OK. So for those of you who don’t know, getting furniture in New York is difficult. I’ve been trying to help a friend who has been living off of their floor and out of a suitcase for about seven months now, a dresser to hold the various items that I inevitably have to step over when I come to visit. "Are you just like, going to pick those pants up off the floor tomorrow and wear them to work?" I ask. He looks at me for a moment wondering, perhaps, what is wrong with doing such a thing, and says, "Well yeah. I mean, they’re clean."
Young twenty-something’s in Manhattan who don’t have a job in investment banking, are most likely living paycheck to paycheck. After rent, what little we have left over is saved for important things like: clothes, brunch, vodka sodas, shoes, beers, and dinners. We have no extra income for the fairly inconsequential things like superfluous costly furniture – namely, dressers.
We are a group of people who would rather store our clothes in a nice pile (clean) on the floor, than risk missing brunch for two months just to save up for a dresser. We do, after all, have our priorities.
However, the other thing about Manhattan is that you can, if you look hard enough, furnish the necessary things (like some plates, say, or a mattress even) without spending an arm and a leg. Craigslist is there for those of us who have arrived (not me) and are willing to sell their old stuff for cheap (Ikea) and actually invest in something new (like, not a futon). Their trash is our treasure (yes please!), and I made it my mission to find my above mentioned friend the least trashiest trash dresser on the island.
(Note: The Dresser is also a 1983 movie (and play) starring Albert Finney (and no one who was born after 1920), that premiered with the tagline, "What happens backstage is always true drama. And often pure comedy").
In the end, it was in fact an investment banker younger than me (ugh!) getting rid of her fairly nice trash dresser with a chestnut finish, and moving across town to Riverside Drive with her boyfriend. Really? So she's able to leave behind perfectly good furniture and her rather large studio apartment to officially grow up and invest in not only a new dresser, but a relationship as well? Surely her trash-to-not-trash changeover happened too soon?
My friend and I scoffed inwardly, bitterly wishing someone nice with furniture from CB2 loved us on the West Side too, just before we proceeded to carry a dresser 12 blocks uptown.
By 68th street the sound of the wheels from the make-shift moving-cart I borrowed from my doorman was loud enough to drown out a passing fleet of fire engines, however didn’t succeed in suppressing my overall hatred of a place that does everything in its power to test you in order for you to prove that you’re worthy just to live there.
Everyone who passed us looked at us with faces of confusion or sheer entertainment. What?! My face shot back. Have you never seen a dresser before?! Sorry we all can’t be rich and successful enough to actually buy one from somewhere real and have it delivered by actual men whose job it is to deliver things!
I was at a low point. I was no longer fabulous New Yorker on the Upper East Side. I was sad poser New Yorker who resided in 10021 but was dragging a large wooden box up 2nd avenue.
After we ruined the ear drums of a few more diners alfresco, we arrived at my friends apartment and then proceeded to carry the large wooden box up five flights of stairs.
When it was finally inside, standing in all its glory, a lone piece of furniture on an otherwise barren wall, I felt a sense of satisfaction (maybe it was the fatigue) flood over me.
My friend would no longer be sifting through piles in the morning to figure out what to wear to the office, which would inevitably save him time and frustration. We had, through hard work and determination, successfully moved one more step towards the American dream – to live in a home full of…furniture.
Yes, we may not have a lot, and no, we may not be investment bankers making six figures living on the West Side in a successful relationship heading towards what might be marriage in an apartment with plush new couches and tall sturdy dressers - but by God, I thought, we’re certainly New Yorkers, where what happens backstage is always true drama - and certainly pure comedy.
July 25, 2007
July 23, 2007
You've been here before.
It happens to me on occasion, where I’ve walked past the exact same apartment building that something was chasing me out of in my dream the night before. I look up for a minute at that front bay window and the greying black of the bricks and that same tree. Yes, that same exact tree was in my way last night, right there in the middle of my getaway as I ran in slow motion away from something that made so much more sense before I woke up with a start and thought with a panic "huh?" before I thought "oh," when I realized that nice thing you get to realize when bad things happen to you at night - it was just a dream.
The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the Laundromat tomorrow.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll have more time.
And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up - and you think yourself: how do I know you?
