Walking Across the World

Garlic. Spice. Salt. The burning, acrid taste of ice on the tongue.

I clutched the damp paper bag close to my chest. Grease trickled down my elbow as I tore chunks from the pizza slab, and crammed them into my mouth. I tiptoed up to a crowded park bench. A woman obligingly shuffled her skirt hem aside. I sat down, heaving hot puffs into the air, and took another bite. The woman did the same. We sat, solemnly chewing and watching the snow settle on Central Park.

It was my first day in New York.

I’d ridden on the red-eye, sweeping into JFK on a wave of fresh snow. The dawn was cold and starlit as we crossed the terminal. I clambered into a taxi and hurtled towards the unknown.

Slowly, things began to shift. The darkness peeled away. The contours of buildings loomed through the gloom. The sky lightened.

And there it was: the famous skyline of Manhattan, silhouetted against the glare of the rising sun. I’d traced it so many times in my mind that I knew it by heart.

The taxi rushed over the bridge and plunged straight into the depths of the island. We sped past shop fronts waking up, past sleepy-footed commuters shuffling their way through the haze. Soon I was left alone, blinking on the sidewalk.

The moment my feet hit the pavement, I knew. I wanted to walk these streets forever. The same thought kept playing in my head, over and over again. This is your first morning in New York. And also: there will never be a first time again.

Before I left, people had asked me why I wanted to go to New York. I tried to explain: the intoxication of the place, the imagination of the city. What if you don’t like it? They asked. It’s not like the movies.

It is.

Or it isn’t. It’s a cliché, but New York truly is what you make it. Isn't that the same with any place?

The best way to learn a city? Walk it. So I did. I walked past tenements and brownstones vivid against the steely winter sky. I walked past broken wire fences and pulsing lights. I walked that whole first day, never pausing.

Except once. Under a sprawling oak tree, I found a tiny stall selling New York’s famous pizza slices. I crept closer. I knew those slices from movies, from TV shows. The hot smell drenched the air.

As I took that first bite, fantasy and reality collided. I was in New York. Heck, I was eating pizza like a New Yorker.

There might never be a first time again. But there would never be a last time either.