All cities have their reputations, and in New York, the hardness of living is legend. When it comes to relocating, this is one of a few places that people move to with a caveat for failure already in hand – arriving on spec, ready to leave after three months or a year if they don’t “make it” here, acknowledging before they even cross the city limits that this is a uniquely unforgiving place for missteps. Simply put, just being here is a challenge, and not least among the weirdnesses of life in the city is this: You’re a face in the crowd, you’re one in a sea of millions, and you may sometimes be lonely… but you’re never, ever alone.
Which, to be perfectly blunt, really sucks.
Solitude is restorative; when it’s unavailable, after awhile, the craving for it reaches a fever pitch. I step out the door and see people, always and everywhere, people, flesh-colored blobs that muck up the horizon with their ambling movements and irritate me just by virtue of being there. I dream of alone-ness, imagining myself as a single black speck of personhood in a vast, bare landscape of city streets. I walk out at odd hours of the night and feel a rush of near-incapacitating irritation when I see a guy – one stupid guy — walking his dog. Damn him. I sit in my apartment and watch “I Am Legend”, marveling at the spectacle of a New York without people, and think, That looks sort of nice.
Except for the zombies.
And then one night, emboldened and slightly drunk by that last, ill-advised beer, I make an impromptu decision to walk home from the Lower East Side and find myself on the Williamsburg Bridge… freezing, but completely, utterly, deliciously alone.
I have company, at first. A lighted sign at the entrance to the footbridge alerts cyclists to the risks of crossing here, as they whiz past the blustery backdrop of the city’s nighttime skyline. One passes me just as I enter, heavy chain lock slung low on his hips, and disappears up the incline. The wind over the East River is brutal, buffeting me from all sides as I continue the trek uphill. The orange lights that illuminate the length of the bridge are dull and sick compared to the bright flashes from below; the path runs high above motor traffic, just above the whoosh of hurried cars and the rumble of the crossing subway, where commuters press their faces against the glass and look out at the glittering crown of the Chrysler Building to the north.
The ground levels off after half a mile; for those on bikes, this is where you stop puffing and pick your head up to see the view. On foot, it barely registers. But there is something here – an opening in the fence that lines the bridge, a narrow walkway that extends over the rush of traffic, a doorway in the gray stone abutment and an access staircase down to the road below. There’s a steel gate here, with a heavy lock that keeps any ordinary person from gaining access to the walkway.
Except that tonight, the lock is open.
I step through, into the unprotected air, and the rush of the wind hits me at full force. Below, the traffic passes in a morse-code blaze of long flashes, white and red, headlights and taillights. A truck roars by, and the vibration beneath my feet is enough to rattle my teeth.
Which is when I look up, and I realize: I’m the only one here.
It only lasts a moment.
But ahhhh.
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