Sharks, Crazies, and Trust Fund Babies

Life in New York City

New York City issues a thundering pronouncement on your insignificance. Photo credit: Stacey Eskelin

Now that John and I are living in the East Village, the fabric of time, my time, has warped into something unrecognizable. No longer the golden afternoons of Italy spent writing Cappuccinos. No longer the leisured hours spent drinking them. Here in the city, it’s all work, and it’s all the time. So much work, in fact, that I haven’t had time for drinking or writing Cappuccinos.

I’ve wanted to. Man, have I wanted to. There’s a connection I feel with you (at least, on my end) in this format. It is you I am speaking to. But as I get older, I have become more sensible of my limitations. Staying up all night writing isn’t good for me. Thinking I can do all the work I must do to “make rent” (in the broadest sense) and maintain a rigorous publishing schedule is unrealistic, at best; at worst, it is dreadfully unhealthy.

But I’d like to publish more often than I have been lately, so fingers crossed. Whether that’s optimistic, delusional, or actually doable remains to be seen.

On the work front, I’ve been busy. Whether anything comes of my labors remains to be seen. This is the fate of the fiction writer. Well, any writer who isn’t J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, or E.L James. I have “things out there.” My agent, whom I greatly appreciate, has been busy on my behalf. I’ve been busy trying to deserve her.

So, yes, there’s been a lot of writing.

I wrote when I was hospitalized with pneumonia. I wrote when I was hospitalized with Covid. I wrote when I got a bad test result from my doctor. I wrote after the “procedure” he performed to determine whether I had anything to worry about. I submitted an editing job to my client on the night my mother died. I wrote in the hours between a furious raft of emails between me and our landlord, with whom we are have an epic row—one that has taken us to court, in fact.

Human metaphor for us all. Photo credit: John B Arnold

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It’s like that here on this crowded little island of Manhattan. Space is at such a premium, an expensive, morally corrupt, abusive, and exploitative premium. The ones who get flattened? Everyone who isn’t a trust fund baby, a hedge-fund manager, or a broflake from Google. They are the only people who can afford the exorbitant rent. In the East Village, we are surrounded by such creatures. As close as our buildings are, it’s impossible not to hear them weeping to friends on Zoom about the mean thing their roommate said, or the weird guy at the bar who refused to believe they were gay, or that time at camp when they lost their retainer.

I try hard to be patient with the dramas of the young. I was young once, too. But I’ll admit that it’s damned difficult when you’ve been in and out of the hospital all year and sodomized by medical instruments; when people you know are dying, and you’re having to navigate the New York City court system without a clue, a lawyer, or even the remotest sense of which courtroom you’re supposed to be in.

I thought middle age was going to be easier than this.

I was wrong.

New York City has brought out all my survival instincts. I’ll be honest—they’re not pretty. At the same time, New York City has filled me to the breaking point with a compassion for human suffering. There is so much of it here.

When I was quaffing cappuccinos on Via Repubblica, people were mostly theoretical. Oh, sure, I knew some. More than a few. But not the way you know them in the city. Here, you’re literally shoulder-to-shoulder with people on the bus, the subway, at the supermarket. They’re in the hospital bed next to you. You hear them on the phone with a niece, a neighbor, an errant son. You discover they have a storage unit and the property manager is about the cut off the locks for non-payment. You hear every word the nurse says when she’s discussing their bowels. You lay there half dead, wheezing and feverish, wondering why life ends up stripping you of everything, especially your dignity.

A few weeks ago, John and I had to schlep up to Harlem in pursuit of a possible attorney. After yet another disappointment (we weren’t sufficiently “incapacitated” to warrant pro-bono representation), I found myself out on the noisy, crowded streets with one hand pressed to my ear, trying to have a phone conversation with yet another attorney. But I couldn’t hear anything except wailing sirens and the skronk of angry motorists, so we ducked into a Popeye’s Chicken outlet and found a booth.

That smell. I wish we had the power to un-smell things. It was a combination of putrefying bird flesh, rancid cooking oil, and bleach. I kept my breathing shallow and my attention focused on the phone call. A grimy Plexiglas service window separated the employees from the customers, so everyone had to shout their order. While my lawyer talked about “HDFC co-op regulations” and “pre-trial diversions,” I was busy making dozens of notes. Then this crazy came into the restaurant, dancing to music in her own head.

When you’ve been in the city a while, you learn not to look. Looking is an invitation for the crazy to engage with you. And there are so many crazies. During the pandemic when all the “normals” cleared the streets, the crazies took over. New York City became their stage, and they were its stars, its quirky lovable stars. This crazy decided to sit next to me, chattering away, and then she extended her arms as though she were driving an oversized steering wheel and shouted, “Isiah!” in wild-eyed jubilation.

Did I think she might stab me? Of course. People get stabbed here all the time. Or punched in the face. Or shot. Or shoved onto train tracks. Once a crazy has had the place to herself for two years, it’s hard to yield the floor.

But a part of me wondered if she wasn’t onto something. I mean, she was having a great time. Me, not so much.

The corroded but strangely beloved artery of this city. Photo credit: John B Arnold.

Suddenly, John started laughing. Not at her or me or even our situation. He was laughing because he remembered what our lives used to be like, the lovely sameness of our days. One minute we were roaming the streets of Amelia, an Italian village seven hundred years older than Rome. The next minute we were in some fried-chicken hell, and someone was standing in front of the Plexiglas loudly complaining that his drumsticks were undercooked.

And yet ….

Would I give up the city? Not willingly. New York City is a drug. It’s a raw Darwinian struggle, at least for those of us without six-figure jobs, diversified portfolios (or any portfolio) or ample trust funds. Even the geography of Manhattan (up the stairs, down the stairs, walkwalkwalkwalk, it’s raining, it’s snowing, you’re a mile from the subway, you’re on the subway, there’s a guy lying in his own vomit, there’s a kid shooting up in front of you, there’s a woman collapsing on the platform, there’s a man defecating by the stairs).

As a writer, I couldn’t give this up, even if I wanted to. It would unconscionable for me to reject this opportunity to witness what the late Anthony Bourdain called “life’s glorious mosaic.”

The city is a gauntlet, a leather bar, a Petri dish, a human puzzle box. It’s the MOMA, the American Ballet Theater, the Met Opera, free concerts in the park. It blows your mind apart with its works of staggering genius and then reassembles the pieces only to blow them up again.

The city forces you to navigate its waters like a shark—or in my case, a minnow trying not to be devoured by a shark. It shakes you down the minute you set foot outside your door--$7.00 for a loaf of bread, $5.00 for a roll of paper towels, $25.00 for a four-block Uber ride.

This city may kill me, it is true. Chances are it will succeed. But I’m not going down without a fight. If I have to punch and kick and scream bloody murder, I will. If I have to cry myself hoarse at the pathos of its broken people, I’ll do that, too.

Italy was a dream. Dreams are easy to love.

New York City isn’t a dream.

It’s life, unshaven.

Copyright © 2024 Stacey Eskelin