Annie wakes up late – always has. Due to the jet lag I was up at the crack of dawn, and lay on my sofa bed looking at my phone for, oh, a good two hours before I heard the usual high-pitched stretching yawn-screech that signifies Annie is awake. She stumbled through to the living room in a baggy black tee and tartan boxer shorts, her platinum hair mashed into a high David Lynch wave by her pillow.

“Sup boys. Did you sleep alright?”

After a lot of loafing and yawning, we got ready and left the flat for coffee. The streets around Bedford-Stuyvesant are very pretty – wide flat pavements and avenues lined with trees, leafy green branches reaching out to greet one another above the road. People sit on the grey steps of brownstones watching the day slip by, while corner stores with chaotic windows flash deals for snacks and energy drinks.

The coffee place was full of hipsters, bespectacled and queer, colourful and relaxed, chatting animatedly. I couldn’t help comparing it all to London – every person I saw, every interaction. My mixed feelings about the city bleed into every trip I take, my mind always venturing of its own accord down What-If Avenue, just left off If-Only Street. Maybe I’d be happier in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Maybe here I’d really thrive. But then of course, that’s the curse of the grounded itinerant: an enduring and caustic case of grass-is-always-greener syndrome. I thought when I was younger that a good stint of roaming would clear my system of wanderlust, but all it did was rearrange my synapses to believe that relocation is the solution to everything.

Tayler had made hot dogs when we got back to the apartment – mustard and ketchup over crispy onions and soft, sweet bread. I took a handful of Doritos, crunched them in my hand and sprinkled them over mine, thinking it a classically American thing to do.

“The fuck?” said Annie. “You put chips on your hot dogs?”

Apparently not. Tayler left for work soon after, and Annie and I headed out for the day. 

She’d planned a full day out in Brooklyn for us, along with facts she’d researched about the different neighbourhoods we’d pass through on our journey – an endearing response, I supposed, to when I did the same thing for her in London, two years ago. We took a train north a few stops and walked down Bedford Avenue towards McCarren Park, dipping into thrift stores and trying on jackets on the way as I wrestled with jet lag and sweated out the hangover. I was in quiet awe of the street – of all of it. The sun shone hot, and each red block was packed tight with an explosion of life and colour and gorgeous hipsters walking with captivating nonchalance. I saw nothing approaching a chain store – nothing cookie-cutter, nothing bland or hackneyed. The place felt so damn original, so potent in character.

Cities are a lot like people in that way. Yes, there’s the individual noise of the street, but zoom out and there’s a balancing effect – an overriding sense of character made up of the eighty thousand moments of the day unfolding far below. Taken as an average, a personality emerges – and, like people, the most alluring and charismatic cities are the ones with an unshakeable sense of self. Tourism dilutes this in many cities, slaps a fake catch-all smile on a place, trying to be everything to everyone to rake in the most cash – but New York retains its character in defiance of this, no fake smiles, no tip-me faux cheeriness. There’s a strange, we’re-all-independent-together community spirit you see across elevated train platforms, parks and choked sidewalks. Berlin had a similar feel. I suppose it comes from the ‘city of immigrants’ mindset – no one truly belongs, therefore everyone does.

I’d brought my film camera out for the day, snapping photos of sights that, to Annie, were completely baffling: a tree in a construction yard, an empty street, a rusting old car. To her, I suppose, this was just what streets looked like. I feel the same way watching tourists photograph dustbins in London.

We passed through McCarren Park, and I laughed to see the exuberance of Americans in America: baseball games, squash courts, family cookouts, a hundred sweaty runners doing laps around a running track, stoned loners with headphones watching clouds, topless calisthenics bros doing handstands on the grass. We’ve got busy parks in London too, dozens, but the energy is a world away. We’re smaller, back home – quieter, slower, more self-conscious. It’s funny – anybody who’s ever stayed in a hostel in Europe knows that when an American checks in, their presence fills the room; they take up space. It’s easy to mistake this as an arrogance – as though the bravado and the brashness are conjured specifically in response to interactions with foreigners. Turns out, that’s just how they talk to each other. There’s something in the water, State-side – a nation of movie stars.

On the far side of the park we reached Pete’s Candy Store, which is not a candy store at all but a saloon-style bar with wooden floors and walls. Annie had brought us there for the daily open mic set in the back, where local comedians come to test their material. We stepped behind a curtain to find a tiny, submarine-like room with a stage ringed with yellow bulbs at one end; the capacity for the whole thing can’t have been more than twenty, and it soon became evident we were the only non-combatants.

A bouncy theatre girl in dungarees played host, and half a dozen would-be comedians took the stage in quick succession and bombed one after another. Despite the best efforts of the host to keep things breezy, the atmosphere began to sour – each aspiring comedian too nervous or too proud to laugh at the others.

“Well, this has been the best gig of my life,” said a surly Egyptian guy as he stepped off the stage.

We left after finishing our drinks, accidentally timing our exit with the start of another set. Whoever was on the mic took umbrage.

“I hate walkers, man,” I heard as we made our way to the swing-door exit. “Why do people think it’s okay to jus—”

Whoosh – bam.

The door swung closed behind us, and we laughed guiltily on the pavement outside.

