A city by rivers and a city by the sea

The river was about fifteen degrees cooler than up on the streets. We stood at the 70th Street pier breathing in the river and estuary breezes when a hot wind smelling of asphalt and concrete came in from the East, the smell of the city streets hit the Hudson with a wham.

Lucia, Rafe, his wife and I had been there all afternoon into night. Manhattan was a sultry steam bath all day, but Manhattan unlike most places gets hottest in evening, when the heat from the streets rises to meet the sky. Then it becomes even more unbearable though I have a passionate love for hot steamy sultry weather. It makes me come alive. Anybody who is with me can testify that’s when I become the most fun person. Simply because I’m not wilting and talking–a lot.

Rafe and Karina live on a marina in Westchester in a condo complex that reminds me of prime Sonny Crockett real estate. They were slumming it at one of Lucia’s and mine two summer river club restaurants. The other is at the Boat Basin. There’s one further uptown but we tend to wander downtown. It’s the river park of my dreams. For 30 years I have dreamed of being able to walk New York river to river, and now it’s possible.

Maybe, she rationalizes, that’s why it’s time to leave. A dream was seen to fruition, and I’m not too old to walk it all. The weather has been so weird that I haven’t been walking as long or as much as I need to.

I needed these years to fall back in love with my city by the river. Now I can leave with some remaining longing and many new great memories.

It’s you, bloggers, who helped me reached this point. You let me reframe my story and tell it from so many perspectives I’m mostly healed.

I paid cash for my apartment and now pay two dollars a square foot in monthly charges. It’s like paying rent and I resent that. That’s only one of my fixed expenses. I use my Amex for everything and pay it every two weeks. That way I don’t use it for frivolous things. When I was in North Myrtle Beach for three weeks in June my Amex bill was almost two thirds less than normal. That’s huge. Had I been there the whole month it would have been slightly more than two thirds.

I so love this city on an island made of stone and am so ready to leave. For the first time I won’t be in New York on 9/11. I will be in North Myrtle writing, and beginning to look for a town house in a gated community with an artificial lake. If I’m going to change lifestyles I’m going to change it in as many ways as possible. The thought of paying $800 a year to a home owners association rather than $1200 a month to the coop association is enticing. The thought of what I can buy for half of what I get for my 600 square feet is motivation.

Even my sister who didn’t want me to leave New York is for this move. The plane ride takes 90 minutes and costs about 50 cents a minute. I could afford a better life. This wasn’t the move that I had envisioned for myself. I didn’t even like North Myrtle the first few days. The city looked too sun bleached, too unexciting. But shag music got under my skin and after awhile so did the city and the people. Shag’s a fascinating combination of beach music and soul. The more I get into it the more intrigued I become. But this will always be the summer I rediscovered Levon Helm and The Band.

I don’t drive and for the sake of humanity never will. I make a big deal of crossing lights and their faults in other cities but the truth is in New York, I hardly ever look or do it so subconsciously I’m not aware of it as I walk through red light after red light.

I live on Riverside Drive, one side of the Drive is surrounded by park, a highway and the river, though the highway really is unobtrusive. If I didn’t have to go to Broadway everyday, wasn’t surrounded by constant construction and didn’t pay so much for so little I wouldn’t dream of leaving. After all these complaints comes the kicker: I have a truly great life.

If Rafe is right and the world ends in 2012–as Karina says he predicted 1999 for the world’s demise–but maybe Nostradamus is right and it will end in the later year–then I will have saved money for nothing and be real pissed at myself for not spending more in the final minutes. I hope I’m less material than that, and don’t really feel like exploring last minutes now.

It’s just that in all its glorious weirdness this totally strange summer has been perfect because it’s the summer I came back to myself. And being the only person on my wing for much of the summer, with the man upstairs away, and the renters downstairs in their real home, I can blast music like it’s 1978. OK, I had almost neighbors then who were the only people ever to complain about my musical habits in Manhattan. But the husband turned out to be a pedophile caught in the act and the landlord refused to rent to the wife as she had no income. That apartment on 63rd off Fifth had more fascinating people move in and out or not move than any single apartment I know
I aint got no home
No place to roam
I aint got a home
No place to roam
Im a lonely boy
I aint got a home

I aint got no sister
I aint got a brother
I aint got a father
Not even a mother
Im a lonely boy
I aint got a home

Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo

Well, I got a voice
And I love to sing
I can sing like a bird
And I can sing like a frog
Im a lonely boy
I aint got a home

I aint got a girl
I aint got a son
I aint got no kin
I aint got no one
Im a lonely frog
I aint got a home

Woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo-woo