I wrote this at the end of my first solo trip to New York in January, 2024.

I landed in New York a little breathless, with sleep in my eyes and a restless excitement stitched into the seams of my coat. January’s cold wasn’t polite. It’s the kind that clawed through your knit gloves and nerves like an old cat gnawing beneath these layers.

“CitizenM Soho, please. Thank you.”

That hotel became my favorite kind of loneliness. Something Blair Waldorf might have chosen to stage her Paris heartbreak in, because I’d discovered, after feeling depthless and glossed as patent leather, disguising my sadness in silk gloves wore well and looked almost intentional beside a Monet painting at the MET. The idea entralled me so much. On the twenty-first floor, the windows stretched wide like cinema screens, and below, the cobbled streets of Soho felt suspended in a theatrical hush. Everyone’s breath was visible in little white ghosts, and I watched a woman in a camel coat walk briskly past the cafe across the street. Then I slipped onto the bed that’s haloed in a soft light along the edges of its frame. The room blued into the skyline and I wondered where the morning had gone.

I needed to be somewhere soon, but God, that room was so sick in the best way. There were no switches and I could raise the blinds, dim the walls, and flood the bathroom with color and music all with a tap on an iPad docked beside my bed. You could not only change the bathroom’s colors but also its hues and sync it with music playing from your Spotify account. I’ve never had anything like this. I stood barefoot on the cool tile of the bathroom that morning, brushing my damp hair in the mirror. I never feel so much myself as when I take a hot shower. For nearly thirty minutes, I felt myself growing pure again over the jazz and push of New York.

I continued my day with a quick bagel and rushed to MoMA. I stared before paintings and stood for what felt like hours in front of Rothko’s red blur. In a nearby small gallery, I met a Polish woman whose smile arrived a little uncomfortably at first. It was not unsettling, but too kind and loving for a first meeting. I thought she'd mistaken me for someone else. Her hands were stained blue, likely paint, and she spoke softly of her art and the gardens she paints.

“You said your name is Christa?”

“Yes.” I said.

She nodded, “Oh, that’s a flattering name, like the light in winter. Nice to meet you, Christa, I’m the artist of this gallery.”

Her words were beautiful. I was too tired and my neurons were not working the way they were supposed to, but I immensely felt better after she described me as winter. It’s my favorite season followed by fall. The night before, I’d just been thinking about all sorts of things about the winter air here, staring at my reflection in the glossed apartment windows as if, to make sure, moment by moment, this is real. That I was going to New York the next day and hopefully I would get to see the first day of snow there.

Her words continued to sound like snowflakes. Maybe it was her accent that softened them. She had a french articulation with a really heavy cursive lilt. A very gentle woman in her mid-thirties working at The New Yorker, wearing an all denim jumpsuit inside a brown, furry long coat. But she spoke with such delicateness that made me feel very still, and very empty. I was masterfully drawn into her paintings and words.

A little later, she suggested another gallery in Chelsea, and handed me a poetry book by Szymborska. “Her poems,” she said, “are quiet enough to hear yourself think. Take it with you and shoot me a text if you are interested in The New Yorker sometime.”

I nodded and smiled and said thank you, though I had never liked poetry much, I was always too impatient for it, and The New Yorker never quite clicked with me. The only reason I remembered the poet’s name was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had read about mad people stuck in my mind while everything else flew right out.

—

Outside, I stared at the white sky. A few cloud puffs were traveling from right to left, and, as I sat there and watched, the cold tingling pain blurred into senselessness. I pulled my scarf tighter and a single pigeon limped in circles near my black leather boots. It didn’t seem afraid of me, and I found it cute like it had chosen me. These tiny encounters always seem to leave a very pure bliss on me. I watched it for a little longer and headed to Chelsea. It was 6pm and I wasn’t ready to go back to my hotel just yet.

I texted my mom: “Met a woman who thinks I’m like winter :0”
She replied: “That sounds right. Winter’s beautiful but she bites.”

I giggled. The wind lifted my coat and I buried the book somewhere into my bag.

I told myself I’d remember her name, the Polish artist. Unfortunately I didn’t, but I got her number in my notebook still, written next to my museum ticket in a blob of blue pen ink.

After Chelsea, I headed toward Greenwich like I knew where I was going. My boots hurt and I hadn’t walked this much in months. I met up with my Summer Program friend at the Ruby’s Cafe and slid into a corner seat by the window, cheeks pink and eyes glassy from the wind. I was flushed by sleepiness.

