🌃🍎 “Preface” (from BRONX NIGHTS) 🌃🍎

 

For a time, the working title of this book was A Retard’s Guide to Moving to New York. You may find this difficult to believe, but a few folks suggested I may want to rethink that.

 

I could try to make a case for the “R” word. Just imagine waking up one day after living a half-century, banging your head against the wall every five minutes for God knows why, only to discover—ta da! You have Autism and PTSD from childhood-related trauma.

 

Most people need some evidence to process how a fairly athletic, hulking man in his 50s with a decent career resume (even a few awards) and some activist and artistic accomplishments (no awards) could be such a colossal, fucking mess with respect to genes, life experience and overall perception of the world. At least I need eyeglasses now—they somehow make my reality more believable.

 

No matter your physique or salary, I kindly recommend you stand in a subway platform with busker beats madly echoing while a train goes flying by your face—after recently being force-fed the foie gras of my childhood. I promise you’ll be grateful if a good friend or aide is present to throw their hands like earmuffs over your ears and quietly mouth to your face, “Just breathe, it will be over soon.”

 

You are also cordially invited to spend an evening smoking cigarettes in the Bronx Detention Center with the former head of the Trinity Gang while your brain can’t stop searching for narratological patterns on the abused and pocked jailcell walls and floors.

 

Have a sausage works bagel the next morning back at home after the D.A. shows up at 2 a.m. to personally free you, and see if you aren’t feeling a wee in need of an exclusive word to describe yourself that no one the fuck else is allowed to use unless the shoe fits them too.

 

I don’t know if you can tell, but parts of my recent past are still a bit of a tender wound.

 

Anyway, then I briefly considered A Neurodivergent Person’s Guide to Moving to New York. Totally sucks. See, we Neuros really need a word that describes—whoa! That’s it! Neuros.

 

A Neuro’s Guide to Moving to New York. I don’t know. Neuro. New York. Gee, maybe I can slip Emperor Nero in there, and we’ll really have some chalkboard wordplay.

 

That said, hopefully we can all agree that Neuro is a much better replacement word for “R.” When I use Neuro, I’m basically describing the sum of my unique behaviors, perception of reality, idiosyncrasies, quirks, etc., that either are foreign to you or somehow align with you. You be the judge. You either are a Neuro or not.

 

As othering is a real thing, let’s be neighborly and assure everyone that whether or not you’re a Neuro, you’re still a loveable and love-capable human being. Hmm. There are some fairly nasty people in this book. Maybe we should defer that “everyone” a bit. I’ll circle back on the subject near the end.

 

Back to the title. I then toyed with Double-Fuck Long-Term COVID So Hard that it is Annihilated, but only after Spending an Inordinate Amount of Time Being Tossed About in a Camel’s Colon at the Bronx Zoo, which is not far, Coincidentally, from Where I Moved from South Carolina in order to Seek a Cure from this Cataclysmic Go-Double-Fuck-Itself-Again Condition.

 

A few folks liked this title, a few considered it a bit wordy.

 

Also, as you may have gathered, COVID and I aren’t much friends. We are in fact the nadir of arranged marriages. Or symbiosis, or whatever you want to call it. More on that, in time.

 

Dang. Well, I still need a title. And preface, for that matter. I cannot start writing a book without both in the can. It’s part of my process.

 

I also can’t start writing without making sure the apartment is perfectly organized, then a half-cigarette and some chocolate and maybe a toke—oh wait, gotta piss!—then make sure there isn’t any clutter strewn about—sigh, need to dust the desk, fold some socks—wait, did the cats get their treat?—okay, just let me water the plants, organize the items on the desk and in my periphery to make sure everything is at aesthetically-pleasing angles, crack my e’er arthritic knuckles, put my knee brace on three or four times, and off we go! Wait, something’s wrong. Where are my eyeglasses?

 

Ahem. Title. Well, my most successful book is Uber Nights. It’s a memoir about my rollercoaster rideshare adventures in the Deep South, a collection of humorous, poignant vignettes that paint the picture of what life…as a late-night Uber driver…is like…and come to think of it, I had Long-Term COVID the whole damn time I experienced and wrote that book! Then everything fell to clusterfuck pieces, and I met Alex—but that was only after Candy (Candace) tried to kill me—so I really started freefalling much earlier than that. Wait, didn’t I meet Candy just after I released Uber Nights?

 

Are you kidding me? This is a bloody sequel?!

 

At least that makes this easy.

 

Manhattan Nights. Nope.

 

New York Nights. Hmm. A few of those already exist, plus people will wonder why this book isn’t about the Arena Football League.

 

NY Nights. Too Netflix.

 

Well, I do live in The Bronx. At least until I get evicted.

 

Bronx Nights.

 

Now just add a nice skyline photo snapped from my rooftop. Bit of an “about” the author and book. Nice. At least I hope you think so.

 

Well, what are you waiting for? There’s no standing here! This is New York. Either turn the page or put me down.

 

But the Midwesterner in me really wants to invite you in with a smile for a cup of coffee and a tale or two.

 

Then again, who knows what the Neuro in me has in store for us both.

 

 

Arik Bjorn

March 2025

 

 

 

To follow Arik Bjorn on all his pages, please visit his LINKTR.EE 🔗.

 

To listen to Arik Bjorn read the “Preface” from his forthcoming book, “BRONX NIGHTS,” plus other chapters, visit his YouTube Page.

 

 

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