I have a handful of “first New York” memories. In one (the true first, I suppose), I’m in maybe ninth grade, sporting braces and what I must say was a pretty fly windbreaker, looking down from the World Trade Center. In another, I’m arriving at Fordham for freshman orientation, toting a carefully curated collection of posters and knickknacks into my dorm room.
But it’s really the last memory, the last first if you will, that I consider my real introduction to the city.
It was a dark a stormy night a nice May afternoon, shortly before college graduation, and my soon-to-be-roommate Lou and I had just driven to our new apartment in Brooklyn (Bed-Stuy, to be exact) from my mom’s house in Pennsylvania, bringing back both the contents of my bedroom and a selection of other items my mother was willing to part with (lamps, a toaster, her entire silverware set.) We parked the U-Haul in front of 904 Greene Ave.—a pleasant brownstone that for two years afforded me the ability to say I lived off of Malcolm X Boulevard—and set about unloading the truck so we could return it.
After piling all of my worldly possessions on the sidewalk, Lou and I realized that we were in a bit of a pickle. The U-Haul needed to be returned within the next half hour, and we both needed to be there (I can’t remember the logistics of this, but it was something about the truck being in his name, but me being the only one with a driver’s license.) So we did what any logical person would do: asked the kindly older gentleman sitting on the stoop next door to watch our stuff while we disappeared for the better part of a half hour.
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