Writing about New York for The New Yorker!

Today, I am publishing a new essay with The New Yorker

How do you do, fellow kids?

Today, I am publishing a new essay with The New Yorker. It never gets old seeing my words in The New Yorker’s signature font, but this one feels extra special because it is also about New York, and my complex relationship to the city that raised me.

A while ago, I pitched Mr. David Remnick on the idea of revisiting Joan Didion’s evergreen essay on leaving NYC, Goodbye To All That. I am hardly the first writer to do so, but certain literary cliches exist for a reason- and one of the aspects of Didion’s original essay that makes it so impossible not to return to is that she created an irresistible template for reflection. It’s the essay equivalent of a folk song that sounds brand new whenever it’s covered by someone who was deeply affected by it (I love those.)

I was oddly self-conscious (something I don’t usually feel when writing, but arguably should feel more often) after completing the essay, realizing just how many complaints I had about New York, how many nausea inducing memories, how many of my signature city stories read as gripes. What I don’t say in the essay, but have realized since (as I’m spending the summer in the city and getting to know it once again) is that this collection of complaints, phobias and hyper-fixations are actually insanely cozy to me, the way one might feel about spending a snowy Thanksgiving trapped inside as your relatives needle at you, or a Friday night on the couch with the love of your life who won’t stop burping. While the childhood fears that the city stirred were incredibly, painfully real for me at the time, they now feel benign, lovely even, because they remind me of something I can never have again: that childhood. I was the wrong kid for New York, but it’s where I was a kid. I now ache with missing that version of New York, that iteration of our family, and at least once a month I dream that I’ve found my way back into our family’s loft at 547 Broadway- where we lived long before the building had its certificate of occupancy, much less an Arcteryx store- and I lay down for a long dusky nap. In the dream, I thrill at the fact of being home alone without my parents. The moment I fall asleep in the dream is always the moment I wake up. My brother recently told me he has a very similar reoccuring dream, only in his he has elaborate logistical issues picking up the keys from the guys at the stationary store that once occupied the ground floor.

I am back in New York for my first summer since 2017, the year that Girls went off the air. We always shot the show during the summer (it’s why Hannah could get away with so many fucking rompers) and so I had six incredible seasons feeling like the streets opened to us, surrounded by pals, making something infused with the joyful possibility that comes with everyone revealing their knees and toes. I didn’t really know how to live here anymore once that was done (perhaps I’d forgotten how to live at all, but that’s for a different essay.)

I’m shooting here again this summer. A lot of those pals are back around me, and I’m quickly making some new ones. In the meantime, I’ve been sampling from all my old favorite restaurants to make sure they’re still as good as I remembered, like a very unfocused quality control officer (hey Lovely Day, you passed my test!) I’ve gotten into wearing these cotton dresses from HVN that remind me of this part in Lolita where Humbert goes to visit our heroine and she’s a barefoot housewife- only I wear them with orthopedic sneakers and my CVS compression socks, cuz a girl’s gotta keep her blood pressure UP to stay vigilant on these streets. I am making lists of places to visit, from The Cloisters (where I first became an anglophile) to Gilgo Beach (I am planning to go with Alissa to bring my forever favorite dyed bodega flowers to honor the women who were killed there.)

It turns out, I’m a much better visitor than I was resident.

But someone wise once said- you can take the girl out of the city, but she’ll always be a CITY GIRL…

xxL