A Loner in the City

In my hometown, I never felt like a local. Even on my street, I never felt like a neighbor. In New York City, mostly southeast of 14th Street, sardined with the offbeats and mavericks, the bohemians dressed as gypsies, the washed-up vegans, the addicted Wall-Streeters, the everyones' who ever wanted to be anyones, the whatchamacallits, and the might've-beens, I felt at ease.

I was reacquainted with my style here, the fad that I was born with before my time. When my lips are stained red, I look like a flapper and live like a modern classicist. I wear silky, baggy shirts salvaged from second-hand shops, scuffed up boots barely fastened by their rotting laces, with a new pair of skinny jeans that occasionally make me look brawny, and my hair is big. Like the big pin curls the women admired in the 1920's. My facial skin is ageless and not perfect, revealing a childlike sense of adventure through an instant gaze into a pair of quarter-sized eyes and confused demeanor. Generally, I appear well put together. But my nails are always chipped with decaying cuticles, bad judgment slips from under my tongue sporadically, and I'm a chronic sufferer of failing romance. As a rule, I rarely flaunt my well-earned figure because I have a peculiar ability of finding a way around this. My heart is stitched on a rolled-up sleeve, gravitating up and down with every bend, movement, or endeavor. I lost my innocence a long time ago, way before I moved to New York, and after my heart was broken. That's a good thing. Because only the Frank Sinatras' survive here.

You have to know how to function alone in this city. As an individual. As an anonymous.
It's not a place for tender-heart rocking or closed-minded foolishness. The legacy of cultural tolerance is not for the unadventurous, incurable bigot. But, here in my city...color is silently pertinent. Having the facade of a multinational is a fast track to joining the medley. But, if you want instant conformity, be true to yourself. New York forced me to acknowledge my sufficient eccentricities. I grew up within the confines of Texas, south of the Mason Dixon line; even when forced, refuse to use "nigga" as a pronoun or invite like-skinned people of similar socio-economic backgrounds into my world. I don't wear racially-distinguishable garments; and my social circles are of Benetton nature. It's a shame that my character difference is mistaken as deviance.

This is me, unveiled. I'm an over-analytical oddball, a three-dollar bill, an idiosyncratic, a case, a rarity. And my name is too often found next to a parenthesized weirdo. I bullied a pigeon today in Cooper Square; one time, I made three mistakes in two hours; the word "mad" has inadvertently slid into my vocabulary; there are times when I don't believe in myself; I dream about reality, but my life is not a storybook; and I live in a city that fully embraces my creativity as an artist. As an individual.

I'm a self-proclaimed New Yorker inspired by invention and freedom.