The time has come for me to leave New York City. After almost two whole days here on business, it just feels right.
It's hard to pinpoint when New York officially was over for me. Was it this morning in my hotel room, when I got the check-in e-mail from Delta? Or five minutes later, when I took a taxi to the airport?
I can still recall the moment it all began like it was yesterday, because it was yesterday. I landed at J.F.K. on a misty Friday afternoon, to attend a conference on plastic utensils. I had finally realized my childhood dream of moving to the concrete jungle, where dreams are manufactured.
Like all new arrivals, I lived fast and hard. I remember going out of my mind on five-hour energy drinks at a panel discussion about "the bamboo-utensil threat," then ducking out early to grab lunch at Olive Garden, where I could rub elbows with some real New Yorkers. I marvelled at the large wall of signed head shots from all the celebrities who had gotten unlimited bread sticks before me. Would I, the head of regional sales for the southwestern branch of Reticulated Plastics, someday end up on that wall?
I'll never forget all the late nights in Times Square conversing with my German tourist friends under the quaint glow of the twenty-five-thousand-square-foot Pepsi billboard, before stumbling back to my hotel to watch "House Hunters" reruns, drunk on life and possibility and Olive Garden's signature Sangarita wine cocktail.
But slowly, imperceptibly, the city changed. I watched as most of my new friends left town, because they had earlier flights. Olive Garden closed, for the night. The charming Duane Reade that was the centerpiece of all of our midtown wilding suddenly shut down—and was replaced with yet another soulless Walgreens.
I take pride in knowing that I lived in New York when it was still gritty. When you could still ride a Ferris wheel in the middle of a giant toy store. When you couldn't walk across Forty-second Street without getting hassled by crowds of topless painted women. When the M&M's store didn't have a limit on the number of pounds of candy you could smuggle out in your conference's complimentary tote bag.
Maybe I've changed. Thinking back, I entered the city's revolving door a naïve thirty-six-year-old business boy, and exited a world-weary thirty-six-year-old businessman. I was once Nuts 4 Nuts. Now I'm no longer nuts 4 anything.
Lately, I've been feeling as if I don't belong here, like when that security guard at the Javits Center wouldn't let me in because "the damn fork thing is over." I tossed my conference lanyard in the garbage, another useless nostalgic reminder of a bygone era.
The sad fact is that businessmen like me are getting priced out of the city. Hotel rates are at an all-time high, and credit-card-dividend reward points just don't go as far as they used to. What will become of a city deprived of its businessmen? I don't want to be around to find out.
I don't mean to sound bitter. I have no regrets about my time in New York. It made me who I am. Perhaps eventually I'll return to marvel at how the city somehow managed to carry on without me. Maybe for another conference, in two weeks.
