the guez

There’s something special about the place and time where I live, a feeling that is intensified by the speed it's all changing. My friends and I live now in this neighborhood as if there is an end date. One day we won’t belong here anymore. That knowledge colors all my experiences in Greenpoint. It was midnight on a Friday night and I was biking home from a dinner party. It had rained earlier in the evening, and my clothes were still damp from the ride out. I raced myself home, trying to build heat against the wind, hurtling past dark shapes on the late-night bike path, crossing invisible lines through neighborhoods, counting each crossing as a leg of a straight-line journey towards my bed and the promise of sleeping soft and warm. I swept past factories and more factories and the lone Hasidic man on his way home. Then glossy plastic condos, too-bright against the night. The smell of water, the river close but invisible. Other cyclists wizzed towards me and past again, all s...