I watch as two helmetless tourists on Citibikes navigate gracelessly around a bus and cruise through a red light.

“This isn’t fucking Disneyland,” I growl to my companion.

I’m frustrated by the tacit elevation of their presence. The bus is part of the backdrop, a 2-D artifact of the place-they-are-visiting. Citibikes and intersections and stoplights exist primarily for their amusement, like a facsimile of a castle on a facsimile of the horizon. Nothing can happen to them. Nothing they don't want.

Then again, this version of the city might be real for a visitor with money-to-spend. The realization settles over me with palpable obviousness. Duh. Money is what allows one to navigate—gracefully or not—around the city’s unique obstacles. Take cars everywhere. Nice hotels and conveniently-located apartments. No quick tallying up of the prices on the menu to see if you really want to get a drink and an appetizer.

But, yeah, regular people live here too. Perhaps with an extra dose of yearning. We've all heard that before. I’m reminded of famous lyrics by a famous pop star:

Only someone with money unspendable, someone who can leave and return from renovated Tribeca penthouses, could write this song. The real feeling of coming to New York is that it was not, was never, waiting for you. One more person on the train. The city does not anticipate the arrival of special souls. It does not relish in doling out rewards.

The window in my bedroom looks out onto a small courtyard, which contains the accumulated trash of everyone who lives in my building. Each night, as I’m falling asleep, the motion-sensor light installed above the door in this courtyard illuminates all attempts at darkness, even the private darkness behind my eyelids. I’m blinded. Goodnight. To not be blinded is simply the result of being up too high; out of range of the light.

The freedom is not to finally feel like you belong here, but to realize that you don’t. You’re here because you needed something. You waited. Welcome.