Don't Forget to Write

Walk Through Dark Harlem

In what seemed like just one long blink later, the siren at the beginning of Childish Gambino's song Bonfire, my phone's alarm, yanked me back to the realm of the conscious. Outside it was just as dark as it had been when I closed my eyes. Stumbling out of bed with eyes half-shut, I fumbled through my bag for clothes, pulling on shorts, then sweat pants, a t-shirt and sweatshirt, all of them with the CCNY logo on them. The sweatshirt had our mascot, a goofy looking beaver, on the back. The beaver was a poor mascot. It wasn't noble like a mustang or an eagle, or bad-ass like a lion or a wolf. As far as I knew beavers didn't do anything cool, they just chewed down trees and built impressive looking dams. Don't get me wrong, that unique skill of theirs is impressive, I don't know of any other animals who build homes for themselves out of their surroundings quite like that. But it doesn't stir up the competitive side in me by any means. And, beyond all of that, beaver is a slang term for vagina. So, in the eyes of some, we were the CCNY Pussies.

I brushed my teeth, packed my duffel bag with water, cleats, goalkeeper gloves, shin guards, and a change of clothes, then shuffled a few textbooks and notebooks into my backpack. In the kitchen Bruno handed me two pieces of toast. I spread peanut butter on them, strapped my bags, and rubbed Milo behind the ear. We walked silently out of the apartment, down the 6 flights stairs, and into the crisp dark morning. The melted peanut butter and crunchy warm toast tasted even better in contrast to the chill.

As everybody in the world already knows, people call New York the city that never sleeps. It's a cute nickname, and at times pretty true, but at 4:30 AM in Sugar Hill, most people are asleep. And most of the streetlights are off. There is a faint and flickering orange orb of light every few blocks when you're lucky. Most of the people that are awake at this hour, in this sleepless city, particularly in this neighborhood, are lurking in the shadows between those dim orange glows. It seems ominous, but they probably won't bother you. Honestly. A lot of them are just night owls smoking their cigarettes, drunks sobering up before they return to their families, kids kicked out of home for the night, maybe even the casual street pharmacist waiting to sell the things that help us all get through our days. They're a fine crowd. Just not the type of people you'd spark up a morning conversation about the weather with. Which is fine, because the only thing I hate more than mornings is forced small talk in the morning.

Bruno wasn't a morning person either, so we didn't talk much during our daily walk to practice. We were looking down at the sidewalk, minding our steps. It was the day before the weekly street sweepings, so there was broken glass and garbage underneath and in-between all of the old, multicolored cars, and some glass scattered around the sidewalk too. There was a bent spoon next to one car, and a syringe near another, both less than five feet away from the entrance to the park.

When we had walked 6 blocks south and nearly made it to 145th street, we took a right into a tiny park. It sat adjacent to the larger one with basketball courts and chess boards that borders Sugar Hill, and the only thing this smaller park consisted of was a staircase that brought you one block West and one block South. At the top of the staircase, under a dim orange glow, was a frosty tipped nappy haired man. I recognized him as the respectable gentleman I had stopped for on the sidewalk yesterday. He was snoring heavy with a brown paper bag wrapped around a bottle in his clutches like a teddy bear. I looked at his face for a moment and thought he looked like a hardened version of Denzel Washington.

He snorted heavily as we shuffled past him and onto the bustling street of commerce that was 145th street. 145th was entirely different from the 6 blocks of tiny Sugar Hill that preceded it on our walk. All the street-lamps worked and most of them were bright white. There were subway terminals up and down it, and the streets and sidewalks were busy, even in this strange hour between night and day. Late night partiers stumbled their way back home or to the next location with alcohol, while the early morning commuters strode their way to subways that would take them to another day at the office. This street was a super highway for anybody within twenty blocks, and housed all of the common man's needs. There were pharmacies, fast food restaurants, grocery stores, barber shops, pawn shops, trinket stores, fruit stands, clothes stores, churches, drug dealers, hookers, and anything else a person needed for nourishment of the mind, body, or soul. It was North Harlem's equivalent of a huge strip mall.

We walked West on 145th for a couple blocks then turned south onto an Avenue which was home to a neighborhood that, had I not walked there myself, I might have mistaken for an entirely different city. The bright white lights from many lampposts reflected off of freshly waxed Mercedes Benz coupes and BMW SUVs that lined the curb. Sitting idly behind the expensive cars were lean brownstone houses the size of 16-unit apartment buildings. Each one was usually home to a single family. Through wide living room windows was the boastful glow of 72" flat screens, and fluffy couches that looked more comfortable than most beds. These people lived a life of luxury that most could only dream of. The men put on suits worth more than some people's cars before going to a job like stock trading, where they gambled with the money of the common people, sometimes won and sometimes lost, but always walked home a bit richer. More money for expensive suits and seven-hundred-dollar designer belts and six hundred-dollar sunglasses with a specific name on them, sending their kids to private schools with tuitions higher than most colleges and driving cars worth more than some homes. The kids were none the wiser, you can't be mad at them for the world they were born into or the way they were raised. Most of them will be naive to how wealthy they are, naive to how easy the socio-economic aspect of their life is, and how much of a head start they could have on the rest of the population in terms of education and careers. Of course, kids aren't thinking about that. They're thinking about playing video games, going to concerts, and getting laid for the first time. They have no idea how to lead a normal life (granted, neither do most of us) and are ignorant to everything in the world around them. Did they know that four blocks away you could pay a woman for sex? That every drug under the sun was within throwing distance? Were they informed that just last week a man was shot and killed in the next neighborhood over? Did they understand that they were living in an oasis, separated from the cruelties of the real world that was just outside their doorstep?

At the end of this pocket neighborhood of wealth and prosperity, we approached the tall white arches that signified entrance into the City College of New York. Crossing through the arches always gave me that sensation of entering a bubble. Traffic was virtually nonexistent; only faculty members and students were allowed through the campus area, which consisted of two avenues and ten streets of blocked off New York City buildings. The architecture here was mostly late 1800's or early 1900's gothic theme, but some of the new buildings had that cube-like modernistic feel to them. One of the buildings, the North Academic Center (NAC for short) was designed by an engineer of prisons, so it looked like some sort of penitentiary for misguided twenty-somethings, and, as such, was perhaps the most accurate representation of what a college was. The combinations of these architectural styles bothered some of the more pompous New Yorkers, but I thought it was interesting. Much like the citizens of the city, these buildings had different backgrounds, ages, and functions.