The sound of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” playing was enough to send her into a tailspin (maybe Liza Minnelli’s version would too, if it were ever actually acknowledged). She fucking hated that song. It made her escalatingly shudder and cringe with each passing verse. Almost as if she were having a seizure in response to it. She could start to feel herself spontaneously break out into hives as soon as “Ol’ Blue Eyes” was singing the second verse: “These little town blues are melting away/I’ll make a brand-new start of it in old New York.” Of course, Frank doesn’t bother to include the fine print that, soon enough, your “brand-new start” will become but a distant memory—not that you have much of a memory anymore after becoming an alcoholic due to the need to find the “cheapest” way possible to cope with the various stresses of living in “a city that never sleeps,” as Frank bills it.

Oh, it sleeps all right though. Violet found that out soon enough when she had to concede to waking up at four a.m. every morning to work at the only job that would hire her quickly enough. In other words, she schlepped to the Amazon warehouse on Staten Island every day at this ungodly hour so that she could help ensure that all the good capitalists of New York, no matter what their income tax bracket, got what they “needed.” For the word “need” is a lot looser in New York than it is in other places. For example, a person “needs” blackout curtains and rat traps.

Violet supposed the only silver lining was that she had managed to find a hovel of a room to rent in, of all places, the Financial District, just a stone’s throw from where she needed to catch the Staten Island Ferry. To her, it was the first of many ironies in her NY existence—living in one of the most expensive neighborhoods while toiling away on her proletariat’s “salary.” When she arrived back on Lower Manhattan soil at the end of her “day,” which concluded at noon, by one o’clock, she was posted up at the Nassau Bar, where she would remain until she was good and pie-eyed.

From there, she would stagger back “home,” which was no home at all of course, but when drunk enough, it didn’t matter. She didn’t notice. Hence, part of her need for getting so wasted (there, again, “need” takes on a unique definition in New York). It made it easier to live with her “situation”—that oh so euphemistic and general word that usually applied to a life that was, well, to use another euphemism, not quite how one had pictured it when they were younger, and full of hope.

This analogy, too, can be used for the “infancy” of one’s arrival in New York versus their “adulthood” (or even “geriatric stage”) in it. Initially full of hope—thanks to false propaganda like Sinatra’s “New York, New York”—they begin to realize that a move to New York isn’t always the solution to what everyone seeks to avoid: a humdrum existence that isn’t inevitably characterized by misery and boredom with “the way it is.” Which is, in part, why having this epiphany about how a place that has, for centuries, been touted as “magical” and the “end all, be all” is actually not the solution to avoiding life’s inevitable banality can be even more soul-crushing than having it in an “ordinary” town.

This is what happened to Violet—gradually, then suddenly…as Hemingway would put it. Hemingway would also say, “I drink to make other people more interesting.” Even if maybe it was actually George Jean Nathan who said that first. But Hemingway is the bigger name, therefore the one remembered for wielding the aphorism. One might say this is also a larger metaphor for New York itself. Those who cull what they need from it—more specifically, the artistic people in it—will use it in whatever work manages to get them famous. Take, for example, Madonna, who sponged up every facet of New York’s Downtown scene in the late seventies and early eighties to cultivate a look and sound that everyone was embodying at the time—it just so happened that Madonna was the one who got famous, therefore was the one credited with, like, “inventing” it.

Violet hadn’t come to New York for any one specific artistic goal. She just knew that she wanted to be around “creative energy.” That, surely, it must be preferable to the mundane non-ambitions of those who were complacent enough to remain in the small town where they grew up. Those whose only impulse it was to “get by” and make “enough money” to live as simply as possible. To buy a house (a.k.a. pay a monthly mortgage payment for most of their lives that amounted to still renting), afford groceries and maybe get a pet to help “dress up” the emptiness of it all.