The host asked if I wanted water and I said no, got a cocktail called “Bitten Clementine” instead. Then my friend arrived. She’s blonde, stylish, taller than I remembered, and she sat down like two years and one pandemic after felt like nothing.

“Christa!” she said, grinning. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I smiled. “I’m close to falling asleep.”

We laughed, then waved the waiter over with a charm only city girls possess. I envied how fluid I become in this city.

“What have you been doing today?” she asked while stirring her drink.

“Walking. Freezing. Meeting people. Staring at clouds. Oh and shopping, look what I got today, isn’t this so cute?!”

“So… your usual. You know, you look so good for how tired you sound right now.”

“Yeah… it’s the dim lighting. Something with the air here too, maybe, I feel fine actually.”

We caught up like girls during recess breaks and at some point I told her about the book of poems, and she groaned.

“Christa, poetry? We were never in a poetry program.”

I shrugged, “Apparently I’m winter now. I need layers I guess.”

We laughed. I felt so happy and free. Life had given me a day borrowed from someone luckier than me.

We wandered back to the hotel carrying leftover fries and too many opinions. Her arm linked with mine and our boots clicking in sync. At the crosswalk, she said something hilarious and I swore I’d make fun of her forever but already forgot. Hah. But I know I smiled in a way that you’d only do when you’re warm down to your ribs. A very innocent and loving kind of happiness for being able to share small, silly moments with your friend.

She crashed at my hotel that night. We were totally, hilariously, and baliizardly wasted.

—

Day 2 in New York began the way all perfect hangovers do. Propped on the table I found a black ballpen with gorgeous silver metalings and a notepad scribbled with messy words. I somehow stole the front desk pen and woke up with blistered feet.

My friend dared me over brunch to go on a date every night. “For the plot,” she said, stabbing her fork into her French toast. “Be whoever you want. You’ll never see them again.”

“You’re literally a menace.” I didn’t agree with it but didn’t say no either, just sipping my iced chai latte and a plate of eggs benedict with smoked salmon. The yolk having burst perfectly like it… Cinema. Perfection. Yummmmm.

She grinned. “Okay I’ll text you where we’re going tonight after my class.”

—

We went to pilates together with her friends at 3pm. Then got ready together at my hotel, which conveniently was a few blocks away from our dinner reservation. First night: a double date with two guys from Brooklyn. One who claimed he is studying law and the other stating he sells ethically-sourced kombucha back at home in Korea. I told him I was a part-time flute player at Julliard, said I’m from Hong Kong and left the rest factual. My friend said she is a young actress in Singapore, then showed Michelle Yeoh as her aunt, and literally continued her plot of being an upcoming celebrity. Ugh I love her. When dinner ended, they offered to go to a high-end bar somewhere in Manhattan, but... we ghosted them.

Second night: finance boys.

One looked like he hadn’t cried since birth, the other looked way too young to be his age so we were really confused. We were still tripping out of our minds knowing that they were somewhere within our ‘type’ of men. The realization was hilarious and we avoided as many eye contact as we possibly could. I pretended to be from Marseille. Said I was only in New York to experience fashion from a “Western capitalism tragicomic angle.” I had absolutely no idea what that meant and if it made any sense. To my right, my friend choked on her water as I continued piecing this absurdist Euro-girl monologue.

Tonight I was braver and she was proud that I went on a pretty diabolical whim. The guys nodded like that made sense. A minute later, he asked if I liked oysters.

“No, I prefer not to have any oysters.”

I love to eat oysters. Passionately. Why did I say that.

We debriefed in the bathroom and my friend was head over heels for her date. “Come on, Christa, please. Just two more hours and we can go back to your hotel. I mean, you’re only in New York once a year, please? I promise, two more hours. I'll do anything you want tomorrow.”

"Fine." It’s hard to reject someone who’s having a good time, especially someone I loved seeing smile.

I chugged a Red Bull vodka and pocketed a matchbook from the restaurant, then made her swear that she wouldn’t be in too deep and that when the time hit 12am we were leaving.

Well.

Turned out we were both more than tipsy, and I knew somewhere between my slur and sip, continuing the night would be fatal for my storyline. Naturally I sabatoged it. I shamelessly blurted out that I’m actually from the Bay Area and only agreed to this date over a dare with my bestie.

“You know how old I am?” I asked. “Everything has to be for the plot while we’re young,” I added with the kind of baseless introspection that sounded so wise after vodka and rum. He smiled and reciprocated the same kind of drunken philosophy.   

“It’s like- the song Fast Car by Luke Combs. Do you know that song? Life needs to be like that. So how old are you?”

