The PATH has a very specific odor. Last year, I had a boyfriend who lived in New Jersey, so I spent a fair amount of time smelling that smell, which is not terrible; it just kind of exists.

When I passed the entrance at 14th Street recently, I smelled that smell, and I thought about him. For a couple minutes, I cried. (If you don’t live in New York, you should know that it’s not that unusual to see people walking along a busy street with tears streaming down their faces, so nobody really looked up. This is a city where a clown dressed in drag riding a bicycle with plastic flowers on the handlebars once told me I was pretty, and it totally made my day because who doesn’t like to hear that they’re pretty? And my friend from out of town was like, “What was that?” And I was like, “You think it’s weird that he said I was pretty? Do you not think I’m pretty?”)

Anyway, I wondered what he was doing, and if he ever thinks about me. (The ex-boyfriend, not the clown. The clown probably doesn’t think about me.) Usually I don’t miss him, but sometimes I do. Now that it’s summer, when things were good and right, I think about him a little more.