NQ. Thank You.

Every true New Yorker has an abusive relationship with the MTA. We all hate it, spend an exhorbitant amount of time trash-talking it, whine and scream in frustration and anger when our train fails to show up or depart on time. But despite the hate, we all use it. Rely on it. Need it. Grow fiercely defensive if anyone out-of-state trashes our subway system--we even grow defensive if another New Yorker attacks our specific, frequented line. That’s our headache, no one who doesn’t deal with it daily is allowed to say anything bad about it.

For me, it was the NQ. I took that line at least twice daily, seven days a week, for four years. I knew all of its frustrating quirks. How for a while, it wouldn’t run between Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center and Prospect Park after 9:30 pm--a misfortune I always encountered, having rehearsals until 10pm. How there was a period where it stopped running entirely at Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center, so I had to take a shuttle bus there to catch my train. How that was always the case over weekends, so I had to leave two hours early to get to make it to my gig. There was even a time where the train suddnely stopped running, no shuttles were provided, and when I asked an MTA worker if there was any way to get to my stop they said, ‘no,’ so I had to turn around and go all the way back into Manhattan, and then take the L back into Brooklyn to crash at a friend’s place.

Due to the Covid-19 virus, I left New York and was fortunate enough to return to my childhood home in Massachussetts, in a small town where nothing much happens. I’ve been back here for 10 months, still paying rent on my New York apartment in a misguided attempt to hold on to my independence. Recently, I had to come to terms with the fact that financially, I couldn’t afford to keep doing that, and officially gave my month’s notice. I do have a summer gig in New York (assuming it doesn’t get pushed back again due to the pandemic), as well as a plan to move in with my best friend in the summer. I’m not saying goodbye forever, but it’s hard to grasp that emotionally.

Weirdly, the thing I’m going to miss the most is the NQ. So much so that I almost cried about it--and I’m not a person who cries very often. It’s not that I’ll miss the headache it gave me...I won’t. But that was my train line. I knew it. I bonded with it. Most of all, there was one thing in particular that I loved about the NQ. It had to go over a bridge to get between Brooklyn and Manhattan. At night, I would get a view of the city, the pier, and the other bridge all beautifully lit up. No matter how tired I was, if I had dozed off, I instinctively woke up in time to catch that view. It meant a lot to me.

New York City is a hard place to live, and stage managing is an emotionally and mentally taxing job. The city, the noise, the pollution, the thousands of people who couldn’t care less about you...it can be soul draining. Stage managing is a high pressure, thankless job, where you’re given no artisitic say and are expected to manage a three ring circus worth of logistics. There were so many times I would question why I was there, what I was doing, if I really wanted any of it.

That view of the city at night that the NQ gave to me daily was soothing, reinvigorating, and inspiring. It reminded me of why I was there, what I was trying to accomplish, that I was living in a place where so much happened every day. A place full of millions of stories, and that it was allowing me to build my own story. That view fed my soul. Knowing that I’m saying goodbye to the NQ and that night cityscape has been the hardest thing for me...harder than saying goodbye to my first apartment and home for four years.

I’ll be moving back in the summer, I know that. But odds are it won’t be along the NQ train line. I’ll have a different set of abusive MTA headaches to get to know and bond with. My only hope is that my new trainline will at least give me a gift similar to my old one, along with the frustrations.

Thank you NQ. And Goodbye.

#NewYork #MTA #NQRW #Covid19 #Personal #Opinion #NonFiction #Reflection