“I’m twenty-two. From Hong Kong. Never talked to anyone from New York, but I like the city. It’s in my blood and it will always be.” I almost launched into a full monologue before he interrupted.

“Oh shit. I’m twenty-six. From Singapore. I went to college here and live here ever since.”

To my surprise he didn’t bolt. He found it… bearable?

I almost fell over. I still couldn’t believe his age. Twenty-six? He looked twenty-three, max. He was definitely not from Singapore too because I know the accent very well, so I carried on about how I speak languages and how I insisted on using all of them at once just to verify if he’s really from Singapore. I kept going and he said something clever, I think. Then I asked him about his past relationships and situationships. We exchanged stories of insane people with such intensity that I found it hilarious and almost therapeutic. He talked about the hard times in his life. He was proud of how he got through them, and at that moment, I felt my body freezing up because I felt like I had to open up too. It wasn’t his fault that I got uncomfortable. He barely knew me. Of course he’d ask questions. But God was on my side because right then and there, the clock struck midnight. I sprinted off to find my friend, who ended up crashing another night at my hotel.

—

Somewhere between the second cocktail and the third stranger calling me mysterious and funny (wait- this made me cringe writing it ahahaha.. God forbid a girl who writes her life out- this… is literally so #pretentious looking but it’s okay… i’m just a girl with lots of words… ), a version of myself quietly evaporated. I didn’t notice until now, on my last night here, that the people I met on these unrepeatable nights actually offered better suggestion and curiosities about me than most people in my life ever had. There were lots of conversations about music, travel stories, obsession with douhua and fries, childhood fanatics, cultural difference between the East and West, how I was raised, how they were raised, and more unspeakable ones that felt extremely comforting and intruguing to talk about and be a part of.

Maybe it’s because people I meet back at home still imagine me as a girl who dabbles in glitter and softness. They don’t know I sports bet, I like long walks in museums, I ferment my own wine, I obsessively loves to write. And that anything I liked that becomes mainstream immediately turn into things I dislike. And I LOVEEEE Billie Eilish so much I could die for her. I am a loyal person and friend, but I leave people when I feel disrespected. I care more about a moral compass than our history. I love people who genuinely love their lives, with not an ounce of bitterness in them. Because, well, bitter people spread bitterness and hurt people hurt people. Those are my two beliefs.

And the loss of needing to be perceived here in the big city feels like shedding skin. I’m looking at the mirror and finally seeing myself staring back happy and free. Someone who attracts only people I genuinely respect and can meet on different levels. People here are simply so authentic and cool. It’s friggin amazing. It’s sick. I’m so sick.

But the past version of me projects something so different, in memory, that I am deep and thoughtful, and I guess, I still am that way but I think I want to be known with a lot more layers than that. And I don’t want to be known as just that. I want to be rightfully insane. To dress like a slut when I want and be a classy rich girl when I can. Duality is driving me nuts but it's the happiest thing I can embody. I want to speak up when someone irritates me slightly and also cheer femininely on champagne in a sundress and kitten heels over some superficial success like I grew up doing in Hong Kong. And in New York, right now and then, I was able to be whatever I wanted that truly felt like myself and find my crowd so effortlessly. There was never one conversation I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.

—

The next day, I visited a cafe in West Village with ivy crawling up its brick wall. I was wearing a tight ribbed sweater in heather grey, black jeans, and a beige coat over some killer black boots. My earrings and necklace were extremely dainty on purpose. I smelled like Byredo’s “Mojave Ghost,” which made me feel luminous and feminine.

She sat next to me at the counter. Kate. She had a soft blonde bob and chrome nails that looked expensive. She reminded me of a young Anna Wintour. “I like your boots,” she said, without looking up from her cappuccino.

I smiled awkwardly. “Thanks. They’re killing me.”

“Good boots always do.” She looked at me fully then, eyes lined in something smudgy. “You visiting?”

“Sort of. Soul-searching to be real with you.”

She snorted. “I did the same, I escaped my hometown. It was like... living in a white-walled city filled with families. No scent. No spark. No story. Just babies everywhere.”

She leaned her elbow on the vintage green marble table, her fingers tracing lazy circles around her cup. She kept talking about how life was before she moved here and how much she missed her sister and their mischievous family dog called Brody.

We ended up talking for two hours. Turned out she was a fashion editor who freelanced after leaving a glossy magazine job that chewed her up day and night. I confessed my guilt over traveling for spending too much. My family had warned me about this and called me reckless. They weren’t wrong, I couldn’t even justify it myself, especially since I’d just been in Los Angeles a month ago.