But after enough months—and then years—spent in New York, Violet could see that things didn’t unfold any differently here. That, sooner or later, even the erstwhile creative types surrender to a life of so-called normalcy. A life spent working a steady job (whether in an office or in the lucrative-in-NYC service industry) and then settling down with someone, anyone after a certain period of “oat-sowing.” But they will still insist—still tell themselves—that the life they lead is inherently “better” than everyone else’s solely because they moved to New York City. And that was it. That was the extent of their “big accomplishment.” For them, it’s enough in the same way that it’s enough for small-town denizens to live in a small town. So what, then, is really the difference?

It took too long for Violet to have this revelation. One that of course arrived while sitting in her usual spot at Nassau Bar. After roughly her fourth vodka soda (yes, her preference was for a drink so “youthful” and “girly”). And her fourth year as an Amazon warehouse worker on Staten Island. This wasn’t the “creative energy” she had envisioned at all. Like everyone everywhere, she had fallen into a routine that had become a rut. But “New York” as a construct, concept and clusterfuck was supposed to distract from that. Sort of like the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz distracting people from his glamorlessness (i.e., total lack of magic) with all the pageantry of that giant head. All that sound and fury, signifying nothing. What had been the point of going this broke and this insane? So that she could take comfort in being able to convince herself, as Frank had, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”? What a crock of shit. Along with Frank chirpily singing, “It’s up to you, New York, New York”—yeah, up to you not to be an asshole, not to totally dash a person’s dreams and expectations. Which is utterly impossible for New York.

Although, when Violet first arrived in the city, she “got a kick out of” (to use the parlance of Sinatra’s day) hearing the song whenever it was played in public places, the more time wore on, the more it started to invoke within her a viscerally negative reaction. A Pavlovian response—but not the kind associated with positive reinforcement. When Violet managed to escape her job at the Amazon warehouse and get something a little more “dignified”—becoming a barista at Starbucks on 35th Street, right next to the bowel of Penn Station—she found that the song started to “materialize” much more often. It seemed to be a regular staple on this particular location’s playlist, catering as it did to the tourist set. A demographic far more susceptible to the “charms” of New York than those who, like Violet, had lived there long enough to see it for what it was: New York Shitty.

And yet, in contrast to those people who saw it for what it was, Violet wasn’t about to stick around and become a “lifer.” Not like those people who experience the revelation, yet still somehow believe they’re going to be “king of the hill, a number one” someday—if they just “stay the course” long enough a.k.a. continue to suffer needlessly in New York.

After about a year working at the Starbucks, listening to that song ad nauseam, it really made her want to get a t-shirt that said, “I Hate ‘New York, New York’” on it. So she did. What else was a Starbucks minimum wage for, after all? Certainly not to be able to afford rent on her increasingly untenable room. She decided to keep wearing it to work, in fact, until she had finally reached her limit of warnings about being “terminated” should she not adhere to the required uniform standards. So much for anything about New York being “punk rock.” Though that should have been obvious when she found that the only jobs she could get were at the locations of two of the biggest corporations in America. For that’s what New York itself was: a big old fucking corporation. With no heart and no character left to appeal to someone like Violet. Nor to make any of the lyrics to one of Sinatra’s “signatures” even slightly believable (though it amazed Violet that they ever were to anyone, let alone herself).

So it was that she finally found the “gumption” to quit New York after being fired from Starbucks. And she would sing to herself, “Start spreading the news: I’m leaving New York today. I don’t wanna be a part of it: New York, New York/These vagabond shoes are longing to go” as she packed up her scant few possessions—including the “I Hate ‘New York, New York’” shirt. The crowning jewel of what her hard-earned paychecks had gotten her.

And even though she escaped, sometimes, whenever that song finds its way into her ears (as it always invariably does), it all comes flooding back to her: how much she fucking hated that place. But more than anything, for beguiling her so shamelessly with such propaganda as “New York, New York,” the city’s proverbial siren song. Forever trying to beckon even those who fled to come back. Only to let them down anew like a lead weight once they take the city up on its trap of an offer to “be a part of it.” The “it” in question being mass delusion.