10 years in new york

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.”

January 1st, 2015 

I landed in Newark in the afternoon, leaning on the two suitcases full of everything I owned while I waited for the cab. There were 10 hundred-dollar bills crumpled up in my makeup bag, a collection of Christmas and graduation gifts from my grandparents and family friends. My dad added a couple of extras to “round it out.” It was the most money I’d ever had on my person, and I felt nervous carrying it around. 

When I got to Bed-Stuy, I gave five of the bills to Brandon. We’d been friends since middle school. I talked the rent down over Facebook for one month in the spare bedroom. I argued that $500 was better than nothing since he didn’t have a third roommate for January in the first place. Brandon and the other roommate, Fatima, agreed to let me stay for one month. They were looking for someone who could pay the full rent in February — unless I found a job. In which case, the room would be mine. We were all waiting to see which happened first. 

Brandon took a picture of me in front of the apartment building to mark the occasion. I wore a sweater my friend Tilde gave me as a going-away present a few nights before. She sold thrifted clothes at Hotel Vegas and looked too cool as she turned away my money. She said the sweater was “made for me.” I did not understand why. It was embroidered with flags from everywhere, and I had done nothing. I never expected Tilde and I to keep in touch, but she was the one who coordinated my sublet and met me at Roma Termini, something like eight or nine years later. I complained about the shame of rolling my carry-on suitcase over cobblestones in Europe, that it was embarrassing, and I should’ve packed lighter for what would go on to be a nine-month trip. She said, “I actually thought you would’ve brought way more stuff.” Tilde still looked too cool, smoking a cigarette and ordering comfortably in Italian. But I didn’t know any of that then. In 2015, I thought that two overweight suitcases could not possibly be enough. 

Fatima rolled a suitcase full of snacks she brought from H-E-B into the empty apartment on my second night. We went to Molasses Books and somehow managed to take the bus the wrong way twice. I don’t remember what we talked about that night, but I knew instantly we would be great friends. 

The first time it snowed, we all clamoured up onto the roof. For as long as I lived in that apartment, the rooftop would be our sacred shrine. “Let’s go up to the roof,” someone would say in conspiratorial tones after a few drinks. It was our nightly pilgrimage. That was the winter every other car that drove down Broadway was playing “Legend” by Drake, but we were listening to Oh Land and taking Buzzfeed quizzes to determine which Beyoncé we were from the digital album. Everyone was in agreement that I was the “Pretty Hurts” Beyoncé. 

“When she smashes all the trophies!” 

“That’s so you!” 

I felt my ears burning and bitterly thought, “No, it's the ‘taking the crown’ bit.” I’d missed the entire point. 

The city was only two miles away but still felt so untouchable. We weren’t supposed to be there on the roof, and yet, we were. The J train covered the sound of Brandon’s loud laughter and my whiny screams as it passed. I was tipsy and came out in the snow in nothing but my underwear and a sweater; I was always the first one who wanted to go back inside. My knees always shook going up the metal rungs. Sometimes I’d get stuck there at the second step from the top, trying to figure out another way to pull myself up.

That first winter in New York was the coldest. I didn’t know how to pack or layer my clothes right. I only had one winter coat and often stole Brandon’s because it was warmer. We didn’t figure out how the heater along the baseboard worked for another three weeks. Even then, it was only because Brandon accidentally kicked the vent open as we were dancing. We rushed over to see if something was broken, only to feel warm air on our hands. There were still so many things we were just beginning to learn. But we were laughing through it all because we weren’t alone in our stupidity. Every embarrassment could simply become an inside joke. 

The three of us were too close. Brandon would come into the bathroom to take a shit while I showered in the morning. Fatima would come in after him and complain that it smelled. Then she’d slam the door and trap me with the smell and steam. We all had to get ready for work at the same time. Brandon got me an internship at a Fashion PR company. I wanted to be a writer and thought it would be a good way to make connections, even though it didn’t pay. 

Someone referred me for a job working “in the closet” at InStyle Magazine. It was a Devil Wears Prada kind of job, organizing all the samples and making sure deliveries got where they needed to go. I got caught up worrying about what to wear to the interview. Instead of preparing, I spent my time conning some guy on Seeking Arrangements into buying me a new dress. I was sent away after two minutes because I hadn’t printed my resume. I never made that mistake again. 

