When I push through the door onto 72nd Street, I waste no time before I begin to run. This is the kind of running I actually enjoy, even when there’s no one around to admire my body. The cold air fills up my lungs, even more bitterly when the sun is on the other side of the world. My earlier buzz is gone and I can’t get high off two puffs like Graham can and does. This is how I get high. This and The Afterward.

I have a route I follow after midnight—down Fifth Avenue to 59th Street, when the apartments begin to make way for hotels and shops and skyscraping offices, then I turn around and work my way north to 90th Street, and then south home again.

Fifth Avenue is littered with doormen in the same way Times Square is with people dressed as Elmo asking for a photo: most buildings have at least two and, on nights like tonight when it’s cool and fresh, they’re usually standing outside, nodding and smiling as you pass. I remember running this way when I first moved up here, and passing a doorman as he sprinted chest-first from a building to open a cab door for one of his residents. I remember thinking, I never want to be the kind of person who would make someone else feel that way—like if you don’t sprint to serve me, there are consequences. But I have become that person. I’m marrying that person. When your fiancé grows up in that kind of environment, it rubs off on you. To his family, it’s not endearing to thank a doorman for doing his job. That’s what the Christmas tip is for, they’d say. To them, it makes you look weak; it means you’re stooping to the lowest common denominator. So I am that kind of person now.

I like this route because it feels like a controlled risk. I read a Twitter thread once that posed the question to women: What would you do if men didn’t exist for a day? Foolishly, I expected answers to involve wearing less makeup or more sweatpants—I know the latest feminist fad is that we dress for ourselves but, I mean, come on...we also dress for men; and in competition with other women to look better for men. No straight women ever strives to be less attractive to the opposite sex. Just look at what I’m wearing to run at midnight with no one around. My outfit couldn’t be tighter.