My decade living in New York City overlapped with your first time there, and how well I remember the energy and excitement of it all. I did end up at the top of the Empire State building, but only because my dad came to visit.

My boyfriend Lenny and I lived on West 24th Street, and when Dad came to visit, we were nervous to say the least. How would a conservative midwesterner react to our lower Manhattan world of Chelsea and the Village. To our extraordinarily gay circle of friends and neighbors?

We broke the ice by walking to the Empire State building the first day he visited. Lenny had been to the top once, when he was an adolescent. It was my first time.

I don’t know what Dad gawked at more, the notions shops and other eccentricities of the fashion district on the way there, or the view after we finally arrived.

But I’m sure he gained a real sense of being a stranger in a strange land, a sense I knew all too well from my own first days in the City. I don’t know if that sense put him in a more accepting frame of mind, but the visit went very well, better than anyone expected.

Eventually, though, the energy, both positive and negative, of New York City wore me down.

When I left for Montreal, I have to say I was glad to go. I’ve been back, and I always love visiting, but I don’t think I would ever want to live there again. I think I know how much it would suck out of me.