thank you new york city
Thank you to New York City for allowing me to blossom into my queerness, which is what I will always love and appreciate you for. My initial judgments of those more femme and queer than me, which were really jealousy disguised as disgust, set free so I could be who I yearned to be and who I will continue to become. Thank you to NYC for showing me that I could wear short shorts and traipse down the street, that every street was a catwalk if I wanted it to be.
Thank you to Nick and Kerrie and Irene for welcoming me to New York and being my first new co-workers and friends. Thank you for supporting me without judgment in the terrible mistakes I made and for seeing beyond my youth and immaturity to advocate for me. Thank you for giving me my start in working directly with queer young people, setting in motion who I am today.
Thank you to Sistah Bitch, Matt. Thank you for being my first New York City roommate. Thank you for many nights watching TV, helping make our apartment a home, and for your patience with me and my antics. Thank you for bearing witness to the insane homophobic and sexual harassment of our super. I am sorry I failed you in so many ways and that I could not be more of the friend and support you needed.
Thank you to John and Courtney and Elizabeth and Casey for providing me with friendship and my first truly magical New York memories and family. Thank you for giving me a place to crash on Leonard Street, for all the nights at Metropolitan and lord knows where else, and for tolerating my antics.
Thank you to Jack, my first New York crush and a one night stand that lit a spark in my imagination of what my life and what love could be like for me outside of North Carolina. Thank you for introducing me to Roisin Murphy though I was not ready at the time. Thank you for trying to keep me around even though I didn't know how to do that.
Thank you to Javier, my wild fling in the height of my delusion. I was not ready for reality, and neither were you. Thanks for giving me a detour into a fabulous life, for the fun and frivolity we shared, and the salacious memories.
Thank you Andrew for giving me my first real gay friends outside of North Carolina. Thank you for having boundaries with someone who had none at the time. Thank you for your generosity, your patience, for introducing me to your friends and giving me the nights out dancing without any cares in the world. When I look back on my time in New York, you are a central part of it. I did not appreciate you enough when you were my friend and I did not know how to keep our friendship going after I got sober, but that's not your fault. I am sorry that I was not the friend I should have been to you, and I will never ever forget the kindness, fun, and respect you gave me even when I was the biggest mess on earth.
Thank you Kelli for being there for me, poking and prodding me constantly, for being fiercely strong and demanding more from where we worked. You showed me how important it was to be unrelenting in your advocacy for the people you were tasked with serving. You gave me intense love and support when I was in the highs of my addictions. I am sorry that my addiction hurt you. Thank you for leaving my life and not trying to reconnect when our time was done. I learned so much about what was acceptable and not acceptable in my relationships, both in how I treated others and how you treated me.
Thank you Emily and Meagan and Steve for your commitment to fun, adventure and travel. Thank you for giving me a place to stay when I had no home, for taking me on trips both psychedelic and grounded to the earth. Thank you for not giving up on me in New Orleans. Thank you for letting me go and leaving my life when our time was done.
Thank you to Jason for the generosity, being a house mother, being one of the really nicest and most welcoming people I met in New York City. I am sorry that I didn't know how to keep a friendship going after I got sober. You welcomed me into your group, you looked out for me, you were a fantastic friend to me. Thank you for being unapologetic about your fabulousness, femininity and queerness. It showed me that people will make assumptions about us and that those people are not the ones for us.
Thank you Kassie for loving me and being my friend as I came into my own as a teacher, thrown into the deep end thanks to New York City Teaching Fellows and for all your curiosity, open-mindedness about my life and experiences, and for your vulnerability. Thank you for being fully in touch with your emotions and helping me know and feel certain that our emotions and sensitivity are strengths and not weaknesses.
Thank you to Lindsay and Tom and Alex for welcoming me into your friend group through Diego with open arms, for staying the course with me and loving me as I changed and shed old habits. Thank you for staying my friend through my recovery and for becoming my chosen family. Thank you for your endless generosity, for your commitment to Diego and I, for the amazing gifts you gave, for dancing at Callbox Lounge and everywhere else, for concerts, for dinners, for sharing all of yourselves with us.
Alex, thank you for showing me Barnaby and accepting that his new name would be Tito.
Thank you to my visitors from other places - Mike, Kyle, Chance, Sarah, Stephen, Heather - for being vital to the memories I created in New York. It was through you that I created lasting memories in New York with people I loved from before my life there, and it's through you that those memories will remain.
Thank you to the Patricia Field store (RIP), to Agave for bottomless brunch, to the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop (my mom's favorite), to Koko Ramen, to Spectrum bar where Diego and I had our first date, to Bartini, to Berlin, to Nowhere Bar, to the Cock, to Eastern Bloc, to Metropolitan and your cookouts and dance parties, to Clubber Down Disco in the Chelsea Hotel, to Webster Hall and Radio City Music Hall and the Music Hall of Williamsburg. No thank you to Terminal 5, you suck. Thank you to nights dancing at Mondo NYC, the Callbox Lounge, to Fire Island Cherry Grove ONLY (none for you the Pines, even though Prab*l Gurung gave me his number at the meat market). Thank you to all the places I ventured into but forgot because hello, I was an active alcoholic!
Thank you to BAM and to Broadway, where I saw trash like Anastasia: The Musical (thanks Mom!) but also Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell!), Angels in America (...ugh, Andrew Garfield), Stonewall: The Opera (the Brick!), the Waverly Gallery (Elaine May!), A Doll's House (Diane Lane!), RENT (Scary Spice!), and too many more to name but I'll always remember because I saved the Playbills.
Thank you to the Keith Haring artwork everywhere, to the museums and galleries where I was transformed and touched by artists like Tilda Swinton sleeping in a box at the MoMA, Marina Abramovic, Peter Hujar, Donna Gottschalk, Jean Paul Gaultier, Mike Kelley, Kehinde Wiley, Vincent Van Gogh, Juno Calypso, Alice Neel, Kara Walker at the Domino Factory, Kerry James Marshall, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Edvard Munch, Chunky Move at the Joyce Theater, Alex da Corte, Alexander McQueen, Diane Arbus, Charles James, Georgia O'Keefe, Marilyn Minter, Stephen Varble, to the drag queens and performers who slayed us (Charlene Incarnate!) and to all the unknown artists who made the city beautiful with the works that adorned the walls, subways, and random nooks and crannies.
Thank you to Videology for RuPaul's Drag Race viewing parties where I watched not only the show but a handsome mustached young man who would eventually become the love of my life, the kind of love I dreamed about but couldn't even imagine when I was just a little queer boy in Kernersville, North Carolina making his first XY.com profile. Thank you to that young man, Diego, for loving me through my antics (sensing a trend here?), for holding me accountable for my actions, for wanting more for me than a life of cycles and patterns and addictions and for sticking around to see what that life would be like. Thank you for being my partner to do activities with, to explore the city with once I was able to be present in it, for joining me on this ride called life.
Thank you to the man on the bicycle who rode past us dining at Bubby's on one of our final meals who yelled frantically "NEW YORK CITY BITCHES!!!"
Thank you for chewing me up and spitting me out, New York City. You did a great job. I did a great job. I'm proud to have known you the way that I did. Bye bye now.