The first summer I lived in New York, I kept falling sickeningly in love. Everything else was terrible. I was 22, it was a really hot summer and I had no air conditioning, the trains kept breaking. There was a trash fire on the 2 train. I got stuck on the Q train between DeKalb and the bridge for nearly 45 minutes. I thought the nuclear strike had come.
I was living off the money I had saved au pairing in Moscow and off of occasional odd jobs. I had nowhere to be and nothing to do until the start of my graduate school program in August. I was subletting a tiny room from a sullen photo assistant who had gone to Bennington with my sister and who never spoke to me. He would sit on the couch and read Karl Ove in his spare time.
I couldn’t figure out how to dress and my body felt all out of joint. I had terrible jaw pain. I had been in Europe for five years and New York felt grimy and unfamiliar. My hair was all one length and I wore this one sundress I had bought the year before every sin…