Feel no fear...

So tonight I decided to wander, carelessly, through the barren streets of Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy in the middle of the night owing to being out of cigarettes and a cavernous allergy to normal sleep patterns that most people seem to possess so easily. Nightmares about things which I know nothing of haunt me and keep me awake at night. I find Bed-Stuy most comforting at night, when no one is left in the streets but other walking undead who cannot sleep and cops. I approach the window of the bodega, owing to the fact that it is the vampire hour and they are as afraid of being robbed as I am in this impoverished and direly sick and jobless neighborhood. I glance back at the man waiting on the corner, eyeing me with apparent interest. "What's up, sweetheart?" He asks me. "You lose something?" As I'm handed back my change I reply, "Nothing but my soul." "I heard that," he replies. I'm allowed to pass, safely. Apparently, admitting that you are among the lost and barren of this city means secure passage.

This place can invigorate you. It can also destitute you at the same time. Oh how I long for the less dangerous, and comforting, streets of Ybor. Thank God for Google Street View when my thirst for home grows wild and vicious in my chest. I did, however, run into a few of my more entrepreneurial, to be kind, regulars from the Big O. I was greeted with coldness and disdain. It just goes to show that when you have something to tender for their companionship, like free alcohol, people can be your best friend. But when you are looking for comrades in a new area and you have nothing to offer they are as scarce as the hyenas and leeches that they truly are.

I was fired, unceremoniously, of course, from my second bartending gig up here. I'm so used to the hospitality industry that I am completely unfazed. The manager who hired me was quite fond of me but she went on vacation and the surrogate took an obvious, malicious, dislike of me from the moment that we met. To coin a phrase, it was a matter of time.

The one thing that I can say is that it has fueled the fire to find something more than this. Now I have the incentive. I have grown weary of listening to people complain about their food. I am far too smart, excuse my lack of humility, to play this game anymore. I deeply long for something more meaningful.

Maybe New York will provide me with the answers I have so anxiously been searching for.

I didn't make it to MoMA. I did not want my experience there, which I have craved as a fan of the arts for far too long, to be marred with being fired for absolutely no reason with misery and fear of survival here, which occurred while I was waiting in line for the exhibits.

I have promised myself more in this city. And I intend to keep it.