Walking down the street here in Flatbush the other day, I came upon a truck parked in front of a house. Emblazoned on the door of the truck was “Mobile DNA Testing” and on the window, a picture of a baby with the question: “Does he really have his father’s eyes?”

Ho, snap!

Why not just put a sign outside your house that says “Cheating Bitch”?

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Before I moved here, I thought of Brooklyn as Brooklyn. It was one place, one thing. To my uninitiated mind, Brooklyn itself had character and an identity as a whole. It’s not that I was wrong, the Mother Borough does have an overarching identity and character … but it’s defined by the unique nature of its neighborhoods.

Brooklyn is comprised of so many distinct areas each with their own qualities that to live here and call oneself a Brooklynite is a bit like calling oneself an American. Sure, it’s true, but how much do urban New Yorkers and rural Kansans really have in common, besides that overarching American moniker? It’s the same with Brooklyn.

People from Flatbush are not people from Brooklyn Heights. Those from the Slope aren’t those from Bensonhurst. Some nabes in proximity have more in common with each other than with certain other ‘hoods, but even the like areas have their differences: the brownstones of Bed-Stuy versus the huge apartment buildings and pre-war opulence of Crown Heights, for example.

When I lived in the Stuy, the girlfriend I was living with would tell me that her students thought we were hardcore for living there. She taught in Crown Heights, and those kids thought Bed-Stuy was the baddest place on Earth. They weren’t far off; gunshots nearly every night, drug dealers doing their business in broad daylight right there in your face.  Ineffectual cops letting the crimes that weren’t murder go on because they had their hands full with more major felonies. But Crown Heights ain’t no walk in the park neither, son. Still, those kids thought their hood was tame compared to the Do Or Die.

That most recent bid in Bed-Stuy was my second tour, and I was deep in it. The first time around, I was dangling on the fringe, in the DMZ between Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvestant proper. That DMZ was pretty tame, even with the Evergreen project Houses diagonally across the street. I got more grief in Prospect Heights, where gentrification was often met with violent opposition. I consider myself lucky I only got punched in the head instead of shot like some of the other invading honky forces.

I know I’ve used this before but, like Johnny Cash said, I’ve been everywhere, man. 4th Avenue at Pacific Street, “Clinton Hill”, Prospect Heights, Park Slope, Gowanus, Bed-Stuy and Flatbush. I spent a little while without a home, and I passed it sleeping on my friends’ couch in Windsor Terrace. I almost moved to Borough Park, but the realtor didn’t like the idea of inter-racial dating. I put a deposit down on a shithole in Sunset Park, but wound up bailing on that bad idea. I’ve been to almost every nabe except Starett City, and I can’t think of any other place than Brooklyn that varies so greatly within an area of about 80 some-odd square miles.

I identify with Flatbush. I don’t feel like as much of an intruder here as I did in Bed-Stuy, but I’ve definitely enjoyed living on the fringe. I’ve been far from the spoiled, trust-funded white brats that pollute Park Slope and Williamsburg, and I’ve been happy for it. My neighborhood is genuine, full of people who work hard and appreciate others who do the same. Sure, there’s not much in the way of nightlife, there’s no fancy cafe with pretentiously named beverages, but there’s also nothing keeping me from sleeping with my window open at night … except chihuahua-sized wasps, of course.

I’ve been in too many places to feel much of a bond with a particular neighborhood. I’ve been alien almost everywhere I’ve lived in this borough, either from being white in a black neighborhood, or being the wrong kind of white in a white ‘hood. As big and as varied as this place is, a niche is not something I’ve yet carved out.

But, more so than someone who’s only lived in one of its neighborhoods, I’m a Brooklynite. I may yet identify with Flatbush more than the whole, but not at the moment. In six years I’ve been too many places to have taken root in any of them. The only permanent place I’ve occupied is the borough herself. So while Brooklynite is more vague than Flatbusher, it’s more specific than American and more significant than just being a New Yorker. As far as I’m concerned, Brooklyn is my country, state and city all in one. I only go to Manhattan to get paid.

I didn’t grow up in the confines of the Greater City of New York, but just outside of it. It was the place in which I aspired to live since my first visit to the American Museum of Natural History. I thought it would be the coolest thing to not have to take the LIRR or drive to see the dinosaurs. And there was a park right across the street. How novel.

When I went away for school, I pined for New York City. When I came back to it’s suburbs during breaks from classes, I would always make at least one trip in to eat some pizza or just walk the streets. When I got closer to graduation, I decided I’d move to Brooklyn when I got my degree. Flatbush was the neighborhood I thought to be quintessentially Brooklyn, even though I’d never been there. To be honest, I’d never been to Brooklyn before I moved here. I just thought it was edgier — more fringe — than bland, sterilized and Disney-fied Manhattan. I wanted to be somewhere with true grit and character, that was still authentic. I wound up living right on 4th Avenue at Pacific Street.

