I Love New York

The day before yesterday I peed in my pants a little bit because I drank a pot of tea and had to walk 30 minutes to get back to the apartment I’m staying in in Brooklyn and I foolishly did not use the bathroom before I went. A couple blocks from the apartment I realized I might not make it so I ducked into a pizza place intending to pee first, then buy a slice to take home but when I found the bathroom a large group of extremely old people, some of them blind, all using walkers, was gathered around a table blocking the way so I deftly bobbed and weaved through them to the bathroom door when one of the women, not the blind one, I guess, yelled loudly across the restaurant at me “Excuse me we’re waiting for the bathroom here!” She pronounced “here” like “heeyah” in a delightful New York accent, though which borough I could not say. I absolutely love this about New York. I love that if someone is doing something vexing you can just yell at them and it’s perfectly acceptable. It’s the reason I have always felt the most comfortable in my own skin in New York. You don’t have to abide by the rules of Southern gentility, like where I am from. You can just get mad and let it fly and go right on about your business with no one batting an eye. It was the second time I’d been yelled at by an old woman that week. The first time was when I got lost in the back alley courtyard trying to take the trash out and the super’s wife yelled out the window at me to get out of there, and to hurry up about it. I was on the phone with the person who owns the apartment at the time, asking her how to get out of the courtyard alley I was trapped in when the super’s wife started yelling at me out the window and the person I was on the phone with whose apartment it was was like who is yelling at you and I told her where the yelling was coming from and she said it was the super’s wife and she was annoyed with me for getting caught because she had given me explicit instructions to keep a low profile while I was staying at her apartment. “Don’t be weird or suspicious, but don’t let anyone see you,” is what she advised me. Apparently there are very strict rules governing her co-op. I found the entire enterprise stressful, and didn’t quite know how to behave, but I did my best. I’d clearly blown it by screwing up taking the trash out and getting yelled at by the super’s wife, and I hope my friend forgives me. 

I am eating my way through Brooklyn. It’s delicious.

The thing I am loving the most is how everyone talks to you in New York. I don’t think I recognized this when I lived here, but after five years of living in the Netherlands where nobody talks to you unless it’s for a specific reason, and then it is kept brief and to the point in Dutch no-nonsense fashion, I am delighted by the random conversations I’ve been party to. Yesterday I took the elevator down to the basement to scope out the laundry situation because I intend to leave the apartment I’m borrowing in pristine condition with clean sheets and towels and I was worried about the logistics – what if I don’t know how to use the machines, what’s the payment method and will I have coins or bills or a laundry card or whatever is required? How many machines are there and what if there’s a wait? I wanted to scope all this out so that I could be low-key and not be seen but also not be suspicious as my friend had advised. Above all, I did not want another incident with the super’s wife.

On the elevator ride up from my laundry reconnaissance mission an older man, with more hair growing out of his ears than seemed possible, was already in the elevator when it arrived to collect me in the basement. “It kept wanting to go down but you know how the button gets stuck,” he said to me, and I nodded confidently, as if I knew how the elevator button got stuck. “How are you today?” He asked. “Fine, thanks, how are you?” I replied, already nervous that I had been seen, and worse, that someone was talking to me when I was supposed to be invisible. He turned to face me full on and said, sincerely and in an upbeat fashion, “I’m doing okay so far today,” and I smiled and said that was great. He continued, “At first I wasn’t sure because I saw all those Amazon packages piled up in the entrance and wondered what they were doing there, so many of them, and they were for the wrong address. One of them was for St. Grace!”, he said, indicated with his arm the direction I presume St. Grace must be. “So then I thought to myself, am I gonna have to call up to St. Grace and tell them they got a package here because how are they gonna know, you know? But then the delivery woman came back and turned out she’d just put the packages there while she went to the truck and she was coming in to get them so it was okay, you know? So that was a close call” he told me, and I nodded emphatically, it certainly was a close call. We’d reached my floor by this point and he was holding the door open telling me this story and I stood there listening and nodding not wanting to make any more of an impression, or, god forbid, have him ask me which apartment I was in. I saw him about an hour later when I was walking up the street, (passing by St. Grace, I noticed,) and he was coming the other way towards home. “Have a great day!” he said to me with great enthusiasm. “You too!” I said back, equally enthused. He clearly recognized me, there was no point keeping up the charade of invisibility at this point.

I’ve been here for a week now and I’m still jet lagged. Here I am at dawn in front of Books Are Magic. In addition to eating my way through Brooklyn, I’m also patronizing all the fabulous book stores. Some day I will write a book and it’s going to be so goddamn good I’ll have book events at these fine bookstores and people will come from far and wide to attend. Read on for more of my magical thinking.

The man on the elevator wasn’t the only guy who wanted to talk to me. A few days before, my friend Dorothy and I were standing outside a coffee shop waiting for my other friend Gaby to join us when a man came out and asked “It’s not too cold for you girls?” holding the door open and indicating we should certainly come inside. After assuring him we weren’t too cold, we were simply waiting on a friend and would be coming in soon enough, he went on to address the construction project on the street. “You know, they are gonna replace ALL these cylinders, all the way up the block. They haven’t been replaced since 1934, they gotta do the whole entire street, it’s gonna be all torn up the whole way up and down, they’re made outta (something, I can’t remember) but now they gotta replace ‘em, you know, I mean they gotta do it,” he insisted, and Dorothy and I nodded along emphatically. They certainly did, we agreed.

I am having the best time. I’ve had the chance to meet up with several writers whose work I’ve admired and have interacted with online and every one of them has been an absolute delight. There is something truly magical about meeting up with another writer and talking, in detail, about writing. I had forgotten how much I love talking to people. I’ve spent the last five years in Amsterdam mostly avoiding people, with good reason, many people suck, but I had somehow convinced myself that I am an introvert and this is most wildly untrue. I have come alive talking to people. I am energized, hearing their stories, telling mine. I am endlessly curious about what they will say next, discovering how much we have in common – one writer I met suggested we stop at the corner to buy lottery tickets because, she said, “That’s the only way you can make it all happen, right?” and I had just told my husband the night before that I wanted us to move to Brooklyn Heights but the only way I could realistically foresee that happening is if we won the lottery. When I told her this she said “Exactly! Magical thinking is the only way to get anything done, am I right?” You are right, my lady. Very right indeed.

This is the townhouse I’m going to buy when I win the lottery and/or sell millions of copies of my book.