Excerpt from my new book Black Boy

I’ve never hated anything the way I’ve hated the Hudson River. It smells like shit, and it always has, there's no two ways about it. The water is disgusting, there are no beautiful fish to admire, and the breeze is only bearable when the smell of sewage and regret isn’t carried upon it. In this city, there's no shortage of either.

As of this moment, I can say that I have wasted my life holding onto this hatred. This bend at the south edge of Manhattan, just below the high-line, was always the most crowded, most sanitized, and most unwelcoming part of the city. On late nights like this it was especially quiet. Not the comforting quiet you can normally find in somewhere like the Bronx, rather it was the deafening silence you only find out in the woods, and only when you've stumbled across something that frightens even the birds and the trees into silence. Even still, at this ungodly hour, in the loneliest corner of the city, there will be someone around to hear the sickening slap I make.

I can already hear you asking “why here?” Well, I'm not sure to be entirely honest. I just thought it would be fitting I suppose, a place I loathed so much. I can’t say with any honesty that I deserved any better, after all. Still, I really, really hate this place, almost despise, except despise is much too gentle. I loathe the Hudson river for the same reasons I loathe myself: unrealized potential.

The Hudson River has always smelled like shit. I suppose I’ll be responsible in part now, too.

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