Somehow, I ended up “in the closet” anyway. When I told Fatima and Brandon I didn’t have rent money for February, they helped me move my twin-sized air mattress into the little hall closet underneath the stairs. It fit perfectly. I took Brandon’s online college course and cleaned the common areas rather than pay rent. A guy named Miguel moved into what was formerly my room. For some reason, I kept all of my belongings in Miguel’s room. I had to sneak in quietly to pick out an outfit for work while he slept. I don’t know why Miguel let me do this, but then again, we were all too close. I can no longer find the picture Miguel took of me topless in his room. The first words I said to almost anyone who crashed with us during that time were often, “Sorry, I’m not putting on any pants.” I never felt the need to cover up. 

*** 

“There’s Chlamydia in the walls!” Brandon shouted one night after he got it for the second time. Miguel got it in his throat. 

When I asked the doctor at Urgent Care to test me, she fell dramatically into the wall and clutched her chest as if she’d never heard of such a terrible thing, “Chlamydia?! In your throat?” 

“Yes,” I said. I swung my feet back and forth while I sat on top of the exam table. I thought there was something deeply wrong with me, but it turned out to only be strep. 

We were all just trying things out. I perfected my Irish Goodbye at Boobie Trap one night just to see some guy’s rent-controlled apartment and sleep on a bed that wasn’t full of stale air. He said he liked my glasses, but they were fake — and Brandon’s. I didn’t wear glasses, yet. 

I started going out with a club promoter for the free dinner and drinks. I cannot remember which was more valuable at the time. It seems like it should’ve been dinner, but I was always trying not to eat it in order to get drunk faster. I was still thrilled by the idea of being able to party at places like 1 Oak and Avenue past two a.m. I tried not to fall asleep on the J train as I watched the sunrise from the Williamsburg Bridge. Someone on their way to work saw that I was wobbly on my heels and helped me down the stairs at Halsey, so I didn’t trip and bash my head on the concrete. I still managed to find other ways to fall. 

Once, I slipped on the stairs at Bedford Ave so hard, there was a rust stain where I hit my tailbone that never came out of my American Apparel Easy Jeans. Brandon and I had a screaming, crying fight after I slipped on black ice. He kept walking as strangers helped me up. I ran after him with tears in my eyes, angry he didn’t even notice I was gone. But I had still gotten up. 

I didn’t understand why everyone stared as I ate my Bacon, Egg, and Cheese standing up on the J. Fatima was the one to tell me it was bad etiquette to eat on the train. Every time I learned of some new way I was fucking things up, Brandon reminded me the first year in New York would be the hardest. “Everyone says we just have to make it through the first year and things will get easier.” He said, “When you’ve lived here for 10 years, that’s when you become a real New Yorker.” We were counting down the days. I couldn’t wait to be a real New Yorker and already know all of these things. 

*** 

When the snow started to melt, I stole spring dresses from my internship. I ate Mini Reese’s from the front desk by the handful for lunch. I worked with rich girls who went to The New School and had parents that paid their rent. I was constantly in awe of the excess around me. I delivered paper bags full of Hermes watches to Vogue. Once, I took a company-expensed cab to collect a $38,000 ring. It was ugly. But I still slipped it on my finger just to see what it felt like. I daydreamed of what my life would be like if I had that ring. The only things I could even think of buying were $300 hair extensions and rent. 

A bunch of Fatima’s friends from Texas came to visit: Maggie, Abe, and Freddy. I sat in front of the coffee table on the floor, writing down every text my ex boyfriend had sent in a journal while they passed around a joint. Freddy asked if I wanted a snack from the Duane Reade around the corner. He brought me a pint of Cherry Garcia when I asked for Half Baked. One day, I would go on to date Freddy for six years. But at that moment, he was just some guy I hardly noticed on the couch because I was too focused on something else. Brandon asked me after they left, “Did you talk to that Freddy guy? He was cool.” 

***

By summer, I had a job selling suits in SoHo. Fatima read off a list of infractions against Miguel. I felt bad that Miguel was getting kicked out because of me, so I didn’t say anything. Brandon didn’t say anything either and started taking out the recycling for perhaps the first time since we moved in. I can still see the vision of him looking down at all the boxes, wrapping them up with twine. I watched him rather than make eye contact with anyone else. Miguel didn’t understand why he had to leave, and Fatima said, “That’s always been Kassie’s room.” And then she yelled at Brandon and I for making her be the bad guy when we all wanted Miguel out. I never felt simultaneously so happy and guilty as I did then. 

