New York is just a place

Never Done: Gave the "I did it there" tour of Manhattan

It was a full day. Fun brunch at our place to share the big whitefish former menorah. After a few hours I stepped away from brunch to have a conference call about a film project, and when I got off the phone, the brunchniks were just leaving, giving me and Josh just enough time to put away the perishables, get dressed, and walk down the park to the train to Manhattan for adoption parenting class. Which ran late, but we still decided to walk across town to dinner with friends.

The first thing that set the walk off from other cross-town walks was the unseasonable warmth. The second thing was that on this unseasonably warm evening, the streets were crawling with Santas. Not just Santas, but hipster Santas, as indicated by cigarettes, nerdy glasses, and ripped tights. Josh asked them who they were, and it turned out that SantaCon had taken over NYC. According the SantaCon website: Santacon is a non-denominational, non-commercial, non-political and non-sensical Santa Claus convention that occurs once a year for absolutely no reason. The rules: Don't fuck with kids. Don't fuck with the cops. Don't fuck with security. Don't fuck with SANTA!

So lots of hipster Santas on the streets (and I did say the Shehekhianu for the Santas, because, really, how often will I get that chance?) and we started walking East. We walked past an apartment where I used to spend nights with someone when I was in grad school. I've gone past it for many years of course since I stopped spending nights there, but for some reason this time I decided to mention to Josh that I used to spend nights there, and told him a bit about the person who lives there. It was no big deal, and the conversation morphed and changed and lit on plenty of other topics, as we left the West Village, and entered the East Village, and as we made our way down 1st Avenue, and approached the restaurant where we were going to meet friends, and I realized that it was smack dab across from another building where I'd spent some (fewer, and not as fun) nights. So I mentioned that too, and suddenly I remembered what it felt to move to New York, and to feel very alone here. I had left a home in Portland, OR where I felt integrally connected to many different people and networks, and I had come here without really understanding what I was embarking on.

I had been extremely close with two people in Portland, and we all decided to apply to MFA programs, in our own disciplines. Kanaan and Sholeh are both extremely talented visual artists, and I was a budding dramatic writer, with one successful production under my belt. Kanaan and I met in a group of artists in the Portland Peaceful Response Coalition, formed after the 9/11 attacks, and he then introduced me to Sholeh. The three of us spent the second half of 2001 together, and into 2002. We supported each others' projects, and we became inseparable friends. When I got accepted into my grad program and they didn't, I was confused and a little paralyzed. I had expected it to be the other way -- that they would both get in and I would not -- a situation that would have been more comfortable for me, whether or not it would have been good for me. One night, at Sholeh's house, I told them I didn't think I should go, so we could all stay together. They looked at me like I was insane, and insisted that I had to go. In retrospect, they were right, and in retrospect, I needed a push like that to make take such a huge step away from my life in Portland. And in retrospect, what I gave up to come to New York did turn out to be irreplaceable and irreplicable. But it didn't stop me from trying.

But I didn't really know how to make connections like that in New York, and besides, I had landed in a grad program with not enough fundamental understanding of my craft, so I needed to spend a huge amount of time catching up and moving forward at the same time. I didn't have so much time for forming new, deep, highly charged relationships. So I decided to try something I'd never tried before: Craigslist hookups. Which on the one hand, seemed ridiculously scary and dangerous to me, and on the other hand felt incredibly straightforward and streamlined. I came up with a plan to mediate against the danger (first meeting in public place with someone I know nearby) and quickly met a sexy, kind writer/ English professor, and we started having overnight dates. In some ways, this did more to domesticate New York than anything else I've done here could have. It was like those nights had a big neon sign hanging over them: NEW YORK IS JUST A PLACE. NEW YORKERS ARE JUST PEOPLE. It's just a big place, and there are just a lot of people, and it takes a long time to get to know enough of the city and the people to feel like you are part of something.

Walking cross town with my partner to meet good friends, coming across the apartments of people who meant a lot to me for a short while, I realized that I have not replicated what I had in Portland, but I have built something new, and that what I have now is a sum of all its valuable parts.