I was thrilled to be a part of the July edition of the fantastic How I Learned Series, hosted by Blaise Allysen Kearsley (who you may see as a guest on Dale Radio very soon!). It was a terrific night full of stories about living in New York told by Bob Powers, Choire Sicha, Maris Kreizman, Blaise, and Sasheer Zamata. I thought I’d include the text of my story here, so you can see what it looks like before I perform it. It always changes slightly when I get up there – but here’s the blueprint that I work from:

HOW I LEARNED TO LIVE IN NEW YORK: PRAYERS FOR NYC
I used to get panic attacks every time I came to New York. Like crippling, stomach wrenching completely doubled over in agony, panic attacks.

I did not grow up in a city, but outside of one. And when I say I grew up outside of Philadelphia, I mean I grew up in an Andrew Wyeth painting. Stone houses, watercolor trees, white curtains blowing inside old barns. And we never went into the city, because my dad worked there all day doing construction so when he came home – after spending hours in traffic, he never wanted to go back in. Also I was not incredibly eager to go to the city, because I watched Fat Albert, and therefore I knew all about city life, which mostly involved hanging out in a junk yard and learning hard lessons about vandalism. And even though my best friend in the world was a heavy set African American kid with a funny nickname I just did not see a future for myself as a radiator player. I know it’s just a hot water bottle and a funnel and a heater, but I have no idea about the fingering on that thing. I imagine it’s like the bagpipes, which I tried to play once. Very difficult.

For awhile I did end up living in small cities – little training wheel places like Providence and San Francisco – and all throughout that time I would visit NY. Usually around Christmas time, and usually to try and go on what I always thought was a date. And what every woman I was on the date with thought was a meaningful way to deepen our friendship. Which is wonderful. I love friends. I have SO MANY FRIENDS!! I can’t say I blame them, because on every one of those ill-fated romantic journeys, I ended up desperately trying to find a public restroom or requesting that we just spend another minute sitting on a bench outside in the freezing cold because jut moving made me nauseous. How good can a date be when you spend forty minutes waiting in line for the toilet at the Union Square Barnes & Noble? Not very is the answer. Not very.

So then I met a woman in Los Angeles and she hated it, because she worked in reality TV and LA has enough going against it that if you work in a medium that requires you to outfit a cul de sac of homes for a program called Baby Borrowers, in which yes – actual human babies are loaned out to unfit teenage couples questioning their relationships – you’re going to hate it. She had lived in New York before and wanted to go back, so I said – give me a year. Cause I was going to marry her, and I did not want our first year of wedded bliss to be spent hunting for a men’s room at Jay Street Metro Tech. After the year was up, we came to New York for a job interview and to find an apartment.

Not being from here, I rented a car from Hertz at their 48th and 2nd Avenue location in Manhattan, in order to best explore rental units in Carroll Gardens. In retrospect, I think it was divine intervention that led me to midtown. Now I don’t know if I was just ready for it, or if New York was ready for me, but something happened when I slid behind the wheel of that baby blue Buick LeSabre. Again – I had been here many times – gotten lost on the subway – been felled by humidity – walked too far in new shoes, walked too far in too much humidity in new jeans– I had been chafed, blistered, and broken by this city and never wanted to live here. But when it was clear that I was going to – when the great Gods of Manhatta discovered I would soon be one of them, that I had given everything up to merge with the greater city-mind – I felt my fears melt…away.

We eased out of the subterranean garage and turned onto 2nd Ave – and I hit the gas. Normally, I am a very cautious driver. On this day, I accelerated through yellow lights, I swerved around public buses, anticipated taxi drivers turning left, bikers – I was Neo in the Matrix – I was on my way to see a woman named Edith from Staten Island who was going to show us a rental property next to the BQE! I was in a full on Billy Joel eating a bagel standing next to an open fire hydrant New York State of Fucking mind!

And I think in that moment – that moment of being accepted into the city’s own strange system, that I realized that this – this whole thing – is – underneath it all – a faith based organization. It was this overwhelming calm that I had given myself over to whatever was going to happen that made things ok.

And it made me also realize that to survive here one had to say little prayers every day. I would wager that we pray here more than anyplace on earth. If you had a drone that you flew over the city to absorb prayers it would explode cause it could not possibly contain them all. Just – boom. Like a super villain whose power it was to absorb stuff– they can always be defeated by simply giving them too much of whatever it is they seem to suck up.

So with this high prayer quotient in mind, I thought I’d share just a few of the prayers I say– just to get through a single day– in New York.

I pray that speck of dirt on my bed sheet does not have legs and feed on human blood.
I pray there’s no snake in the toilet.
I pray there’s no roach in my shower, because my friend Rebecca who, mid-rinse thought she was pulling a hair out of the hole in her sponge and instead it was an antenna.
I pray the cart has cinnamon raisin bagels, why do they always run out of cinnamon raisin bagels?
I pray the lights I see at the end of the tunnel do not belong to the trash train, cause I’m running late, because I like to watch the erotic tension between NY1’s Pat Kiernan and Jamie Shupak Stelter.
I pray that no one opens that metal subway door with the alarm. Why is that alarm there. No one cares about that alarm.
I pray I don’t have to help someone with their stroller down the stairs, not that I wouldn’t, but I don’t like being put in the position of being a bad person when I choose not to do it.
I pray that the subway car is not full, but also not empty, cause that means someone is using it as a toilet.
I pray that I don’t make eye contact with a beautiful person, because I have nothing to offer.
I pray that I don’t have to look in someone’s crotch and/or armpit.
I pray that the three guys on the F Train will realize that there’s not enough time between Delancey/Essex and 2nd Avenue to sing the entirety of This Little Light of Mine.
I pray that it’s ok that I never give money to singers, dancers, trumpet players, or people handing out old sandwiches. When I do decide to give to someone, it’s going to be big. I’m saving up. I want to make a difference. Just not every day.
I pray that any of the following won’t fall on me while walking to the office: plates of glass, crap from a pigeon, a whole pigeon, air conditioner water, an air conditioner, a person holding an air conditioner.
I pray that I will be exhaling when I pass the garbage behind Bobby Flay’s new restaurant. There should probably be a whole sub category of smell prayers – but let’s just say the same applies to the Gowanus, Abercrombie and Fitch, and the live poultry place on my corner.
I pray that I make enough money.
I pray that my rent doesn’t go up.
I pray that my wife doesn’t ask me how much that bottle of whiskey cost.
I pray that they never find out how much I write stories and comedy bits at work.
I pray that lunch will cost less than $15, and that root beer is not fattening, and this salad will taste better.
I pray that my lane number is called next at Whole Foods.
I pray that the free sample guy at Trader Joe’s doesn’t try to strike up a conversation with me.
I pray for my family’s safety and that keeping my wallet in my front pocket all these years was the right choice, cause now all my jeans have a giant wallet pattern on the front so that every mugger knows where I keep my wallet.
And finally I pray that we are in fact all connected and that we’re all working together in some cosmic way forward and that doing shows in front of 2 people is just as productive as doing shows in front of 100 and that everybody who says “ just stick to it” is right and that someday someone’s going to go back through all 12,500 tweets and realize what a genius I was and that someone will come to their senses and stop selling slim fit shirts and that my single friends find happiness and stop asking me what to do with their lives, and that they never move the fireworks back to the other side of the river and that I don’t have sleep apnea, and we all get a good night’s sleep cause we have to do this all over again tomorrow –
AND THAT’S HOW I LEARNED TO LIVE IN NEW YORK.

-JB, 2014.
Photo of me by Jesse Chan-Norris.