The last time I lived alone, I lived in an apartment high above the Henry Hudson Parkway, overlooking the river and the Palisades. There was a fire escape — my very first own fire escape — and even though the roar of speeding-past traffic made it almost unbearable to endure, I would dutifully climb out onto that fire escape and sit, surveying the domain, until the enjoyment was cut short: either by my vertigo setting in, or by a screeching fleet of passing crotch rockets.

I spent enough time out there to know that to gain access to my apartment via the fire escape would be next to impossible, as one would have to first figure out how to get to the foot of the tall bluff — which is completely inaccessible from the streets atop it, and more or less would require either approaching by boat via the Hudson, and then climbing up the hill and through the woods to make one’s way across multiple lanes of highway, or being dropped off or rolling out of a northerly-moving vehicle — and then conveniently having rappelling gear on hand, or at least a long, thick rope or several bedsheets tied together to expertly toss up and over the lowest rung of the fire escape ladder, which still hovers a good, oh, maybe ten feet overhead?

Yet, even with this knowledge, I routinely woke in the middle of the night in that apartment in a cold sweat, short of breath, nightmares fresh in my mind, convinced someone was coming to get me. And now here I am in my current apartment — living alone for the first time since then, with a fire escape again! — and I’m just one story up from the street. Anyone could walk by, reach up, grab hold of the ladder, pull it down, ascend, materialize on my floor, and take three long strides across the room to end me in under a minute.

And yet:

Here I am in my current apartment — living alone for the first time in two and a half years — and once again I routinely wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, short of breath, nightmares fresh in my mind, convinced someone is coming to get me.

Not for nothing, but from a mountaintop lair more secure than post-haircut Rapunzel’s tower to the elderly-infested Lower Upper East Side or Upper East Side South or DUQueeB (Down Under the Queensboro Bridge) or wherever it is that I now live (where nobody is even bothered by the squealing-past crotch rockets unless their hearing aids are turned up!) — separated by Bed-Stuy -Do Or Die!- Brooklyn™ and an anonymous highrise staffed by oft-slumbering-on-the-job doormen in the renowned “only remaining gritty” part of Manhattan — somehow it was only in the years in between that I felt safe.