How We Live Now
Page 7
The news locally is both terrible and encouraging: Daily deaths in New York have fallen below 100, the lowest figure since the end of March, and the numbers overall are gradually going down. Even so: approximately 100 people a day are still dying from this virus. At least 30,000 New Yorkers have died so far.
I remember when it was only one person—just a couple of months ago.
We are obviously a long way from returning to any semblance of normalcy. The lockdown that was supposed to end in New York by mid-May has been extended into June, and, like everyone, I am climbing the walls here. But I also know I am among the most fortunate: I have a roof over my head, food in my fridge, and my health to be thankful for. So, if this is how we have to live—with masks and gloves and almost no human contact for several more months—then so be it, this is how we have to live. I want to see what’s on the other side of this fucking mountain.
60
Because what is is what matters most. What was will only make you blue in New York.
61
Today @ 3:04 P.M.
I get a text from Jesse:
“Babe”
“Babe,” I reply.
“Had a dream about you lol”
“Yeah?What do you remember?”
“Laughing and fucking”
“That sounds like us”
“I legitimately woke up laughing”
“I love hearing that”
“I loved feeling it”
“I wish I could have that dream,” I say.
Young Man with a Trumpet
April 30, 2020
POSTSCRIPT
In early March, when Covid-19 was the viral equivalent of a tsunami approaching, I started making notes about what I was seeing, hearing, feeling—noticing. This book soon began to take shape, and I wrote and photographed it in fewer than eight weeks. I aimed to provide a snapshot in real time of the early days of this crisis, and to preserve memories of a New York I saw rapidly disappearing.
Already, those early days—how we lived a mere two or three months ago—seem like distant memories. As I write this, the nation is in the throes of a long-overdue reckoning with our country’s systemic racism, ignited by the latest killing of a Black person by white people: the brutal public torture and murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers on May 25.
Just a few weeks ago, it was so quiet I could hear from my apartment birds singing and trees rustling. Yet right now I am surrounded by noise I can’t shut out by closing windows and doors: helicopters circling; sirens wailing; horns honking at the gas station as people fill up before the eight P.M. curfew; table saws cutting plywood to protect shop windows from looters; and gloriously, raucously loud protesters—most masked, some not—chanting as they march up Eighth Avenue by the thousands, blocking traffic on Fourteenth Street: “Whose Streets? Our Streets!” “Justice Now!” “Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!”
Suddenly, police are everywhere—on bikes, on foot, carrying batons and zip ties.
My eyes fill with tears, and I send a text to Jesse: “YOU matter to me—I hope you know that.”
“I love you,” he texts back.
I grab my camera, put on a face mask, stuff an extra one plus hand sanitizer into a pocket, and head out the door to bear witness. Curfew starts in just a few hours.
—June 3, 2020
New York City
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you:
Zann Erick
Emily Forland
Emma Hopkin
Tara Kennedy
Myunghee Kwon
Cindy Loh
Nancy Miller
Laura Phillips
Patti Ratchford
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
BILL HAYES is the author of Insomniac City and The Anatomist, among other books, and a forthcoming history of exercise, Sweat, to be published by Bloomsbury in 2021. Hayes is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times. A collection of his street photography, How New York Breaks Your Heart, was published recently by Bloomsbury. Hayes has completed the screenplay for a film adaptation of Insomniac City, currently in the works from Hopscotch Features, and he is a co-editor of Oliver Sacks’s posthumous books. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com.
AFTERIMAGE
Squad Cars on Patrol, Eighth Avenue
May 29, 2020
NYPD Clearing Protest on Fourteenth Street, 4:49 P.M.
June 3, 2020
Protest at Washington Square Park
June 8, 2020
Young Men on a Park Bench
June 8, 2020
Lynn—Lipstick Touch-Up
June 8, 2020
Cavier at Work on a New Mural
June 10, 2020
“Quarantine” by Cavier
June 10, 2020
Find Your Freedom
June 11, 2020
Boarded Up on Broadway
June 14, 2020
In Memoriam: Mural by @dpfstudio
June 14, 2020
“Do You Understand Yet?!”
June 14, 2020
Liberty!
June 18, 2020
New York City
June 18, 2020
Graffiti Artists in the Sky
June 18, 2020
How NYC Spells Love: Mural by Hektad
June 14, 2020
BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING
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First published in the United States 2020
This electronic edition published 2020 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text and photographs copyright © Bill Hayes 2020
Author’s note: some individuals’ names have been changed to protect their privacy.
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