"Why are you staying here anyway?"
"Because it feels right."
"Like an addiction. I don't drink too much. I don’t do drugs no more. I try to get through. But I need the city."
"Despite all the trouble."
"I tried to live elsewhere. Louisiana, Florida. Places were dumps. You get the sun and warm winters, that's true. But it didn't feel like home. It didn't feel like home."
"How long have you been there?"
"I don't know. Seventeen, eighteen years. I came back in 99. I wanted a real slice of pizza so I walked from North Carolina."
"I hitchhiked for a couple of days, then I took a train with a guy who had been traveling from Texas. Then I walked."
"All the way up to New York."
"All the way up. It was better than staying in the swamps."
"You were living out of the cities."
"I had a cabin in Florida. Found it abandoned, half crumbling. Used to fish and hunt for a while. Fixed the roof, even. But the damn mosquitoes and the heat, man."
"I went back here. First thing I did was eating a frank with sauerkraut and mustard. Tasted wrong but felt right."
"How did you fare with winter?"
"I did better than some. A man I knew died near the tracks under Riverside Park. Another lost his leg."
"Yeah. I lived there with a community of about a dozen people. Some of them used to work and got up early each morning to shower at the public baths. An older guy borrowed an apartment every time his kids came to visit because he didn't want them to know. There were couples. Only things we didn't have were running water and electricity."
"There was sick shit going on. People eating rats. I've seen dead bodies left alone for weeks until someone dragged them outside for the Amtrak workers to pick them. Sometimes we heard a baby cry."
"We made fires. I stayed in an alcove by myself so I could get some rest and stock on food, you know. Had a real bed and a nightstand all dragged from the streets. This woman had a whole shelving structure in her place, all neatly organized like in a regular apartment. There were thieves from time to time, so I had to get a knife to protect my things."
"It must have been scary living here."
"Not that much. We had a whole system made of pipes to communicate between us. I was always bringing stuff from the trash. Cinder blocks to make walls, framed pictures, rugs. I got in fights. Mostly drunks coming out of bars or kids trying to steal."
"Were they other groups besides yours?"
"About a hundred, maybe more."
"All there in the tunnels."
"All there. It wasn't bad. It was temporary, I thought."
"My sister. She worked in a school in the Upper East Side. She came to see me, once. I met her in a pizza joint on 93rd but she didn't talk too much, you know. Two kids, tow boys. Husband was a retail manager. I remember I paid for the pizza. It was a long time ago."
"I didn't want her to get involved. I heard she was looking for me after that, but I never spoke to her again. My life is my life. I am who I am. I don't need help. She seemed to be doing fine, that's all that matters."
"I didn't want my mother to know I was back. She was starting to lose her mind at this time. It would have been too difficult. My father passed when I was little, but my mother – I didn't want her to know. My brother and my sister took care of her. I don't know if she's still alive. She was a good woman, always trying her best to keep us together. She was a real good woman. Real good."
"That's why I feel at home here."
"Did you stay in the tunnels for long?"
"The city opened a few rooms at the 95th Street shelter. I moved there for a while. It was terrible. I left as soon as I could. Some nights I didn't even sleep there. It felt safer in the tunnels."
"There were gang rapes in the bathrooms, man. Children running with syringes in the halls. Girls beaten everyday. Thugs coming in the rooms and trashing everything to find dope or money."
"Kids living in there. Six or seven in a room."
"I did. Went back to the tunnels. Then I got a job. I was handing flyers to tourists in Times Square."
"Enough to get an apartment with three other roommates in Astoria. It was great. I could watch TV. I could see the city from my window. Easily the best two years I had here. Then one of the roommates moved out to live with his girlfriend. The lease was in his name, so the landlord renewed it and the rent went way up. I knew I wouldn't be able to stay on my income alone. So I started selling crack cocaine."
"Then it got out of hand."
"I started to test the product. I got hooked so fast. So fast."
"Did you manage to pay the rent?"
"I got busted by the cops after three months and got evicted."
"I was smoking like a motherfucker. I was really messed up. And it all happened so quick I still don't understand how – that thing fucks you up so bad you don't know who you are anymore."
"They say it's worse than anything else."
"I didn't even feel better. Time just passed slower. My thoughts were like frozen. I knew it was going to kill me but I couldn't do anything to stop. I smoked more and more and more, until I woke up in Lenox Hill's ER after almost a full day of coma."
"They gave me methadone and let me on the loose."
"Not enough rooms. Not enough doctors. I had to OD two other times to get to a methadone clinic. A nurse sponsored me because I was being a danger to myself and they had this test program to run."
"I'm supposed to be dead, you know. I'm not supposed to be breathing right now. I'm some kind of ghost."
"You're there in the end."
"The city didn't want me gone."
"She didn't want me gone. I need her, so maybe she needs me. Maybe that's part of her plan. With all the noise and the smells."
"Maybe it's her way to tell me she loves me."
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