There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to study their face, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s "oh’s" and "ahh’s" all around as you show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this huge hole of a place - you know people.
But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot of people, and chances are that this random person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them, because everyone knows that no one in New York ever talks to anyone when they don’t have to.
And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and it’s more impossible to meet someone here than...and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know anyone at all.
(That, and, it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay).
So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll get it together. Is it desperation? (some would think so). Is it loneliness? (some would understand), or is it just this city taking it’s toll when all you need is to connect with someone else who doesn’t want your seat on the subway, doesn’t want to get past you on the sidewalk, doesn’t want to get in line before you at Starbucks?
Who knows. Some things don’t make sense whether you’re asleep or awake, and no one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.
And the subway carries on slow and steady, and so you do because, (huh!?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before. Oh.
The bad moments are when bad things happen and you’re stuck with that "huh?" moment for far longer than you’d like. You’ve been here before and it stinks worse than that pile of laundry in the corner you keep telling yourself you’ll bring to the Laundromat tomorrow.
Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll have more time.
And then if you’re like me and you’ve come to a state in your mind where you’re starting to forget in the fog of your life what’s real and what’s not, you’ll find yourself staring at a person on the subway the way you do when you think you know them but aren’t confident enough to speak up - and you think yourself: how do I know you?
There’s something about living in a city with so many people that if you find one person you know, if you happen to be in the same section of the same 1 train with this person, you have an obligation as a fellow lonely insignificant New Yorker to speak up, to study their face, to make the connection of: "Oh yeah, you’re Mark, right? I met you at that bar on Rivington like a month ago. You’re friends with my friend Jessica?" And then it’s "oh’s" and "ahh’s" all around as you show everyone around you and prove to yourself that you’re making something of yourself in this huge hole of a place - you know people.
But if you’re like me, you know people, sure, but not a lot of people, and chances are that this random person you’re staring at in the same section of the same 1 train isn’t anyone you’ve ever met before. Plus, you’re thinking to yourself, you’d probably really remember someone who is that cute. You just want to think that you know this person so that you have a reason to talk to them, because everyone knows that no one in New York ever talks to anyone when they don’t have to.
And he’s cute, yes, and you haven’t been on a date since....and it’s more impossible to meet someone here than...and you think to yourself that if this guy just got to know you he’d never want to leave you. He’d realize how lucky he was, how much of a catch you really are. It’s because we all know how great we are, how much potential we have - but in a city full of so many people who don’t talk to each other it’s very easy for no one to ever really get to know anyone at all.
(That, and, it is also a little known fact among all New Yorkers that men of a certain age who are relatively attractive, put together and are wearing a tie that matches his dress shirt (tucked in), and is carrying some form of briefcase (ie: no backpack), and doesn’t have a ring on his finger - is gay).
So he gets off the train at 28th street and you laugh at yourself because you realize how ridiculous you’re becoming - you know very well you didn’t know him at all. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, you lie to yourself, you’ll get it together. Is it desperation? (some would think so). Is it loneliness? (some would understand), or is it just this city taking it’s toll when all you need is to connect with someone else who doesn’t want your seat on the subway, doesn’t want to get past you on the sidewalk, doesn’t want to get in line before you at Starbucks?
Who knows. Some things don’t make sense whether you’re asleep or awake, and no one knows if their reality will ever catch up with their dreams.
And the subway carries on slow and steady, and so you do because, (huh!?), you think to yourself, you’ve been here before. Oh.
July 17, 2007
Vertical New York is blocking out our sight.
I don’t know when things changed and everyone started to lose sight of themselves in the haze of other people’s lives.
All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us. Because we deep-down know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze.
Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home.
But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion. Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the better bag, the better apartment, betterboyfriendbetterreservationatthebetterrestaurant...
How are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own? Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)
They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out. Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].
Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind...and empty-handed.
All the time is the constant humming of other people’s lives in our ears, sometimes loud, sometimes drowned out by our own questions that have been testing us. Because we deep-down know, (don’t we?) that we’re just another face on just another subway, holding just another railing, hand over hand, the railing that helps us up and helps us along, helps us out of the haze.