Miguel should’ve probably kept the room, anyway. I crawled into Brandon’s bed most nights. I felt more comfortable with him beside me. I didn’t know how to be on my own then.  

Brandon and I got day drunk together on the Fourth of July. We were hyped up for what we thought would be a crazy day out, but Manhattan looked like a ghost town. The bartender explained how everyone used the long weekend to “escape” New York. We couldn’t imagine wanting to leave New York when it was already our greatest escape. We sat on someone else’s stoop and yelled, “We own this building!” Strangers chuckled along with us as they passed by. The idea of buying a place felt so ridiculous it was laughable. That would take like what, 10 years? 

We fought that Fourth of July because when Brandon called me his best friend, I only said, “Thanks.” I watched the fireworks from the platform at Myrtle Broadway, holding a too-drunk Brandon up beside me. 

I wrote poems on the floor before I passed out to the whir of the window unit above my head. Brandon said, “What are you doing? Go to sleep.”

“I’m writing,” I told him. “I’m going to be a writer.” But when I saw the poems in the morning, I thought they were trash next to everyone else’s stuff. It seemed like the people around me had something figured out that I couldn’t quite grasp. They had jobs, salaries, and health insurance. I wondered what I was doing wrong that they all had right. 

*** 

To tell the truth, I never really made it through my first year in New York. After eight months, I packed up my shit and went home. When I looked in the mirror on my 24th birthday, I thought my life was over. I felt rejected by the city because I hadn’t found what I considered to be a “real” job. I thought that a career or a place could define me, that without that definition, I’d never amount to anything. I promised to be back in a year, though it felt like a lie coming out of my mouth. I didn’t even believe in myself. But a year later, it turned out to be true. Everything came together much easier the second time around. And again, I asked Brandon to let me crash at his until I found a place to live. 

It was fashion week, and Brandon woke me up to do poppers in the delusional halo of the middle of the night. “Do you get it now?” he said, and I nodded. We both laughed hysterically as we did poppers again and again. At that moment, it would’ve been hard to imagine a time when Brandon and I wouldn’t be friends. 

The last time I ever saw Brandon was at Sweet & Vicious on Bowery. We both had less than $30 in the bank to last another week. We fought because he wanted to get day drunk for “Sunday Funday,” and I didn’t. It was my second try at a first year in New York, and I wanted to do things right that time around. I stood angrily in the background of a Duane Reade while he got his grandma to wire him $200. Brandon told me I had to get drunk since he was buying. I told him the drinks would be on his grandma, anyway. We fought, and I left. 

He must’ve lost his wallet that night because he asked me to come buy him a Metro card in the morning. I was subletting on the Lower East Side and couldn’t go all the way out to Brooklyn before work. I told him to hop the turnstile and grow up. Neither of us acted very grown. We both said a bunch of mean things to each other over text messages at seven a.m., and I never talked to Brandon again. 

*** 

I got sober. I made it through a year in New York without giving up. And then another one. I got a bed of my own, and I was always reaching for some new kind of tiny milestone. The years in New York started stacking up. I thought I would leave a bunch of times but wondered where else I would go.

Fatima bought her own home. For a while, Brandon rented the upstairs apartment. She broke this news to me gently and promised that everyone would be respectful of my “boundaries.” I couldn’t imagine any of us ever using the word “boundaries” when we lived together on MacDonough. Everything felt very adult, and I wondered what would have happened if we’d all just stayed friends. It felt weird to go over and hang out at Fatima’s, knowing Brandon was just hovering over our heads. 

Eventually, Fatima had to kick Brandon out. “I thought it would be fine because we’re not fucking 23 anymore,” she explained to me one day. Hearing her say this made me feel sort of justified in our friendship breakup. I thought maybe I was right to cut Brandon out of my life so abruptly. And then I just felt bad again. 

*** 

When someone once asked me what kind of New Yorker I was, I said, “The kind who’s never there.” 

I became the kind of person who “escaped” New York. I became a writer. A person who needed glasses to see — not to play pretend. I overcame the hurdles I could not reach at 23. But there were still questions I did not know how to answer. Like, “How long have you been in New York?” 

