It was 10:50 PM and the other side of my life was about to begin. I had just wrapped up a five hour and fifty minute online workshop. I was static, satisfied and tired to the point of wanting a semi toxic release. It was easy to get. Everything in New York is easy to get. Except, maybe, sleep.
I caught up with two friends at one of my favorite bars in Soho. It was a relaxed bar that is as much fun on the inside as being out for a smoke on the outside.
I just needed to dance.
The king of Soho I liked to call him.
The king of soho knew every bar and restaurant in the area and everyone who worked there. He knew the server, the bartender, the cook, and the owner. Everywhere we’d go, it’d be like he had been there since the place opened up. I felt like a fish in the water, swimming with the shark. Flowing, safe, amused by his glide. I knew I was a shark too, only in different waters.
Many treated him like they owed him something. And he treated them like they did. ‘’Act a victim and you become one’’ I thought. So I never did. Thinking this would exempt me from his sometimes savage tendencies.
He wasn’t always nice to them but It appeared as if everyone loved him, hated him, and accepted him like that. A 50 - 50 human. You either love him, hate him, or want to be him. He doesn’t care which. And you wish you didn’t care either. An inspiring person whose the last trying to be one.
I could imagine him reading my work in Spanish and saying ‘’awwww that’s sweet’’. But knowing he would think I was too soft. He never really got to know me like that. He brought out my tougher side. And I liked it.
‘‘What makes you so ambitious?’’ He asked me once. And sent me on a train of thought where I discovered I was. I was blessed with knowing what I wanted. And I wanted a lot. But to me, I just held these dreams closely but loosely. This made me excited to be alive and gave me ways to have fun throughout my existence. Which I thought was the main way to make breathing really worth it. Ambition had a more robust energy. It sounded like a need to get, not a joy to have.
I had my life. I had my work, my projects, my therapist and available wholesome dynamics. I just felt they were boring at the time. New York moves around stimulation. Something needs to hit you in all the right spots in order to go and spend your costly time there. You lay on your bed and it is as if something comes through he window to pull you back into the streets.
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