written by Domenic

…it all starts around late February when you think holy shit it’s cold and you are trudging through the brown slush and you could really use a day that reaches 60 degrees or even 50 for that matter. It’s been cold for an eternity. You get antsy and maybe it snows again and you curse off everything in the world on your way to work but then one day in late-March it happens. You roll out of bed and go outside and it’s warm. It is sunny and crisp and believe it or not you don’t have to wear long underwear today. Then one night you smell that spring smell that makes you know you are alive. There’s that one first group of days that happens where it finally feels like it’s here and everyone else knows it too. People are walking around with huge smiles plastered across their faces because this hasn’t been felt since at least September. It’s a Friday you had to work late but who really cares because it’s perfect outside and you get paid hourly anyways. You meet up with friends who are already 2-hours deep into it and you carouse around Manhattan Island in a type of alcoholic lust unheard of in December. After those first few days of spring it is never the same again. All of a sudden it’s Opening Day and you feel 18 again and you think ‘it all goes up from here’; we’re making the right decisions. People are getting more frantic and staying outside and brown hair is turning blond. When you wake up on Saturdays you don’t even think ‘what will I do today?’ because by the time you are thinking that you are already diving head first into the stocked cooler on your friends roof in the sunshine. You blow through a stop sign and it is late May and then you finally realize it IS here. You turn the stereo louder. Nobody really cares about anything anymore because it’s May for crying out loud, summer is right around the corner. Your coat hangs in your closet when you go out and not the dirty floor of a bar.  You start trying to bum rides to the beach on the weekends. You take the Q train out to Coney Isle for the Mermaid Parade and sit in the sand to drink beer and eat Nathan’s while the freaks parade all over the boardwalk the sun sets you look up at the moon and smile. All of a sudden it’s July 4th we’re at the beach all day everyone’s laughing, swimming, drinking and living you are alive and you want the world but for right now this is perfect I could be here forever. Driving home in a car packed with lunatics and beer over the Marine Parkway Bridge you catch a glimpse of the city skyline bathed in the early evening sun. Cruising through Brooklyn smelling that summer air filled with bbq and seeing the people, and then the music, coming up on that block party you had to detour on Bedford Avenue gets you lost in Brooklyn and then finally realizing you have arrived and it is finally here. You end up on a friend’s roof with other strangers where you down cold beer, tell stories, jokes, and dance. The sun sets over Manhattan Island the sky fills with bright beautiful explosions illuminating the skyline. While you drink your beer you look out and aren’t sure if it gets any better than this. People are dancing on the roof as you finish up a long kiss with a blonde, see the reflection of fireworks in her blue eyes and she smiles. You lean in for another one and the rest of July is a complete blast you don’t give a shit about anything at all because it’s gorgeous out all the time and you don’t need to put on seven layers to leave your apartment. Going into a store with the air set below 65 makes you shiver. Girls wear close to nothing and there is a certain thirst in the air. Every movement provokes a desire and people act on whims and urges. The AC blasts non-stop you grill and stay lazy.  August comes through and wow it’s hot. You can’t move without sweating and the subway platform is the inside of an oven. The sidewalks radiate the heat into your soul it is almost carnal. People long for cooler days but you know better. You hit the beach every weekend you can. Posting up and putting your toes in the sand to suck down Pacificos as you look out at the horizon letting your mind unwind slowly. Unraveling and cutting those loose ends which used to tie a noose in the back of your mind. The rooftop parties are classics the students come back to town and all of a sudden there’s a pennant race and then the playoffs are on. What happened to September? It went with the humidity but it felt damn good while it went. Will the Yanks do it again? Then you dress up in a ridiculous outfit and go bouncing around the Village like a maniac and as you wake up the next day to get a glass of water you look at the clock and realize that it is Nov. 1st already. I could have sworn that just the other day I was sitting on the roof of Berry Park on a late Sunday afternoon in August sinking Paulaners into the warm summer evening. Now I can see my own breath. Well the city in November isn’t half bad but then all of a sudden you are out in Manhattan and it’s really cold and you are all bundled up from head to toe.  You find yourself on Lafayette and Houston and maybe everything could just be OK if I could get myself inside and drink Bulleit until the weather warms. A memory comes of a New York when you were fresh. When everything just seemed better than when your family moved out to NJ. When the sun the stars and the city lights shown with more vividness and color. When you see someone on the subway and you could have sworn you know them from some time previous but you just can’t seem to close in on the memory. You know that there is something in this city you lost a long time ago. Somewhere on those dirty side streets, in those video stores, the stoops, the restaurants, the dingy bars and the loft parties there is something you left behind that day in 1992. Something that you’ve tried to recreate, something you’ve looked for through endless six packs, parties, nights, cigarettes, and Jack Daniel’s. Those cloudy Sunday mornings when you wake up with a white crust under your nostrils look out your window staring for a few minutes and then sigh. You can’t really place the feeling or the time but you know it’s around here somewhere. You’ve come back to find it. For now you just countdown each day till the next paycheck; you seem to be living for the next day instead of living in the present. You try to just get through each week so it can be Friday again. Days don’t seem to exist in between the weekend. Time feels like it is moving faster than you can live it. Faster than you can grab on to it and say ‘hey! Slow down buddy remember when we put our feet up and smiled and laughed?’ After a while you realize that you are older than you expected to be at this age. Something happened too quickly. You make it day by day grunting around, you forget how cold it is outside but then…