The New York City Journals, Part II: Protagonist Problem Child
Can we be heroes just for one day?
I was in the middle of writing a piece for London's favorite trash rag today—
And I am writing to you instead. I'm okay with that.
Change of pace is good sometimes unless done in saboteur vain. Don’t tell me you’re performing two tasks at once—at least not correctly. Anyway. I’m working on my condescending tone.
I procrastinate by pacing the hallway, dancing in the kitchen, twirling my hair, and engaging in other general tomfoolery, which is not up for discussion now because I have a deadline with the Brits. I invite your imagination to wander into my 2,000-square-foot house with too much stuff everywhere and look for my mind, will ya?
No, seriously, you should see my cupboard space. Over-the-counter cough medicine sits next to the powdered sugar and about a dozen shake-top cylinders of sprinkles, imperials, and confetti. To the left, pasta boxes make like mid-game Jenga, beside a five-year-old jar of tahini I will never use.
We all have a thing.
While researching the article I should write as soon as possible, I added a bit more decorative fire and brimstone to the Homeosepian hellscape that is my perception of this world.
Yes, sir, I am a headcase: Neuronightmare on broken pathways.
I am so fucking grateful I can share it, you curious human.
We are all mad here, there, everywhere.
But, this story—
This was MADhattan.
My New York City tenure ended and began the same way—in a cause-and-effect feedback loop, steady sprinting the hamster wheel marathon song that never ends until we trust-fall off the bitch! And, well, I am thrilled to report that, although I finally let go for dear life, the ‘ole noodle seems to have incurred some severe damage—damn that pre-frontal cortex, am I right?!
Cognition and chemicals are a mercurial and immiscible blend—like Sid & Nancy, oil and water, pineapples and pizza, laxatives and sleeping pills, me and the other girls strutting Lower Manhattan from 2005 to 2012—save two girlfriends whom I loved away sooner or later because shame and self-sabotage are funny like that, and not like ha-ha funny.
It’s a complex conundrum of cause and effect: brain chemistry and cognitive deficits, all irreversible and misunderstood.
These days, novel stimuli break down the door, coming in whether you like it or not. And they keep multiplying, expanding, pixelating—
Beam me up, Shirley Maclaine!
Addiction is merely attachment, and whether you're clinging to the apron strings of heroin (look, I finally learned my homophones) or doom-scrolling the days away, feeling sorry for a self you wish you hadn't molded this way, you and the whole lot of us roaming this earth are junkies for a dopamine fix—attention, recognition, likes, comments, a sip, a pinch, a toke, a shot, a pill, a boy, a girl, a song, a scenery.
A status quo hardens you. You tap it with your thumbs like an ape—priming and perfecting to an end that never comes because ones and zeroes trump abstract thinkers every time.
Wet the clay.
You must detach first from the thing—whatever your bailiwick.
Oh, you have a thing.
You have one.
Yes, you do.
The junkie phase, fortunately, was short-lived. I never did like a downer for too long. Now, speedballing— that was a different story. It's too rich for my taste, though. I was broke, on a fast track to being fired from my modeling agency—dropped like a hot brick. Like a fiery hot, relentlessly angry, confused, and indifferent brick—heavy with hurt, and syrupy margaritas, cupcakes from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, dumplings from Vanessa’s, and everything else that makes New York City livable for the flat broke and fully broken.
Shortly after arriving in the city that summer, I became close to a girl I met at Niagara, on the corner of Avenue A and 7th Street.
Becka was from Martha’s Vineyard and knew Summer Knight from childhood; she had just moved to NYC from Boston; she was loud, beautiful, cocky, and cool as they came.
I didn’t write much during June 2005's last leg. Perhaps I was busy trying to impress Becka, and maybe not during a ten-day blackout, but I can’t be sure.
She and her boyfriend Shaun, who lived with her in a ground-floor apartment on Suffolk Street between Stanton and Houston, were set to travel back to a suburb of Boston via the Lucky Star Bus line—if you know, you know—and they invited me to join them.
Sitting on the bus, I opened my journal, and suddenly, the sun came out— not only did the sky over the Williamsburg Bridge open into the tinted window of the rumbling bus, but the sun shone inside me again.
For the first time since I landed at JFK that spring with my suitcase and my inhibition, the sun rose in my soul; the clouds cleared; blue skies appeared; warmth radiated into my bones in a way I could not fully articulate with words.
I distinctly remember that I knew that at that moment, everything might be okay. Keyword: might. Maybe was enough, though. For a twenty-year-old, frightened girl trying, trying so very hard to be beautiful, cocky, and cool as they came, maybe was enough.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but we had a good time ALL the time.” –Becka Diamond