From each sublet─the one in the Ansonia building that smelled of mothballs and had fake Picassos; the East Village walk-up with the bathtub in the kitchen; the Barrow Street two-bedroom with padlocks on the kitchen cupboards─I took a piece of that person's life and held it up against my own. At night in all of these borrowed beds, my own idea of home started to take shape.
Eventually, of course, I got my own apartment, and then left the city and moved into my own house. When I think back to my first night in Manhattan, on the door that served as a bed in that tiny Sullivan Street apartment, I remember how frightened I had been─of the city, of the grief for my dead brother that I had carried there with me, of the new love I thought I'd found. I remembered longing for even one thing that was mine, something I could hold on to through the long night. I didn't know it all those years ago, but I had come in search of a home. And I had found it on plywood and futons and all the other pieces of lives I borrowed as I, bit by bit, built my future.
30年前,我乘坐美国全国铁路货运公司(Amtrak)的火车抵达了纽约宾州火车站(Penn Station),一下车,扑面而来的是燥热的空气和恶臭。我手里拎着一个巨大的垃圾袋,里面装满了我的衣服。
我蓝色牛仔裤的前袋里塞了1,000美元,那是我所有的积蓄,后裤兜里有一张纸条,上面潦草地写着一个地址:苏利文大街( Sullivan St.)228号。
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