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[3.11.06] [Stevens]
NEW YORK I'M LEAVING YOU
"I remember the all night dancing, the sex in the bathrooms and backs of taxi cabs speeding to Williamsburg in the days when you had to bribe the drivers to take you there; the sex on West Broadway in the front seat of my truck on a saturday night, the windows fogged and freezing over as the people walked by and cheered. Thank you for that."
By Tim Hall
New York I'm leaving you.
New York it's not working out between us.
New York we don't talk like we used to.
New York I think it's time we started seeing other people.
Thanks for all the beer, New York.
Thanks for Rockefeller Center and the New York Mets.
Thanks for all those weekend summer empty streets sweating west village ghost town fingersnapping and singing my own songs down Bleecker, Washington Square, Great Jones, St. Mark's Place.
New York we never go anywhere any more.
New York you always played hard to get but this is ridiculous.
New York there's a big hole where my heart used to be.
New York your children walk the streets like zombies.
New York what have you done for me lately?
New York are you trying to hypnotize me for your zombie masses, yearning to feel something?
New York I don't want to be another grey gargoyle in your cemetery.
Who does the rent control, New York?
New York there are too many people kissing your ass.
Go fuck yourself, New York.
New York where would you be these days without Brooklyn?
New York I haven't had an argument about poetry in 15 years.
Sometimes I think I know you better than I know myself, New York.
New York I never really found you -- not the way Warhol found you, or Lou Reed found you... Not the way Ginsberg and Burroughs, Blondie and David Johansen found you. Not the way Pollock found you. Not the way Seymour Krim and O. Henry found you. Not the way Melville, Whitman and Wharton found you. Not the way McInerney and Ellis found you.
New York was it something I said?
New York I feel like I've missed you every day I've been here.
New York you're like a bus terminal in my mind, but with no ticket windows or destination signs, and I'm walking around all day, looking for the men's room.
New York I've been drunk for much of the past 20 years and that hasn't been your fault.
New York I haven't made too many friends here and that's only partly your fault.
New York your cramped and uptight offices are a drag.
New York your fabulous restaurants are a drag.
New York your most rich and powerful people are a drag.
I say, "New York I think you're trying to kill me," and in your best Bogart voice you say "If I wanted to kill you you'd be dead already."
New York this isn't Hollywood.
New York this isn't the movies.
New York this is my life we're talking about.
You didn't ask me what I think of you, New York, but maybe that's why you're New York and I'm not.
New York you've got me all confused.
Yes, New York, I remember the girls.
I remember the all night dancing, the sex in the bathrooms and backs of taxi cabs speeding to Williamsburg in the days when you had to bribe the drivers to take you there; the sex on West Broadway in the front seat of my truck on a saturday night, the windows fogged and freezing over as the people walked by and cheered. Thank you for that.
I remember the cheap and plentiful drugs, the junky woman selling laundromat on 7th and C, and how romantic it was to chase her down in the dark and the rain waving my money trying to convince her I wasn't a cop. And later on the angels on bicycle who would deliver it to my door.
Thank you, New York.
Thank you for the cheap beer in the rundown saloons, when the talk was loud and the laughter came fast and the air blue with smoke.
New York this is always going to hurt me more than it hurts you.
New York you never gave me a moment's peace all the time I've been here and yet now that I'm leaving you New York I realize two things: one, that you never gave me peace because I never asked for it, and that maybe that was your way of saying you loved me too.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
 Tim Hall's stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including New York's Press, Post, and Observer newspapers. From 1995 to 1999 he was co-editor and creative director of The New York Hangover, an underground newspaper that attracted a legion of followers, including such diverse personalities as Lewis Lapham of Harper's magazine and Joey Ramone. His first novel was published in December 2004 by Undie Press, as was his collection of stories and essays, Triumph of The Won't, in 2006.
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