New York

People move to New York City to kill their inner child...there is something they don't like about it, something vulnerable, undeveloped.. naive, which is perhaps the greatest kiss of death explanation they can give you... I say 'they' because I grew up in NYC, and these days I love to act naive.. it feels... well.. childish. You see, growing up there being a child had it's detractors, it was beaten out of you for a number of reasons, so I went elsewhere to be a kid, to find what they had all left behind in their rush to be BCC, Big City Cool... I wanted to see where all these pretentious honor students from the Midwest were coming from, what they left behind, what embarrassment, what ruined by insufficient status high school relationship had so crushed them that the only solution was to run to the sunless canyons where they would never believe I walked as a toddler petting dogs and riding bikes, in search of endless rejection and edge, perfection or masochistic pleasure but never both.. endless consumption of culture so rare as to be endemic only to such a place as this, a seething sea of voracious minds frail and gaunt from the endless high that is 'the' city..
The reasons for stamping out childhood in the Jungle were many, and came from different people in different ways, but it was one thing that all New Yorkers seemed to agree on..
The Old School guys would remind you that you had responsibilities.. that being a child of such a city gave you a mantle of authority not to be shirked... you had responsibilities to somehow lead, to not just be any old kid searching for fun around the corner. You had a job to do.. you come from New York, and the world will look to you for leadership.. this was the Noblis Oblige of the classicists, don't you realize how lucky you are kid, who needs trees when you got Broadway... where would the next Julius Ceasar come from if not from Rome?!
Then there were the 'Almost Made It's', who realized how, in sad hindsight, they were only hanging out with kids because they hadn't somehow started 'it' soon enough, that special skill they game to hawk but found out that 200 could hawk it better and only 50 could pay the bills with it in the worlds greatest meritocracy.. they would teach you that now was not the time to play with toys and idly away opportunity... you must refine while the clay is still fit to be molded.. then there are the seekers, come to the city with no particular ambition but with a bold desire to never go back from where they came from, to never imbibe the filtered and derivative.. for them, childishness is Disney and Disney is commercial and therefore of a place other than New York, a luxury of those who truly will take what they are given instead of deciding what they want, so no, you can stuff your fairy tales, since the world is a dangerous place, and why pretend otherwise, because in some sad way they are afraid to ever again indulge that part of them that would want comfort over truth, kid, since what a false hope it will turn out to be, so they impose upon you the endless indignities of their life in a 400 sq ft walk up miles from anything and call it virtue...
and last but not least your buddies will teach you, brother to brother, the perils of looking vulnerable. They will teach you to sound like a man as a boy, to keep your money in your sock or underwear, a practice you never questioned until you were a teenager, and they will teach you to 'hold your own', but they will neglect to remind you to be yourself( and potentially for the best.. Who they hell could you be with all this weight on you?).
I know how good you are, or how you will never be good enough (and that you secretly love that fact..), now can I please go back to playing with my blocks and throwing Wet Soggies out the window...!? This is just one more place for god's sake, don't let it get to you.. One more... Really good place..
Some guy wrote a song called New York I Love You, but You Are Bringing Me Down..
He's voicing the attitude.. sigh, of group two, but somehow the tone says the same thing I want to say.. Take it away Kermit, perhaps perfectly, one contribution of NYC to a pretty well rounded childhood..a creature of the Mississippi Delta though Hensen might have been, he came too...
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=-eohHwsplvY&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-eohHwsplvY
Oh, and..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKYChph3meg&sns=em