First we take Manhattan

I wrote this about a year ago, and meant to post it then. Sorry to my loyal fans on here, which is probably zero, considering my inconsistency. I had my scribbled down notes from a cafe in Inwood, and I was going to weave it into something nice, including all the quiet, hidden wonders of my trip (almost) all the way around Manhattan, like the garden off of the Harlem River Drive, which I only ended up wandering through because I needed to pee. (finding places to pee was one of the hard parts).

I look back now on days like this with special appreciation. And since I did this trip, there’s been periods where it feels like I’m dragging my feet around the tip of Manhattan, whimpering to myself. I don’t have a particularly good or revelatory ending for this, but I’m worried that if I try to think of one, it might be another year before I get around to finishing. So here you have it.

First we take Manhattan 
Like many ideas, the idea of walking around the perimeter of Manhattan had lived as just that—an idea—for a while. Between the middle aged man I had talked to while contra dancing and the summer of 2025. He told me that the Great Saunter happened every May, a group of dedicated walkers traversing Manhattan. He had done it that same day, and somehow still had the energy to dance at night. I thought that I would like to be in that kind of shape decades from now—hell, I’m not in that shape now. 

It was the summer of 2025, the summer after I graduated college. I had quit my job working at a non-profit shortly after starting—the first job I had ever quit. It was the summer of zohran, performative males. Initially, the lack of structure that came from being unemployed made me uneasy. Too much time alone with my thoughts, every day was a blank slate of decisions. But soon I grew to enjoy it—I had time for the things I usually never had time for. One day I called a good friend, who was living abroad. I told her that I had quit my job. She asked what I was going to do. She said the world was my oyster. You should do something crazy, like skydiving. Tell me later what you end up doing. Eh, I mumbled, we’ll see. I spent the summer getting my driver’s license, learning to play the drums, doing small projects I created for myself. It was a solitary summer, but I didn’t mind. The last months of college had been overflowing with social activity, enough for leftovers, enough that you could fill containers to save for later.

I was starting a new job in August, and it began to dawn on me that my period of unemployment was almost over, and what exciting thing had I done? What had I done to be the ‘unemployed friend on a Tuesday?’ So I ended up one morning on the R train to Whitehall St, from where I would attempt to walk around the entire perimeter of Manhattan. Maybe I was sick of the lonely nights, the deafening silence of the gym at 9pm, like I was in school again, or the nights spent scrolling were some kind of wake-up call for a reset. A reset. Is it always some kind of long and treacherous journey that must serve as a reset when you are stuck in yourself? Maybe, I am also—have been—saying goodbye to New York. Cleaning out my things, and then trying to see much of the city I once called home. A goodbye walk. One stop away, at Court St. I have a long day ahead.

About 20 miles in, close to delirium, I find myself in a coffee shop in Inwood, near the northernmost part of Manhattan. I needed to charge my phone, so I was loitering outside the cafe, looking to see if there was anyone I could approach and ask if they had a charger. In my loitering, a guy who worked there asked me if I wanted to order. I told him I needed to charge my phone, and he said they had cords in the cafe. So I borrowed the barista’s charger and ordered an iced coffee, an exchange which was far too pained and prolonged in my dazed and fatigued state. At a bench, sipping on iced coffee while my phone charges behind the counter. My hands long for the screen, but I’m in time out. Miles 7-9 were cruising, but since the halfway point I’ve been questioning my life choices. Reaching the very top should’ve been exciting, but at the northernmost tip of Manhattan, there were only garbage trucks. A sanitation center. I’ve been talking to myself a lot. At one point I started quietly whimpering, to which I promptly responded out loud “head up.” Now this is what I keep telling myself when my morale is low, which is most of the time. “Head up” and then I will quicken my pace, take out the slack in my walk that I have allowed in. Head up. I was thinking of giving up early, maybe just saying I did the length and not the perimeter and that’s good enough, that’s already quite a lot, but now I am thinking I will try to send it, I think I can do it, I think I have to. 

33 miles and I didn’t finish. It was only supposed to be 32, but it was hard to tell where you could and couldn’t walk on the FDR so there were lots of times when I thought I could walk somewhere but couldn’t and had to turn back, resulting in precious energy being wasted. I gave up around W 17th street and 12th avenue after miles on the Hudson Greenway, which really was beautiful, passing by runners and people enjoying the weather that was just right. Sending voice memos to friends telling them of my adventure, soliciting words of encouragement to keep going. Listening to an audiobook about language, listening to Novacane by Frank Ocean. Trying my best not to think about the pain in my feet, not to think about anything, novacane, novacane, novacane, as the sky became dark and everything became less pretty passing through midtown, the green of Inwood long gone, a billboard here, a hustler club there.

On W 17th st and 12th avenue, I sat on a cement block and took off my sneakers and started at my dirty ankles and considered the pain in my feet and tried to look up how many named streets there are in Manhattan before the numbered ones and slowly accepted the realization that I would not be able to finish the challenge I had created for myself. I dragged myself to the subway, each step nearly bringing me to tears. When I got home, I ran a bath and made a grilled cheese sandwich, which I ate in the bathtub, washing away my day of adventure.