Lost, (aren’t we?) even after so much happens, that at times we can’t help but look back and wonder how we ever made it through, how we’re still here, right now putting foot in front of foot, walking forward, walking home.
But we can’t really forget, (can we?) who we really are in the midst of all the confusion. Being in New York it’s easy to feel like you’re not measuring up, like you’re not as good as the next person, not as pretty, not as successful, not as important, not as smart, (and) without the better bag, the better apartment, betterboyfriendbetterreservationatthebetterrestaurant...
How are we, in a city full of so many people who know exactly what they want, supposed to fit in and find a place of our own? Seems like things pass so fast here that if you spend too much time thinking about what you really want you’re going to miss out on it to the one’s that already do, (and they do, don’t they?)
They know and you don’t know why, or how, or what led them into the arms of such extreme clarity that they’re able to go through each day with it all seemingly figured out. Wish we had our own personal copy of TONY delivered secretly to our apartment door every week that would tell us exactly where to go to get everything we want: Time Out New York would suddenly become Time Out [insert your name here].
Maybe that’s the thing about this city that makes you start to lose sight of yourself in the haze of other people’s lives, makes you want to skip town altogether and find a place that isn’t so threatening to your dreams - too many people all wanting the same things always means that someone is destined to end up blind...and empty-handed.
July 12, 2007
Recipe for New York.
There comes a time in every New Yorkers life when they think to themselves: am I really going to be able to do this forever?
Case in point last weekend having to go to Port Authority to get on a bus just to go to someone’s house in New Jersey for a barbeque. It was a friends office summer party, and I came with them because in this day and age he and I are both younger-than-usual people trapped in a late-twenties-early-thirties world. These sort of office functions we go to, as not only singles, but (gasp!) unmarried, makes us feel like we’re from some alternate universe upon arrival.
I decided that in order to make a great first impression on this married and older co-workers of his who all work at an admired magazine, that I would charm this backyard gathering with a homemade blueberry pie. So I spent my Saturday afternoon baking, from scratch, a lattice pie. (Fact: most of my ideas sound really great upon their initial burst into my brain, and not until I’m deep in it do I realize how far from great the idea really is).
Running late we decided to hop in a cab to Port Authority. The pie, still warm, was placed in a paper bag and set on the seat between us. We didn’t want to miss the only bus that we knew would bring us safely to this little town somewhere across the Hudson. Close to 42nd street I lifted the pie off the seat, and saw, much to my chagrin, a pool of thick blueberry syrup had pooled within the entire bottom of the bag and was currently falling over my hands and consequently, over the entire aluminum covered pie. Shit.
My friend and I looked at each other with shock, and as I held the pie in my hands, fingers burning, I realized something else was wrong the way you know when a big storm is about to break, and began looking frantically around the cab in a very blood-covered-Jack Woltz-pulling-the-covers-back-in-his-bed sort of way. Pools of blueberry syrup were all over the back seat, and the largest of them was alongside my leg, covering the entire left leg of my madras plaid pants. Shit. Shit. Shit.
All I remember at that point was running from the cab into Port Authority holding a pie like it was on fire with blue syrup streaking down my arms as people watched in confusion and horror. Sure, it was no horse, but it was still pretty shocking. And any New Yorker who has any foul play cab experiences knows that the only thing to do in a situation like that is to simply throw money at the driver and run before they can realize what you’ve done.
There was then the line of women in the bathroom who watched as I tried to wash the blue from my arms, and I hate whoever came up with the idea of getting rid of paper towels in public restrooms and opted for those hot air dryers. There were people watching as I ran back and forth from the bathroom to the gift shop grabbing a new bag, napkins, all just in time to board the bus and show up at this party and be introduced (and sure to leave a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons), with blueberry all over my pants with a large spattering over the chest of my white shirt for good measure.
On the bus, my friend looked at me and through laughter and disbelief over how sometimes it seems like I just can’t catch a break, asked: will there come a time when we just can’t do this thing anymore?
This thing that he was referring to, of course, was New York. There are a lot of times in this city when you wonder why you go through so much just to bring a pie to a party. Perhaps there will come a time when I won’t have the energy left, and fleeing Manhattan will be the only option.
Until that time, however, I’ll tough it out, I think, for a while anyway. Or at least until I run out of unstained clothes.