Kate stirred her cappuccino like she was mixing potion, and I couldn’t take my eyes off how long her silver chrome acrylics were.

“Well, you’ll waste your life at somewhere safe and uninspired,” she said.

She said it as casually as pointing out a headache.

That day, I didn’t go shopping. I walked the High Line until dark and wrapped my hands tight in my coat next to Kate. Then I ended up at some showcase in Brooklyn that she invited me to. It was wildly creative, somewhere between a fashion exhibit and a concept space. The venue was a parking garage on one side and a cute jazz bar on the other. Cray.

There were ballroom gowns hanging and models all over the venue, delicate silks and tulle in shades of moonlight, deep wine, and obsidian. Some were embroidered with glass beads, others had trains that spilled over staircases with lace and sheen. The models wandered the space slowly in satin heels and diamond jewelries. It was impressive and busy, filled with chatters and people dressed in fashionable ways. I had a conversaion with someone who seemed like my age about how the exhibit symbolizes an “exorcism of the feminine”, something I pretended to understand.

I stayed until closing.

If I were smarter, braver, harder-working and less sentimental, I’d live here. I wouldn’t mind signing a cheap lease on the spot in the Harlems and suffer through rent and rodents. But I’m still working on the bravery part and I still care too much about sentimental things back at home.

I spent my entire allowance, again, not on Prada or fine dining, but on entry tickets, on chai lattes and on the subway. Then on museum bookshops, on stupid little things I like to collect, on my fancy dinners and bar expenses with Kate and some her friends and my friends. It wasn’t responsible. At. All.

—

The next day, I withdrew some money from my savings account. I usually never touch it, it is forbidden to and quarantined in a separate bank account on a separate app. I purposely made it inconvenient and deliberate to access so that i, um… had to think twice.

But I did not think twice. I was in an emergency.

To make myself feel better, my father would have done the same at my age and in my shoes, and unless I told him myself he’d never know, I thought.

It was early morning, around 7am, and I hadn’t been able to sleep well. I had just stepped out of my first store when a voice absolutely terrified me.

“Are you lost?” a man asked.

I wasn’t. And holy- I nearly stepped out of my skin. I flinched so hard I forgot there were poeple behind me.

His voice was not loud but it was extremely low, subterranean to say the least. It sounded like what you would hear echo in a tunnel at the start of a horror movie. Lol. I turned, already tensing.

“No, I’m just standing,” I nodded once and said. He was tall with the dense build of someone who’d resemble Steve Adams. I felt like a dandelion next to him, featherlight and startled. I hated how small my voice sounded. I never felt great about my voice, of how it curled inward and even piercing sometimes when I’m nervous. Sometimes it even sounds soft, like I’m flirting or speaking in a baby voice.

He didn’t leave after I answered. I could tell he was trying to figure out if I was alone and parsing the edges of how alone I looked. Creep. So I blended into the passerbys swiftly. I forgot to be enjoying the morning after how terrible I slept last night. But that’s New York for you.

I sat outside in the early sun after that. It was not warm at all, but the light was gold and carressing like honey. I read the gifted poetry book by Szymborska with an overpriced tea. My diamond ring caught the light as I flipped through the pages.

The truth is, I didn’t enjoy this book, but I enjoyed the heartfelt feeling that came with it. I love reading for many various reasons. Apart from the knowledge itself, I like the shape of a book in my hands, the sound of pages being turned, and the gesture of reading. It’s so poignant and elegant.

At the same time, I could really feel how this book was gifted with a gentleness from the Polish artist. Her softness was well received even if the words failed to move me.

She was right. The book is so quiet it draws attention inwards, until all I can hear are my own thoughts while reading it.

I guess that’s why I finished it in one seating.

And here I am again, sitting in front of my laptop with my fingers tapping fast. Trying to write everything about this trip down until it’s all exhausted out of me. The experiences, the encounters, the way the world shaped itself into a classroom just for me.

And I get it now.

The world is my classroom. Probably, and actually, no. It’s definitely the best one any human could ask for. And I hope I can keep doing this as long as I want, as long as it keeps teaching me.

—

Now, tea is cooling beside me and my boots are crossed at the ankle. I’m sitting at the hotel lounge of CitizenM Soho. CYANIDE by Daniel Caesar is playing through my AirPods. I feel thankfully clear. Tomorrow I’m leaving this city behind, and I feel like I had finally stepped into a version of myself who is sharper. Someone with more layers than a glossed, depthless patent leather.

This trip went beyond my expectations. I met some really cool people, and I am very grateful for the people here.

Happily fulfilled,

Christa