I wondered if my 10 years in New York really counted because I had skipped out early on my first year. Or because I have left for so many extended periods of time. The question leaves me feeling like I did looking in the mirror on my 24th birthday — like a liar. Like, I’m not a real New Yorker. Like someone who never showed up for class but managed to pass the final exam because the professor helped them out. 

***

When I got a call from my mom just 20 minutes after we got off the phone, I knew she would tell me someone was dead before I answered. A thousand faces of people I loved flashed before my eyes. I never expected Brandon to be the name she said. The world is small, even when we sometimes forget. But my mom still kept in touch with someone who kept in touch with his mom. And I was, truthfully, relieved it was no one else.

Fatima was the only person I could think of to call. I felt like I needed to call someone. Neither of us knew how to feel. We weren’t friends with Brandon anymore, but we wouldn’t have been friends at all were it not for him. “He was someone who was a part of a lot of my memories,” she said. 

Brandon was a part of a lot of my memories, too. They are good memories. I cannot stress the sweetness of the memories I have from my first year in New York enough. But there were nine more years. And I went on to be a bunch of different people in New York, none of whom Brandon ever knew. 

Sometimes I think I have forgotten all of these different versions of myself, but New York never lets you forget for too long. I have had a million second chances. I have begun again and again and again. I hope there were different Brandons spiraling off in New York, too. I hope all those different Brandons were doing even better than we could have imagined when we were just sitting there on a rooftop in Bed-Stuy, still looking out at all the possibilities in front of us in awe. 

I remember feeling like we could be anyone. 

The Brandon I knew loved Manhattan. He knew every word to every single Nicki Minaj song. He watched Alexander Wang runway shows on repeat. He was on a first-name basis with his local barista. He went through a phase in which he ate nothing but Açaí bowls. He gave too much money to people who asked for it. He was maybe too kind, and that’s why he felt like he was owed something. Maybe he was. I do not know a Brandon that could say the word no. He had a lot of demons he couldn’t shake, and because we were too close, I know exactly which ones. He knew mine, too. 

After our final fight, Brandon reached out to me a bunch of times. He called. He emailed. I blocked and ignored. At the start of the pandemic, he texted my mom to tell her if I got sick or needed anything, that he would be there. “But, you know, I have no way of getting in touch with her,” he said. 

I always thought I’d run into Brandon again, but I never did. I’d see a cowlick of blonde hair on the train and think maybe it was time for some big confrontation. I always expected him to pop up out of nowhere and tell me all the ways that I was never good enough for New York. I expected him to let everyone know I was a fraud. 

Leaving New York is not something I can imagine Brandon would ever do. I think he would consider it a sin. And as I packed up to leave for London, I wondered if the choice I made was somehow wrong. I wondered if I was a bad person for calling it quits on a friendship that wasn’t working anymore. Brandon was not my only friendship breakup during 10 years in New York. I started thinking, again, there was something deeply wrong with me. But maybe these things are complicated, and sometimes, we are all still fucking 23 or whatever. I think a friendship can run its course, just like a city can. 

The last thing Brandon ever said to me was, “You wouldn’t be in New York without me.” He was right. I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t be the person I am today had I not let go of him either. We weren’t friends anymore — not for something like 10 years.  

*** 

August 16, 2015 

I thought maybe that was where the story ended, but we had to go back out on the roof one last time. 

Some girl I found on Craigslist took over my room. I let her move in a few days before my flight because she asked if she could, and I had been a person who asked for crazy favors like that from people I didn’t really know. I told her it was fine as long as she didn’t mind sharing the bed with me. And during those last few nights, we both slept easy. We talked about Depop and I gave her advice about living in New York while I packed everything back up into the two suitcases I had brought only eight months before. 

“No offense, this is just for us.” Brandon said when she tried to follow us up. We were going to listen to Beyoncé and dance one last time. 

“We’re, like, having a moment,” I said, though I still got wobbly on the top rail, struggling to fling open the weight of the hatch in the wind. 

Brandon offered to go first, but I wanted him there to catch me if I fell. 

“I hate this!” I screamed, pitching my usual fit and being the most dramatic bitch of all time as we made our way up. Brandon just laughed and shoved me by the ass through the hatch, knowing even though I was scared of the steps, I would still climb them. 

Kassie Rene is the founding editor of Virgo Venus Press. Her words have been featured in Hobart Pulp, Rejection Letters, and elsewhere. She’s working on a novel. And a collection of essays. And a bunch of other stuff. You can find her on the internet @dontcallmekass.