if you’re very rich, the city becomes a service. someone else handles the friction. time stretches. the noise dulls. you pay to avoid eye contact. the city feels smaller, more obedient. you experience new york as a series of well lit interiors.

youre doing drugs because youre working a series of part time jobs or because youre a wall street demon. the substances may share a name, but the intention does not. one is trying to stay awake long enough to matter. the other is trying to disappear. both are negotiating with exhaustion. new york is generous with illusion at both ends.

the best food is $5 or $500. a dumpling cart that understands you. a slice eaten at the end of a long night. or a room where the lighting has been rehearsed and a staff member picks up your napkin before you realized you dropped it. the middle meals are forgettable. the ones that cost $43 and still leave you hungry. the city does not reward moderation. either you eat to survive or you eat to signal that survival is no longer the concern.

both the rich and the poor understand the same truth from opposite directions. that new york is not a place to be balanced. it is a place to be extreme. you either learn how to make very little feel like enough, or you pay obscene amounts to make sure nothing ever feels like too much.

but if you are neither, the city demands constant proof that you deserve the space you take up. proof that you can keep up. you pay too much for rooms that do not quite hold you. you ration joy. you hesitate before saying yes. you feel the clock louder than the music. this is where people thin out. rent increases, nights cost more than they ever really give back.

the city arranges comparison so precisely that comfort never quite settles. wealth raises the ceiling, but the ceiling never stops moving.

new york is not cruel. it is precise. it rewards surrender at the bottom and insulation at the top. everything else is endurance. and endurance, over time, asks for more than most people mean to give.

Cheryl Douglass • Cheryl Douglass (@cherdougie)