“Preface” (from BRONX NIGHTS 🌃🍎)

For a time, the working title of this book was A Retard’s Guide to Moving to New York. You may find this difficult to believe, but several folks suggested I may want to rethink that.

I could make a case to apply the “R” word to myself. Just imagine waking up one day after living a half-century, banging your head against the wall every five minutes for God knows why, only to discover—ta da!—you have Autism and PTSD from childhood-related trauma.

Most people need some evidence to process how a fairly athletic, burly man in his 50s with a decent career resume (even a few awards) and some activist and artistic accomplishments (no awards) could be such a colossal, fucking mess with respect to genes, life experience and overall perception of the world. At least I need eyeglasses now—they somehow make my conditions more credible.

No matter your physique or salary, I kindly recommend you stand in a subway platform, busker beats madly echoing, a train flying past your face—after recently being force-fed the foie gras of my childhood. I promise you’ll be grateful if a good friend or aide is present to throw hands like earmuffs over your ears and quietly mouth to your face, “Just breathe, it will be over soon.”

You are also cordially invited to spend an evening smoking cigarettes in the Bronx Detention Center with the former head of the Trinity Gang while your brain can’t stop searching for narratological patterns on the abused and pocked jailcell walls and floors.

Have a sausage works bagel the next morning back at home after the D.A. shows up at 2 a.m. to personally free you. See if you aren’t feeling a wee in need of a word to describe yourself that no one the fuck else is allowed to use unless the shoe fits them too.

I don’t know if you can tell, but parts of my recent past remain a bit of a tender wound.

Anyway, I briefly considered A Neurodivergent Person’s Guide to Moving to New York. Totally sucks. See, we Neuros really need a word that describes—whoa! That’s it. Neuros.

A Neuro’s Guide to Moving to New York. I don’t know. Neuro. New York. Gee, maybe I can slip Emperor Nero in there, and we’ll really have some chalkboard wordplay.

Hopefully we can agree Neuro is a much better replacement word for “R.” When I use Neuro, I’m describing the sum of my diagnoses, unique behaviors, perception of reality, idiosyncrasies, quirks, etc., that either are foreign to you or somehow align with you. You be the judge. You either are a Neuro or not.

Othering is a real thing. So let’s be neighborly and assure everyone that whether you’re a Neuro or not, you’re still a loveable and love-capable human being. Hmm. There are some fairly nasty people in this book. Maybe we should reconsider that “everyone.” I’ll circle back on the subject.

Back to the title. I then toyed with Double-Fuck Long-Term COVID So Hard that it Gets Annihilated (After Being Tossed About in a Camel’s Colon at the Bronx Zoo, not far from where I fled South Carolina to Seek a Cure from this Cataclysmic Go-Double-Fuck-Itself-Again Condition).

A few folks liked this title, a few considered it a bit wordy.

Also, as you may have gathered, COVID and I aren’t much friends. We are in fact the abyss of arranged marriages. Or symbiosis, or whatever you want to call it. More on that, in time, too.

Dang. I still need a title. And preface. I cannot start writing a book without both in the can. It’s part of my process.

I also can’t start writing until I’ve perfectly organized the apartment, then a half-cigarette and some chocolate, maybe a toke—oh wait, gotta piss!—then make sure there isn’t any clutter strewn about—sigh, need to dust the desk, fold some socks—wait, did the cats get their tuna treat?—okay, just let me water the plants, organize the items on the desk and in my periphery to make sure everything is at aesthetically-pleasing angles, crack my e’er arthritic knuckles, put my knee brace on three or four times, and off we go! Wait, something’s wrong. Where the hell are my glasses?

Ahem. Title. My most successful book is Uber Nights. It’s a memoir about my rollercoaster rideshare adventures in the Deep South, a collection of humorous, poignant vignettes that paint the picture of what life…as a late-night Uber driver…is like…come to think of it, I had Long COVID the whole damn time I experienced and wrote that book! Then everything fell to clusterfuck pieces, and I met Alex—but that was only after Candy (Candace) tried to kill me. So I really started freefalling much earlier than I realized.

Are you kidding me? This is a bloody sequel?

At least that makes this easy.

Manhattan Nights. Nope.

New York Nights. Hmm. A few of those already exist, plus people will wonder why this book isn’t about the Arena Football League.

NY Nights. Too Netflix.

Well, I do live in The Bronx. At least until I get evicted.

Bronx Nights.

Now just add a skyline photo snapped from my rooftop. Bit of an “about” the author and book. Nice. At least I hope you agree.

What are you waiting for? There’s no standing here! This is New York. Either turn the page or put me down.

But the Midwesterner in me really wants to invite you in with a smile for a cup of coffee and a tale or two.

Then again, who knows what the Neuro in me has in store for us both.

Arik Bjorn
March 2025