at everything in the small cozy space. But I just kept walking. At some point the buildings started getting taller and quit looking as cool. The trees thinned out and the streets turned modern. I decided to turn around and find Joe’s coffee shop hidden underground on my way back to the subway station. I wandered around trying to recognize the streets. Had it been on my left or on my right? At some point I knew I wasn’t going to find it in time to be able to properly hang out so I checked my transit app to see where to catch the train home. I wanted to go back to Union Square though. I could sit on a bench in the big concrete space for a while and stare at the pigeons. Even though the valium was starting to wear off I walked right past it of course and had to turn around and retrace my steps. Now the square was filled with a giant farmers market. Yay at least I finally found something cool today.

I don’t even wanna go into how fucking lost I got as I left, ripping chunks off of my fresh baguette and stuffing them in my mouth, walking up and down the longest blocks I’ve ever walked. A million steps in wrong directions, trying to find my way to the subway train that would take me home.

…….continued