Savage Nights – Walking Manhattan, NYC

Part of the Marker Stones series (4 of 4)

I took the train from Washington, D.C., to New York City in the heat of July 2018, riding up with my brother while he was on a business trip. The first two days belonged to his world: a luxury hotel near the NBC studios, a polished dinner in the Meatpacking District, the top of One World Trade, the 9/11 memorial.

Then he left.
And I began to walk.

On my first day alone, it poured. I was soaked straight through—no change of clothes, no way to get dry or clean. Miserable. It set the tone. I was carrying the same compulsion that drove every walkabout in those years: follow what I believed were signs, push farther, prove something.

Manhattan hit like a wall—motion, noise, heat rising off the pavement. The streets never let up. I walked endlessly.

One day in Brooklyn, I spent eight hours cleaning a random street corner down to the cracks, prying tiny gum-wrapper fragments from the concrete. No one asked me to. I just did it. Over those years, I collected thousands of pounds of trash. In New York, the scale overwhelmed me. There was always more around the corner. Endless. I couldn’t do it alone.

Another day, I cleaned the stairwells of a twenty-story apartment building—stairs that hadn’t been swept in years. From the rooftop, I saw how tightly people lived—multiple families sharing single bedrooms. The woman who offered me the work vanished on payday. Her adult son took mercy on me and handed me twenty dollars. The night before, grateful for the opportunity, I’d cleaned their community garden without being asked.

I wasn’t angry. Leaving them with clean stairs felt like enough.

I visited galleries throughout Chelsea and the Lower East Side, expecting the pinnacle of art in the art capital. What I found instead were installations—floors covered in sand, literal piles of garbage, long plaques explaining what the work was supposed to mean. It felt academic. Emotionless. I left hungry for something alive.

One afternoon, following what I thought were signs into Central Park, I sat near two women on a bench. One was reading a Christian devotional. I asked if she was a publisher—anything connected to books. She smiled and said no, just a reader.

I was absurdly disappointed.

I remembered a man I’d known on the streets in Gainesville who had moved to New York to wait tables at a rooftop bar. I found the place—a sleek hotel high above the city. I pulled a sport coat from my backpack, made myself presentable despite a week on the streets, and walked in like I belonged. I sat at the bar and waited.

I truly believed my destiny—the person who would change everything—was there. Manhattan glittered below the balcony.

After an hour, nothing.

I took one last look, rode the elevator down, collected my bag, and slept on a park bench. Disappointment.

Not long after, I met a playwright who was homeless with his transgender son, trying to make it in the city. He shared his opera with me. It was genuinely good. For once, I wasn’t being asked to earn my place or explain myself. I was simply allowed to listen.

He looked at me the way people sometimes did back then—like I was a priest.

I met Andrey Medina at an art pop-up show—ironically hosted by a Gainesville clothing company called Always True, created in memory of the founder’s brother. After the show, Andrey toured me through New York—took me to the Seinfeld diner, walked me through the city like it was his living room. At one point, we helped break up a fight outside a club. We talked like old friends.

He took a risk and let me stay the night in his parents’ house, in his sister’s empty room. The next day, I spent time with his family. He took me to the Bronx to see his studio—tucked inside a storage unit—where I caught a glimpse of something I was meant to build someday.

We’re still friends. He’s a gifted musician and director.

One evening, an elderly woman—hunched over, cane in hand, wrapped in a shawl—asked me for money. I offered instead to buy her food at a sit-down chain across the street. I ordered a full chicken meal, spending what little I had. When the food arrived, she was gone. I gave the meal to someone else. Looking back, she likely left when no cash appeared.

Inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, I sat in a pew and quietly wept. A young Polynesian woman behind me asked if I was okay. I told her I would be. She nodded and said she wasn’t Catholic, but she loved Jesus deeply. She was moving to Hawaii for missionary work.

She gently placed her hand on my shoulder and pressed a hundred-dollar bill into it. I refused. By then, I had nothing left.

As I walked out, on the last pew sat a dark-skinned Latino man—exhausted, eyes glistening, shoulders collapsed inward. Without thinking, I placed that money in his hand and kept walking. I caught his expression—disbelief, shock, something like answered prayer.

After nearly two weeks on the streets, worn down, I tried the shelter system. Intake in Manhattan. Assignment to Brooklyn. The waiting room felt like processing. The medical exam. The small stipend for subway fare and food. It was considered one of the “better” shelters in the city, but it felt like a prison.

A loud, domineering, unemployed chef controlled the room. I looked out the window, saw street art, and knew I couldn’t stay. I left.

Wandering the industrial blocks afterward, I slipped into a modern hotel gym. Quiet. A private shower with a lock. Clean towels.

It was the best shower of my life.

Mercy.

Over the next few days, I kept finding myself drawn—quietly, without explanation—to three places. Highline Stages on 15th Street, empty and being prepped, its doors inexplicably open. A specific row of homes in Greenpoint that felt unmistakably like somewhere I would live one day. And a warehouse near Plymouth Street in Vinegar Hill, where I had a vivid vision of building something meaningful.

Walking one afternoon through Cypress Hills, past a massive cemetery, the lyrics “Insane in the membrane” popped into my head. I laughed quietly at myself. The mix of death, city heat, and my own obsession felt absurd—and strangely tender.

The final night ended with me sleeping in a hallway at LaGuardia, just outside the terminals. Eventually, I flew back to Bradenton—home soil, Gulf air waiting.

I thought every sign, every bold move, every act of giving was earning something. I didn’t yet know the difference between a sign and an invitation. I didn’t understand that God wasn’t asking me to suffer more—He was carrying me through it.

Every mercy—the opera, Andrey’s room, the shower, the twenty dollars, the hundred-dollar chain—was Him saying, I’ve got you, son.

The darkness tried. It didn’t win. He did.

If you’re walking your own savage nights right now—concrete heat, nowhere safe, destiny feeling just one sign away—know this:

He sees you.
He’ll send a room when you need it.
He’ll let you clean what’s broken.
He’s bringing you home.

Praise Jesus,
Jason

 

Read the full series: [1. The Divine Anhinga] [2. Exactly Where the Rain Fell] [3. Frozen Mercy] [4. Savage Nights]