The digs were tiny and it was a sublet, so after a few months, it was out of there and onward to a place in Cobble Hill on the cusp of Bedford-Stuyvestant. Less than a year there before a move to a sweet one-bedroom near the Museum. A little more than a year there before a break-up forced me out.

Still no Flatbush. Honestly, the idea of living there had left my mind. It wasn’t a conscious thing; I just stopped thinking about it. At some point, certain places in Brooklyn became too far away. As much as I wanted to avoid living in Manhattan, I judged parts of Brooklyn based on their proximity to New York County. I was working on that island, afterall, and I didn’t want to need an hour to commute.

I wound up in Park Slope, living with strangers for roommates for the first time. It lasted two months before I was forced out by three people, one of whom pissed in cups rather than use the communal bathroom and the other two who each owned one species of rodent or another. It didn’t break me up too bad that I’d been evicted; what a bunch of freaks. But what a pain in the ass.

So, I moved down the street into Gowanus, into an utter hovel of a shithole apartment, but it was cheap and my room was enormous. Landlords we’re totally racist, stereotypical cocks (they had the nerve to call my girlfriend a “mulignan”) but my new roommate seemed cool, if off-color. Still, as the year wore on that situation soured. Me and the roommate kept totally different hours, had little in common and it became a passively aggressive nightmare of resentment and uncomfortability.

I moved again, into a place with the girlfriend whose race my landlords maligned, into Bed-Stuy. Another of those neighborhoods I believed typified Brooklyn. Its gorgeous brownstones and tree-lined streets were the stuff of movie scenes, but the realities of gunfire every night and the shit-strewn streets, the vomitous low-rent retail hell of Fulton Street made living there less of a dream and more of a sentence.

That relationship ran its course and again I had to move out. After two years in the Stuy I found a place in Flatbush.

Thus far, I dig the neighborhood. It’s very insular. Most people on the street are ebullient as opposed to the Stuy’s angry and aggressive sociopathy. It’s near the park. It’s got a Duane Reade and a Family Dollar (so did Bed-Stuy, but these are closer). I’ve got three trains to choose from instead of one (the G really didn’t count as an option). But now my commute to work utterly blows. As crap as the A-train was, it connected to the train that put me right under the building where I work. My commute was, tops, 35 minutes except on disaster days. Now, it’s 45 minutes (that’s a miracle) to an hour.

I sometimes think I’d be better of living on Long Island, or forking out this kind of dough to live with a roommate somewhere closer to the city, but then I realize that on LI gas would cost me hundreds a month and the LIRR would be a few more hundred. Insurance for the car, etc. and I’d be paying close to 500 plus just to get around. Why not just stay in New York and at least be somewhere walkable? And living with someone? No way. I’ve proven that I can’t. The money I spend to live alone is as well-spent as a good investment.

Despite her place in the curriculum of courses I took, I never read any Virginia Woolf, but I do believe she said something about needing a room of one’s own. I’ve got three (not including the bathroom). And they’re all mine.

It’s a nice feeling.

So, I’m in Flatbush digging everything except my commute.

It could really be a lot worse.

Tonight just wasn’t my night. Both of the hockey teams I play for each lost their semi-final hockey playoff games. We’re done. No championship bid. Same as the previous three seasons. My Frozen Four bracket is toast. I went with my Alma Mater, like I did last year (which paid dividends then), but they blew it this year. And the team I had them beating in the championship game got knocked out tonight, too. It was just a bad night for green.

So, a good hour after I left Chelsea Piers, I got back to my apartment. First thing I did was bust out the Boar’s Head and make a killer sandwich. I’ve been eating Whole Foods cold-cuts for ages because my celiac disease essentially forces me to shop there. But today, I just didn’t feel like making the trip. I went down into the subway, but it refused to come, so I went back above ground and walked over to the friendly neighborhood Foodtown.

I hated Foodtown when I first moved here. It was grossly overpriced and it made shopping locally practically impossible. Lately, though, they’ve got this “low-price guarantee” … I guess I wasn’t the only one screaming highway robbery.

Anyway, it was great to have Boar’s Head again. I love cold cuts. I grew up on deli sandwiches from the Deer Hills deli and they whipped up some paper thin BH cuts that were simply delicious. I got the kid at the Foodtown to cut me some decently thin provisions and he did a pretty good job. Nobody in the ghetto really appreciates deli meat, in my experience, so it takes a lot of compliments and encouragement to get the deli guys to accommodate my white-boy expectations … that is, not slice it slab thick.

After losing the NCAA hockey pool, two hockey playoff games at the Piers, and other of life’s little battles, this sandwich really hits the spot. Ovengold turkey, genoa salami, muenster cheese and some serious greens on brown rice bread with mayo. As my New York Post reporter buddy says about my homemade sandwiches: “That looks like a sandwich a white person would pay a lot of money for.”