The Ten Most Memorable Events of My Twenties

3. My New York City Life Begins
Fall 2000
Age: 26

I was born in Manhattan, and I grew up about half an hour outside the city. My parents took me there all the time. But I never really explored it much on my own. Then, when I was 14, we moved to Tokyo, and after finishing high school there, I wound up spending most of the next eight years in Virginia. I’d occasionally see Broadway matines by myself during breaks from college and law school, but when I did, I rarely ventured outside midtown.

When I graduated from law school in 1999 at age 25, my plan was to get a job in Manhattan and move there. But things took a strange turn, and I wound up working and living in central New Jersey for almost a year instead. I was perhaps a 75-minute train ride from Manhattan, which meant that I could only visit the city on weekends. And I didn’t even go every weekend, so New York remained on the periphery of my boring life — some distant Emerald City that was close enough to entice me but too far away to be convenient.

And then in May 2000, I received a call from the New Jersey court system, to which I’d sent my resumé the previous August. I’d never heard from them, and I’d completely forgotten about it. But then out of the blue they called with to interview for a clerkship up in Newark. I interviewed and I got the clerkship, which was to start in August 2000. I was thrilled — I could finally move back up to New York again. For the clerkship, I had to remain a New Jersey resident, but I’d heard that parts of Jersey City had become popular, and it was right across the Hudson from Manhattan, so it seemed like a good place to live.

I didn’t actually get to move into my first apartment there until October 30, but my life began to change once I began working in Newark. From Newark it was worlds easier to get to Manhattan on a weeknight. In September I attended my first Twentysomething meeting and promptly made a good friend.

Once I moved to Jersey City, things got even easier. I could now take spontaneous trips across the river via the 24-hour PATH, so I was in Manhattan all the time, sometimes even more than once a day; I never had to worry about catching a “last train” home; I finally figured out the subway system. I became familiar with more and more neighborhoods. I started going out, going on dates, making new friends, meeting lots of people. I even got myself a therapist in the Village.

My new Twentysomething friend told me I should keep a journal of my “first year in New York,” but that statement puzzled me. It wasn’t my first year in New York. Was it? Hadn’t I grown up around here? Hadn’t I always enjoyed feeling so cultured and so superior to my Virginia friends because of where I was from?

But perhaps I hadn’t been as familiar with the city as I’d thought. Sure, I’d always known the theater district, and I’d gone into the city with my parents all the time. But it had never really been my city. And yet my feelings of superiority had always kept me from admitting that I didn’t know New York as well I’d thought. It had kept me from exploring New York, from seeing it as a newcomer. I was afraid I’d look like a tourist.

But when my friend referred to my “first year in New York,” I realized he was right. This really was, in a way, my first year in New York. (Even if I technically lived in Jersey City.)

I love New York. I love it. It’s where I was born, it’s where my parents grew up, it’s where my grandparents lived. I love the theater, the restaurants, the parks, the diversity, the vitality, the spontaneity of the streets, the chaos and convenience, the skyscrapers and the subway, the lack of history and the history hidden in plain sight, the extreme gayness and the straightness and the sexual confusion, the unwavering avenues that let you see Times Square and Central Park from 30 blocks away, the disorienting patchwork quilt of streets in the Village.

I love New York. It’s my city. I’ve learned so much here. And there’s so much more to learn — about the city, and about myself. I hope it never stops.

I can’t imagine living anywhere else. It’s good to be home.