ME & NEW YORK CITY: BACK ON! BUT WILL IT LAST?

I can't seem to stop surprising myself. After nearly two years of declaring myself totally over New York City, I'm starting to feel a little bit homesick. Good thing, too, because I will be back in the Apple in exactly two weeks (after a side trip to Rio for Carnaval).

It started yesterday when I was looking at NYC rental apartments for my friend Jeff and me. Although I will be spending most of my time in New York with my friend Lori, Jeff, whom I met in Buenos Aires the week I moved here, is going to fly in from St. Louis my first weekend in town so that we can hang out together in our native country for the first time ever.

Looking at apartments in various neighborhoods made me feel a twinge of nostalgia for the old days. But even more surprising than that is that I found myself gravitating toward the pads in Hell's Kitchen, a neighborhood that I was loathe to go out in four years ago much less sleep there. (Sorry, Cara!) I hear it's NYC's new gay village. Maybe that has something to do with it.

That peaceful, easy homesick feeling returned today while I was watching an episode of Seinfeld. Though the NYC-based sitcom was filmed in L.A., it's humor was quintessentially New York, and as I watched (it was the episode where Poppy peed on Jerry's couch), I suddenly had a craving for a New York City slice.

Here in BA, the pizza is pretty hit and miss (mostly miss). I think it's because they use too little tomato sauce or none at all, making it, essentially, bread with a slab of melted mozzarella cheese on top. One of the first places I'm hitting when I get into NYC is St. Mark's Pizza in the East Village. It's been way too long.

Since Seinfeld, little things keep setting me off on my New York nostalgia trip. An email Lori sent me today about the death of Days of Our Lives matriarch Frances Reid (may she rest in peace) reminded me of all those weeknights spent in front of the TV watching a five-hour block of my daytime soaps (Young & The Restless, Days of Our Lives, All My Children, One Life to Live, General Hospital) on SoapNet. These days, the only one I keep track of is One Life to Live, which I watch on YouTube. It's not the same.

Now I'm hungry for cashews, a scrambled egg and cheese sandwich, grape juice, cranberry juice, which I don't think even exists in South America. I want all of the things I've been missing for three and a half years but hadn't realized just how much until today.

Will my rekindled romance with New York City last? Don't count on it. I'm sure once I've had my fill of all of the above Manhattan treats, I'll be more than ready to move on to my next stop: London!