“Well they sucked,” said Annie. “Sorry man. It’s usually way funnier than that.”

“Ah, I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m just happy to be out and about.”

We floated through more bars after that, chatting about my improv classes and Brooklyn’s history and our attitudes towards wealth and corporate life. We drank at these bars: Metropolitan, Duck Duck, Boyfriend, and Happy Fun – I wrote down the names, but they all sort of blur together. The afternoon’s decor was all glitter, repurposed palettes, outdoor disco balls and stickers on walls – it felt homey and familiar, drawing me back in mind to endless lost nights in Heidegluhen and Sisyphos. Nobody looks at you funny in those sorts of places. The strange camaraderie of outcasts.

Having passed through Williamsburg and Bushwick in an increasingly jovial daze, we returned to Annie’s apartment, where she took me out onto the terrace and we climbed a fifteen-foot open ladder to the rooftop. Up there with the droning fan-vents, we stood and sipped bottles of beer in the breeze, talking slurrily, turning slowly like kebab spits to revel in the panorama – views rolling all the way to the long silver skyscrapers on the island. We took photos of one another, posing against the skyline.

Half an hour later we boarded the rickety train for Manhattan to grab dinner at Tayler’s place of work, a Japanese jazz bar in Greenwich Village. Now, at no point had Annie and I decided aloud that the day would be devoted to booze – but of course, as is usually the way with the first proper night of a foreign holiday (especially after two years apart) – we ended up roaringly, adolescently drunk. I have vague memories of the train ride there, a far off, muted pandemonium of scenes like watching a film screened at the far end of a train tunnel: racing each other flat-footed and goofy along the pavement, shadow boxing and testing each others pain thresholds with a lighter on the platform – the smell of burnt hair – games of slaps and knuckles in the train carriage, teetering all over without a free hand to hold the poles.

We emerged above ground in a haze of green and yellow light at West 4th Street, and I leaned against a wall of fresh posters and howled to find my jacket covered in transparent glue goo. Beneath the high brick terraces with their suspended fire escapes, I felt like a bee emerging groggily from a winter in the hive to find a meadow abundant with flowers. The Village sings at night – everybody outside, on corners or cafes or dining with windows open in second storey windows.

We stumbled into Tokyo Record Bar and took a table opposite one another. Tayler greeted us warmly, taking note of how blurry we were, then set our table with a couple of double whiskeys on the house – whether these were intended as an act of kindness or as a dare, I cannot say, but to me, knowing the effect it has on me, the gift of any liquor ever is always received with a pained nod more suitable to the receipt of a declaration of war. Culinarily we were pampered – wave after wave of Japanese-Latin fusion dishes, roe tacos and edamame salads and curious stuffed pasta things in a delicate creamy sauce that held me in awe.

Because haute cuisine serves only dainty portions, after thanking Tayler we headed out to finish up with a slice of pizza from a shop a few doors down, then I asked Annie if we could do something I’d always wanted to do, having seen it on television a thousand times: drink from brown paper bags on a doorstep. Annie obliged, and we sat outside a brownstone like scoundrels and talked woozy nonsense for half an hour.

“Okay, wanna get a beer for the train and head back?” said Annie, as we stood up to leave.

“Can you drink on the trains here?”

“Of course boys.”

I squinted. Annie rolled her eyes.

“Ugh alright, I mean, not technically, but we’re heading into Brooklyn, man. You just bag it up and nobody cares.”

“Alright,” I shrugged. “If you’re sure.”

We’d made it one stop on the train when the carriage doors opened to reveal two members of the New York Police Department standing on the platform, about to board.

We blinked at them, as their gaze lowered to the brown bags clutched in our hands.

“Okay. Step off the train, please.”

Feeling a muted rush of emotion, I stepped off the train beside Annie, both of us suddenly blushing and silent and serious, and stood in a square with the officers – one Latino, one Caucasian, both quite young, NYPD badges on their chests and guns on their hips.

“It’s illegal to drink alcohol on the train.”

“Sorry.”

“Can we see some IDs please?”

Annie handed her driving license over, and I admitted I didn’t have mine on me.

“Are you guys from out of town?” asked the officer, hearing our accents.

“I’m from Texas,” said Annie. “And he’s British, he’s visiting.”

“From London,” I clarified. “I just arrived yesterday.”

And then, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I added, solemnly:

“Really sorry. It wasn’t our intention to be naughty.”

Naughty? Whether this bizarre twee British-ism conjured some sympathy, or the officers were just in an affable mood, I can’t say – but they let us off with a warning.

“Thank you,” I said. “Apologies again.”

We dropped our drinks into a trash can and moved down the platform to exhale.

“Blimey,” I breathed. “I didn’t expect that.”

“Dude, I’ve literally never seen one cop on this whole train route before.”

“Yeah,” I said, watching a rat skirt along the track edges. “We’re lucky they were so cool about it.” 

Annie – incorrigibly immune to all forms of authority and punishment – took a different stance.

“Don’t they have anything better to do man? We weren’t hurting anyone.”

“They’re just doing their job,” I said. “That could have gone a lot worse. As far as I’m concerned, I’m calling this a win.”