seven more days in a model city. (the world and new york)

On my final approach to LGA after accepting my first real-life job offer and having to relocate, I couldn’t help but notice that from my current angle the city looked like a giant model train set.  The type of model that was constructed by someone with an eye for the finest detail and had spent decades with a pack of tiny paint brushes crafting every minute shadow down to the white foam streaks on the hulls of the boats in the rivers and harbors.  Perfect patterns created over time to represent the motion of the ships and let us all know what direction they were heading.   Yes, this was my model, my play set that I now had control of and could run down into the basement and play with at any given time.  I had inherited this city from all those that had come before me and now I was here to find my place among it, and I had just flown in on my model 747 to take a closer look.

That was about a week ago.

Getting to that point and coming to live in NYC is relatively simple series of events.  All that I had to do was pass three phone interviews with my eventual employer, survive a bout of food poisoning that I picked up while in the city for my personal and final interview that nearly killed me, fly back to find a place to live in Manhattan, fly home again, sell everything that I didn’t absolutely have to have, pile the rest into my car, drive 1000 miles, find a home for my trusty Honda Civic, and finally, learn to live in one of the largest cities in the world that in which, I had collectively spent less then seven days of my life.

Sounds simple I know.  But is anything ever really that simple?  If it is for you, the next time I see you I’d watch out, because I’m going to punch you right in the face.  Finding a job can be enough trouble, you know this.  Finding a place to live in the city that is larger then a closet and that doesn’t cost 80% of your paycheck each month can be a truly serious endeavor. You probably know this as well if you are over the age of 19.  I certainly expected this as I taxied down my model runway and reviewed the apartments that I had lined up to check out.  However, there are certainly a few things that I did not expect to find in my model city whilst seeking out my place among it.  There were certain things that the great crafters of this city wanted to hide in the center that you couldn’t see from the air or possibly perceive from the outside.

1. As I walked through Brooklyn searching for an apartment, I did not expect to see the man walking in front of me suddenly stop, turn to his right, pull out his penis, and urinate all over a conversion van that was parked there.  I did however eventually chalk it up to par for the course and didn’t let it effect me.  We’ve all been drunk in the afternoon.

1. I did not expect to reach one of the rooms that I was hoping to sublet and find out that the other two tenants were full time nudists.  While the tenant showing the apartment was dressed at the time of my arrival, she had decided that it was a good idea to mention that they were both nudists because as she stated, “I would have figured it out eventually on my own anyway, and it was better if she just told me now.”  I agreed that this was just the sort of caveat that was best discussed in advance and I thanked her for letting me know.  I was then asked if I had ever thought about being a nudist myself or if I had any real problems with it.  I shook my head and the only thing that I could think to say was that I wasn’t really as secure with my naked body as much as a nudist might be.  Which is true, but the fact of the matter was that it had never really even crossed my mind, and that I had thought the whole nudist thing had died out in the sixties. I was also thinking about how one of the tenants was a morbidly obese middle-aged Italian man, and the other was an anorexic actress that while I’m certain are both beautiful in their own bare fashion, I may just not be the type of person that could fully appreciate them. I then suddenly found myself thinking about who would be doing the dishes the majority of the time or who might be sleeping on the couch when I came in with a friend from out of town with one leg draped over the top of the couch and the other on the floor and which would be worse.  I decided just to level with the girl and tell her that I couldn’t be a nudist because I was to afraid of what might happen during some sort of freak accident involving a cup of tea and an aerobics session or something of the sort and so I wondered back out to the sidewalk still homeless and thinking of all the other possible accidents that could occur whilst wondering around the home naked.
2. When I found an apartment that was a sizable one bedroom with a less then average rent I expected it to be in a sketchy part of town.  I did not expect to have the landlord not show up to let me into the apartment as we had agreed, nor did I expect him to screen his phone calls when I tried to get in touch about what I should do.  I also did not expect his answer.  I was to wait until someone exited the building and then go in after them, then I would pay a visit to the sixth floor and count the doors on the right hand side of the hall.  The third door from the elevator would be the apartment and it should be unlocked because after all, it was empty.  This seemed logical in a sense so I sat and waited for a tenant to exit and when on happened to leave I went looking for the apartment which I found by counting just as I had been told.  The door unfortunately, was not unlocked so I dialed the landlord again.  “Really?  Locked?” He said with some surprise in his voice.  “Try again.”  I did so and he was now content that the door was actually locked.  “What should I do?” I asked.  “Do you have a credit card?” “I do, why?” I waited for a response only because my mind would not allow me to assume what I already knew to be the truth.  “Slide it between the lock and the jam.  The door will open.”  “You want me to break in?” I asked half sarcastically.  While the landlord waited on the other end of the phone I stood for a few moments trying to jimmy open the door.  I put the phone down for a moment to really give it a good go and just at that moment another tenant got off the elevator and as she turned towards her apartment she stopped and starred blankly at me as she witnessed what she thought was no doubt a burglary, and with wide eyes quietly turned the other way and slowly let herself into the apartment.  I could feel her dialing 911 in my brain and started playing of the conversation that I would soon  be having with the police over in my mind.  “Oh yeah. No it’s fine officer, talk to this guy on the phone, he owns the apartment and wanted me to break in so I could take a look.”  I hung up the phone and exited the building.
3. Finally, I did not expect to end up living with a wiry sixty something New Yorker named Alice, but seeing how the location wasn’t that bad and that since I’d been at her apartment (to see the room and discuss logistics) she hadn’t asked me about being naked, peed on anything, or suggested that I commit a felony, so I figured  that this was my best shot to date, and worked out a month to month lease agreement for a furnished room. 

