Escape from New York

Departures, arrivals and humiliations

Long ago, Lulu and I determined the two greatest instances of humiliation, which anyone living in NYC must experience over and over again:

1. Having to stop in the middle of pedestrian traffic, bend over, and tie your shoe.

2. Eating sushi in a rush above a trash can (this usually occurs in close proximity to the Union Square Whole Foods).

I am pleased to introduce a new entry to the list, this time, to launch an international franchise:

1. Upon discovering that your checked baggage is 14 pounds overweight, having to step aside — in full view of the bleak human masses — open everything, and redistribute items. This reaches near-orgasmic mortification when you must move the podcast microphone you packed just in case, even though your own podcast is on indefinite hiatus, is the culprit.

   

Dexter gave me fancy eatable chocolate hearts for my birthday, and half of one was enough to make my ten-hour flight a fantasy ride. I watched several episodes of Sex and the City and was awed anew, thinking about the legions of girls who moved to the city to be Carrie Bradshaw, only to be annihilated, inevitably, hopelessly, by Melissa Rich.

Naturally, I was seated between two Hasidic men, whose only packed sustenance were store-bought containers of two-dozen rogelach. Who knows how they experienced me, as I watched Labyrinth and cried to myself, with the ease of a lunatic.

Indeed, everything on that flight felt like a taste of the sublime, because it was, as Frodo says, mine, my own. I lapped up the “food” like it was Michelin starred; I felt unbound from my diet, my body dysmorphia, my bank account, all of it. It hadn’t occurred to me up to that point that I was leaving NYC again and returning to Tel Aviv…I was too dissociated to understand what was going on. Perhaps I’m like a dog — I only know that shit is going down once we’re pulling up to the vet’s office.

And as the possibility of rapture, of sunsets and shirtless men, began to radiate through my cannabinoided body, so too did I feel the countervailing, Saturnian opposition — like when Jews smash a glass at the wedding altar, to remember previous destruction, or when my mother reminded me, as I headed to the beach, that Bob Marley, whom we must love “because he supported Israel!,” died of skin cancer…between his toes. Try to forget that one. I had to ask myself: could this simple, solar rush another one of my escapes into fantasy land? Like Jennifer Connelly’s Sarah, in Labyrinth — a performance which deserves a retroactive lifetime Oscar and statues of her likeness in every town square — was I falling into another seductive snare, compromising my values for some bottled, artificial, shallow sunlight?

Yes and no. Kiko recently brought up “happiness versus evolution.” Last night, I dreamt that I won a week-long trip to Thailand, all expenses paid, and I could choose a companion to invite. I woke up feeling a shock of optimism — or perhaps it was faith. I’ve written plenty for NYLON about Jupiter entering Taurus, my home sign, on the 16th (here’s the explainer and horoscopes). I understood this dream to be a direct missive from the thunder god, the planet of luck, fortune and expansion. It was a referendum on my fatalism, and my learned belief — a la Stanley Yelnats — that character can only be developed through hardship. I woke up understanding that anything could happen this summer — even and especially the spectacular — but that I was limiting the possibilities by meeting everything with dread, the way I have since I was eight years old.

Of course I am concerned about jumping headfirst into infinite pleasure, because, having spent significant time in Los Angeles, I know what it is to encounter people who have been there too long (and before you get offended, just know that if you’re reading this Substack, I’m not talking about you; I’m talking about everyone else I made out with at Horse Meat Disco on New Year’s Eve). Take home one guy from Hot Dog Sundays, check out his social media, and you’ll know what I mean: when you spend too much time in the fairy kingdom, when you never make it back to complete your trials and face ultimate evil, you start to resemble a wax figure of yourself. Is that the cost of happiness? Total stagnation? To be “interesting” or have something to say, must you subject yourself to life in Murderworld?

But at the same time, during some of the most revolutionary periods of my life, like when Uranus stepped on my sun all winter, I was so in the crucible of pain that I couldn’t see beyond myself, couldn’t access empathy or joy or pleasure or possibility. I just wanted out. Ultimately, that evolutionary gauntlet did further bolster the knowledge that I’m immortal, and made me prove — to myself — that I could survive without a home, without funds, and in a state of total, indefinite uncertainty.

Was it worth it? Sure. Would I wish it on my worst enemies? Absolutely not. Where am I even going with this? Sure, there’s value to both happiness and evolution. Perhaps the lesson from my dream is that I must embrace both sides of the coin when it’s called for — a time to eat ice cream by the sea, and a time to watch a police officer clip his nails on the A train — but not cleave to suffering as intrinsic to my identity or future. This distinction may be key. If I am to struggle for the sake of evolution, that’s fine, but it’s not the whole of who I am. I can and should believe that the time of new beginnings is at hand, and the best is yet to come.

My dad recently asked me what my plan is: how will I live? How will I make money? He threw in the classic Polish-Jewish reminder that I keep him from sleeping at night. All I could say was: I don’t know. I pray that this Jupiter in Taurus moment brings the work of the previous years to fruition, expansion and exhibition, and changes my life. But it might not. I am OK with that, and now have the strength to know that I’ll be fine either way. The challenge is to dust off the dread, and believe that it may all end magnificently.