It was a good day and that feels important. It was all raw nerve endings and pulsing, and that’s what I wanted to be. It was reading The Basketball Diaries as an adolescent that made the City feel real, necessary, and urgent, however. My parents were from the city, The Bronx, my grandmother lived in Queens, there was Broadway and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Knicks and Yankees. I would have lived in New York City at some point no matter what. New York City was still dirty and angry though in the ’90s, and that was part of the allure. Though to say that requires acknowledging how poorly people of color were treated, stop and frisk, broken windows, the constant neglect of the underserved, homeless individuals sleeping in parks, HIV/AIDS still largely ignored, the crack epidemic, no conversation about #metoo or anything like it, the stink around the handling of the Central Park Five still redolent in the air. Maybe given all of the death of New York City pieces lately, the ’90s were actually the last great time to live there? The 1970s were something, Warhol and the Ramones, and I suppose the 1980s too, with Haring and Basquiat, though maybe every era before was the greatest as well, depending on your experiences, proclivities, and privilege. It was the early 1990s and not the greatest time to live in New York City. Plans for dinner at Benny’s Burritos in the East Village and live music at some long-forgotten jazz club we had somehow never quite made it to loomed. I’ll soon run despite the rain.įirst though, I sit down to read about I May Destroy You and trauma. Then we drank, played cards, and went to bed at a decent time. My wife and I watched a movie after work the night before, Class Action Park, it was brutal and surreal, like most everything now. Another son is starting high school at home and in his room, attending Zoom classes all-day, somehow making friends, I hope. I have a son who started college and is on lockdown, fighting COVID and his own fears around this next phase of his life. My father has been dead for 20 years this fall. There is a splash of cinnamon on top to juice my metabolism, already clumpy and molded to the ice cubes and the side of the cup. I’m drinking my first cup of coffee of the day, one hour after getting out of bed to ensure I’m awake before the caffeine hits my brain. I’m reading about Michaela Coel, I May Destroy You, and creating one’s own fictions. I awoke to a message from an old friend who can only briefly visit with his dying mother because of the pandemic. Ben Tanzer reflects on a traumatic experience brought to the forefront recently after watching Michaela Coel’s series I May Destroy You.
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