"No, you fucking asshole, I'm in the Empire State Building!"
It's some time around midnight. It's after I yelled at the men with their temperament eyebrows, but before a time that I figured out the weird feeling in my shoe was blood hemorrhaging from my toe. It's 20 degrees outside and I've found my safe haven within the walls of the Empire State Building. I had been lost, unable to find my friends and with a dying phone and numb fingers, I was able to slip into the lobby. I have wandered all of Manhattan but somehow never saw the building in full view, but as I'm yelling through the phone, I look at a small gilded replica of the landmark through tears, trying to decide if I should leave or not.
•
I must've been around 10 when I was mindlessly flipping through the pages of our encyclopaedia set. It was a blissful time before the Internet and I learned about various plants, animals, cultures, and far away places thanks to the J.G. Ferguson Publishing Company. I was dreamingly flipping through the alphabet when I reached N.
Nerd. Nevus cell. New. New South Wales. New York. New York City.
And there it was. In a black and white photo stood the Empire State Building, beacon in the spirit of New York in halftone glory. It's hard to say if this was the beginning of it all or not, but the memory burns bright enough to know that this was a big part of it. My dad would tell me stories about the city, bringing me home tokens from the MTA and a small bronze statue featuring the skyline of New York. All that exists of that now is the small Empire State Building that a broke off, collecting dust in the room of my childhood.
•
I'm desperately craning my neck to see out the window. I have Marcus Mumford's voice blaring in my ear as I impatiently gaze out the small airplane window. We must be near the ground but we've hit a cloud. I intently stare out in a monochrome landscape when, though the clouds, the magnificent skyline of New York appears. The island of Manhattan from the sky was merely made up of small toy buildings. I'm searching for my favorite landmark, but it's too much of a choatic jumble. We land in LaGuardia. Disoriented, I felt like the city skyline should be right in front of me, but all I see are other airline terminals. As we pull into the gate, reflected among blue and green tinted windows, she made her first appearance. The windows of the terminal mirrored the skyline from the opposite side of the plane, and spattered amongst the glass was the Empire State Building.
•
34th street Penn Station. Each night the E train would take me home. I lived on 29th and 8th. The people of the New York Arts Program would like you to think that this is Chelsea, but we came to know it as a dry husk off of midtown. You could get off at 33rd but I normally left through the 35th street exit. It was there that you could come of the stairs, and even before you reached street level, the glowing light of the Empire State Building would fill the staircase with light. It would normally be different colours, but I always like the white. It reminded me of old glamour photos of the NY skyline, with the Empire State Building beings it's glowing star. She was there, a beacon to always welcome me home. There's something to be said about living in a house infested with rats and cockroaches, but it never bothered me. For me, it was New York. Because only in New York you can live in a house infested with rats, but you always knew, and not for a wavering second did you ever believe that there was a better place outside of New York City.
•
I close my eyes as the train rocks back and forth. Emotionally and physically hungover, I head to the airport. I think back on a time, just 11 months earlier, of how much I loved New York; I walked around Brooklyn with the Empire State Building always in broad view. How I loved seeing that building, a vessel for my unshakeable love for New York. I didn't even have a chance to look at the building in my weekend, and all I can think of is going home. A weekend of getting hopelessly lost and unconnected with friends, jostled around by tourist families trying to get a photo of the Rockefeller Christmas Tree, and not once did I ever get the comfort of my favorite building to keep up my spirit. Get me out of that big city life and back to the safe confinements of normalcy.
I open my eyes to the surprise of daylight. We were heading above ground, and I crane my neck to see the skyline of New York, standing tall in the morning light- yet with a cloud of fog drifting right over the Empire State Building. I furrow my brow, but all I can do is smile and appreciate the unwavering temperament of the city. She's a bitch sometimes, but as I lean my head back with a grin on my face and close my eyes again knowing that New York, through thick and thin, really is the greatest city on Earth.