My room is above average size for the money, and I have access to the entire apartment as though I was a general roommate.  Alice spends the majority of her time reading outdated books or watching the news in the living room, and since I am really only around when I am about to sleep things seem to be working out pretty well. 

From my bed at night I can see the lights of time square and I had at one time bragged to many people about this.  Eventually though  I realized that they were so bright that they kept me awake at night from over twenty blocks away, so I stopped bragging about it and bought some darker shades.   Sometimes at night I lay in bed and wonder about the people that live in the apartments right above the square.  Had their landlord been as upfront with the light show as my first potential roommate had been about being naked on the regular?  Or, did the landlord try to charge extra saying that the apartment had a jive discothèque feel that was very much sought after by all the celebrities frequenting the area?

After finding an apartment I took a bus to DC so that I could attend a friends wedding and continue about the list of things to accomplish cited earlier.  Once I had finished packing the things I could not live without, a computer, a surfboard, a snowboard, a winter jacket, a toothbrush, and some clothing for work, I left my South Carolina home and started up 95 towards my model city.  It was not until this point that I started to seriously face the issue of what I would be doing with my car when I arrived, and since I figured I would have no real need for it, I decided to sell it when I arrived in the city and just park it in a garage until such time someone took it off my hands.  In theory this sounded great, but not a whole lot of people were actually looking for cars in Manhattan, so I ended up parking it in a storage garage where if I called a day in advance, I could take it out on weekends.

Learning to live in the city has been a bit of a transition for me.  Maybe it is because I feel so out of place carrying my surfboard back and forth on the 30 block walk from my apartment to my garage on the weekends and having the locals look at me like I’m a crazy person.  And then there is having other men openly check me out, which has certainly educated me as to how obvious it must be when I am checking out a woman, and how ridiculous I must look when I’m trying to be on the sly about it.

Since everything is close, and I don’t have the car during the week, I take my bike most places.  Actually, it is Alice’s husband’s bike, but since he passed a few years ago and no one was using it, it was left at my disposal. Biking in the city can be an adventure in itself.  Actually, it is sort of like playing Frogger except when you fuck-up, you actually die.  Running in and out of lanes, avoiding pedestrians, signaling to cabs, riding between two buses, all of it is the sort of thing that I feel is a real part of understanding how the city lives and breathes. The streets are filled with red and white lights and so packed that I imagine them to be like giant arteries feeding the massive concrete organs that make up my model city. The first time I road down Seventh Avenue through times square I almost lost my life because much like any tourist on the sidewalk I was navigating the arteries with my head up in the sky and my mouth on the ground which nearly caused me to run into the back of a horse that had decided to cross the street whilst the cop that was supposed to be riding it, got off to write a cab a ticket.

Finding entertainment in the city has been easy.  At a moments notice you can hop in a cab that can take you anywhere you like to commit any kind of sin that you can think up at any given moment, and the driver can most likely tell you the best spot.  Of the places I’ve visited so far I must say the sky bar at the Hudson, one of the Morgans’ hotels, has been my favorite spot.  The only reason I found it is because they are a client of ours at work, and I had to go to attend a meeting one afternoon and afterwards my boss showed me around the property a bit.  The Bar is on the 15^th floor, and when you walk out of the hall and onto the roof deck turned botanical garden, you can see the all of the arteries and the organs and the model lite up just bright enough to cover the 18 dollar a drink cost.

My time in the model city has now doubled, a week has gone by and already I feel as though I have spent 7 months or seven years.  One morning walking to work I checked my blackberry as I waited for an artery to clear so that all of the model people could run across the street to their model careers, and I think I grew up by accident.  It occurred to me then as I crossed the street that I couldn’t see beyond the block in front of me.  The giant concrete organs that had been so perfectly crafted were blocking my view of the outside world and I panicked a little and I wondered what might be going on out there or if the outside was still even there. 

After work I called for my car and the next morning I got up early and with my surfboard, trekked 30 blocks through a maze of confused looking people, but I was not one of them.  I knew where I was going today and why. The beach was not far from the city, and could be directly found by highway and so to me it was a quick relief but to direct and seemed like just another ride along another artery.  The next day I had to push my limits a little further.  I headed North via the West Side highway to see if there was still a world outside and just drove and drove until there were no more model people or concrete organs or anything really and I just drove until it would be impossible for the city to see me cheat.

Outside of the city it feels like fall.  The wind is steady and the trees bend to it’s will.  Outside of the city there are seasons and mountains and empty highways that head North and West and after my first week of living in NYC, I found those highways and everything that came with them.  Outside the city I drove fast and went unnoticed and noted that the same artisans that crafted cities with such detail also crafted a variety of other worlds.

After proving sufficiently to myself that the world outside was still in tact I turned the car around and drove back through the high mountains and the real sky and the real trees and the highways.  After some time driving, just above my dash appeared the gray skyline of my model city. I could see the boats in the water with white foam on their sides and trucks and buses turning into red and white lights flooding the arteries that gave life and breath into this model city.  I parked my car at the garage and as I unloaded I made a point to schedule its release for the next week and made an inquiry about long-term arrangements in the model garage.  I’d be using the car again next week to ensure once again that the world was still just outside the walls of my model city, because I wouldn’t be rid of either of them any time soon.