I've gone abruptly from fuck high heels and bras I will never wear them again, to man, I miss uncomfortable lingerie and fancy heels because they remind me of my great big filthy hot 25-year marriage to New York City..

Thing about New York City, is that you can wear fancy lingerie as normal daywear, and nobody even blinks, and also, if you wear great high heels, someone will carry you up the subway stairs just because you're adding to the mood of the city. It's generous like that.

I mean *also* there are the day where you hobble five miles on cobblestones, and the ones where your skirt splits because you thought you could vault over the three foot deep puddle that was waiting for you, and I still fucking love NYC.

There's plenty of awkward, plenty of ugly, plenty of hell no to go around in NYC, and there are also plenty of times I've gotten to walk down the street in a $3 dress, and been queen of the city for that moment. It's a great, great place.

As well, NYC is the only place where a girl from Idaho can appear, having never been there, and within a few weeks, be looking over the city from a very strange penthouse personal assistant job, while spending the weekends dancing topless in a queer club.

And though the above sounds questionable, it's actually a perfectly normal NYC existence. I was going to college at the time, so part of my time was also spent downtown studying Byzantine history and playwriting. But it was bookended by latex skirts and high society fundraisers.

Back to the original tweet, in 25 years of NYC, there really was never a time when I thought I didn't belong there. I wore cowboy boots & ballgowns to work & people just shrugged & put on their own wigs made of fake flowers, & went about their business.

Anytime I've seen a New York is Over article in these 25 years, which I've seen a million times, my ears have gone flat, and I've hissed. New York isn't over. New York is just evolving, which is what it does all the time.

I owe New York my career as a storyteller. I owe New York my high levels of no fucks to give, which have been very useful in a profession full of rejection. I owe it my life, repeatedly saved by strangers, and my certainty, repeatedly bolstered by people I met on the subway.

I've been freezing in New York, weeping in New York, broke in New York, deathly sick in New York, madly in love in New York, the toast of the town in New York, the littlest unknown in New York, & the whole time, I've been a New Yorker, even when I didn't technically live there.

New York is not a fundamentally comfortable city. That's not its nature. It has nothing to say to sweatpants. It is uncomfortable heels and stabby lingerie, and smeared lipstick and gigantic whoops and hollers. It is unlikely friendships and cackling laughter.

It's a city where - this happened to me - you can get invited into a stranger's funeral just because you walk past looking good, and at the funeral there's a huge dance party celebrating the dead, and a decade later, you're still friends with the people you danced with there.

In conclusion: NYC is a city that can build family out of nothing, a city that can dance at funerals in celebration of lives lived, and a city that can take anyone and keep them close. This is just a Saturday morning love letter to a place I love.