Where New Yorkers Got Their Hearts Broken, 2
"He’s gay now and I’m married to a wonderful guy!!!”
Hi everyone,
This is the second installment of an ongoing project mapping heartbreak in New York City.
I’d be remiss not to say, at the tippy top, that these responses carry a lot of love and a lot of pain. This story in particular talks a lot about death. Please take care of yourself!
If you’re curious how the project came to be, here’s the first installment.
Once again, I can’t thank those who shared their stories enough. And if you’d like to add your own, you can submit yours anonymously here:
“Bar Tabac in Carroll Gardens. My boyfriend from my early 20s used to take me there and it’s where we fell in love. I hadn't had much ‘fancy' food before, and I remember thinking it was so chic to have these long, casual dinners, summer nights, eating outside. I remember feeling like I could do anything.
He passed by suicide later and doesn't have a burial site, so I think of it as the place where I go to visit and talk to him.”
“There’s a stoop on Lafayette St where a girl I was wild about and I broke up. Rode past it every night from work for years and years. Took me a long time to not need to make an effort not to look.”
“Got broken up with over text working a costumed job in Times Square…”
“I struggle with the East Village and, in particular, Veselka.
My brother, who was also a journalist, had an internship with the NY Daily News in 2012 and we spent many late nights eating pierogies and drinking beer there. Life felt like it was teeming with possibility that summer. He died in 2017.”
“The Strand Book Store in Greenwich Village. I went there on a date with my ex-boyfriend in our first two months of dating. On the bottom floor, there’s a little alcove where couples inscribe their initials and the date. We did that together with a red Sharpie. I go back there sometimes, I crouch down next to the heart and cry for a bit. He’s the greatest love (and loss) of my life.”
“I used to date this guy who lived in Red Hook before he recently died. I avoid it purposefully. Horny and sad thinking about it right now.”
“In my senior year of high school, my first boyfriend and longtime childhood crush stood me up at The Angelika Theater, where we were supposed to see Call Me By Your Name. His friend told me that it was because I took too much effort. I saw the film alone that night and sobbed dramatically on the train home to the soundtrack by Sufjan Stevens. We still went on seeing each other and he was my ‘first,’ until he said he wasn’t ready to be exclusive. Then that summer after we graduated, my best friend admitted she had been secretly sleeping with him the whole time. Still love the Angelika though!”
“I got dumped on the 456 platform at 59th street after a Yankee game ☠️ he’s gay now and I’m married to a wonderful guy!!!”
“Junior’s, at the corner of Dekalb and Flatbush. Almost a decade ago I had an abortion at the women’s health clinic across the street. It was an easy decision and I had little to no feelings about it. As time passed, the fact that my partner wasn’t physically with me that week and I felt they’d offered no emotional support, began to weigh on me. I didn’t realize until a year or two ago when I accidentally walked by it. The bright signage looked like a twisted Coney Island face; mocking me.”
“I avoid a whole chunk of the West Village. The love of my life had a fatal heart attack in our apartment on Carmine St. I can’t even bring myself to get a slice from Joe’s ….”
“I went to college on E 68th Street. Sometimes I would accidentally pass Sloan Kettering and I would feel a rush of panic coming over me. In 2012, when I was a teenager, I had been alone overnight with my father there to keep him company. He unfortunately died that night before I could reach out and get family there. Seeing him die so unexpectedly has had a really big impact on who I became.
Passing that place makes me nauseous. He was a 9/11 first responder. Got very sick from helping at ground zero.”
“East 9th and Avenue A, across from Doc Holiday’s. On October 3, 2020, I got a call that my dad had a fatal heart attack in California. There was nothing I could do. I hate walking by there.”
“There’s a restaurant in Carroll Gardens that used to go to with my dad- goddamnit I’m already crying-called Petite Crevette. I thought I could go there for his first birthday after he died and I just sobbed through the whole thing. Turns out the server recently lost her dad so she gave me free wine and boxed up my food and hugged me.”
Thank you again to everyone who contributed.
To share yours:
very here for this series.
something about imagining all these stories and thinking of each paragraph being a real persons experience is so beautiful!! i’m so grateful for our ability to feel all these crazy tumultuous emotions. thank you once again Eloise for combining all these stories<333