Case in point last weekend having to go to Port Authority to get on a bus just to go to someone’s house in New Jersey for a barbeque. It was a friends office summer party, and I came with them because in this day and age he and I are both younger-than-usual people trapped in a late-twenties-early-thirties world. These sort of office functions we go to, as not only singles, but (gasp!) unmarried, makes us feel like we’re from some alternate universe upon arrival.
I decided that in order to make a great first impression on this married and older co-workers of his who all work at an admired magazine, that I would charm this backyard gathering with a homemade blueberry pie. So I spent my Saturday afternoon baking, from scratch, a lattice pie. (Fact: most of my ideas sound really great upon their initial burst into my brain, and not until I’m deep in it do I realize how far from great the idea really is).
Running late we decided to hop in a cab to Port Authority. The pie, still warm, was placed in a paper bag and set on the seat between us. We didn’t want to miss the only bus that we knew would bring us safely to this little town somewhere across the Hudson. Close to 42nd street I lifted the pie off the seat, and saw, much to my chagrin, a pool of thick blueberry syrup had pooled within the entire bottom of the bag and was currently falling over my hands and consequently, over the entire aluminum covered pie. Shit.
My friend and I looked at each other with shock, and as I held the pie in my hands, fingers burning, I realized something else was wrong the way you know when a big storm is about to break, and began looking frantically around the cab in a very blood-covered-Jack Woltz-pulling-the-covers-back-in-his-bed sort of way. Pools of blueberry syrup were all over the back seat, and the largest of them was alongside my leg, covering the entire left leg of my madras plaid pants. Shit. Shit. Shit.
All I remember at that point was running from the cab into Port Authority holding a pie like it was on fire with blue syrup streaking down my arms as people watched in confusion and horror. Sure, it was no horse, but it was still pretty shocking. And any New Yorker who has any foul play cab experiences knows that the only thing to do in a situation like that is to simply throw money at the driver and run before they can realize what you’ve done.
There was then the line of women in the bathroom who watched as I tried to wash the blue from my arms, and I hate whoever came up with the idea of getting rid of paper towels in public restrooms and opted for those hot air dryers. There were people watching as I ran back and forth from the bathroom to the gift shop grabbing a new bag, napkins, all just in time to board the bus and show up at this party and be introduced (and sure to leave a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons), with blueberry all over my pants with a large spattering over the chest of my white shirt for good measure.
On the bus, my friend looked at me and through laughter and disbelief over how sometimes it seems like I just can’t catch a break, asked: will there come a time when we just can’t do this thing anymore?
This thing that he was referring to, of course, was New York. There are a lot of times in this city when you wonder why you go through so much just to bring a pie to a party. Perhaps there will come a time when I won’t have the energy left, and fleeing Manhattan will be the only option.
Until that time, however, I’ll tough it out, I think, for a while anyway. Or at least until I run out of unstained clothes.
July 2, 2007
In Medias Res
One of these days I'm going to finish something (and I don't mean drinks or boring phone calls or bad movies). I mean one of these days I'm going to follow through with all the things I think about doing and talk about doing and feel in the pit of my stomach that I should.
But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.
For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.
Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.
One of these days I'm going to finish something so all these things that I've missed out on won't have been for nothing. We all have to find the time to learn to swim eventually.
But I keeping losing time. It flies, doesn't it? Like flies that float and land on burning lamp bulbs and disintegrate or get squashed and disappear.
For too long I have thought I have an infinite amount. And that's so easy, isn't it? With clocks everywhere counting down your every moment, quantifying and qualifying every part of your day, your everyday that never seems to change. And there will always be more vodka sodas and boring phone calls and bad movies - but not chances. You can never have too many chances.
Because one night you can go to sleep and wake up in the morning and find that time has caught up with you. And clocks stop and you don't want them to (you never do), then there you are in the middle of a sea of crowded minutes, hours, days, all struggling against the drowning chances that you know you've missed, swimming in the regret, suffocating in the realization that it’s a silly time to learn to swim when you start to drown.
One of these days I'm going to finish something so all these things that I've missed out on won't have been for nothing. We all have to find the time to learn to swim eventually.
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