“It was one thing to have rich people in your pasture, but when the Clatterbucks thought of Catholics, they saw statues of the Virgin Mary going up in the yard, ten feet high.”
- Ann Patchett, The Patron Saint of Liars
There are a lot of things to do in New York City, but if you live there – in the way anyone lives any where – for the most part, you’re going to do the same five or six things over and over again. The Lafayette Bistro on Franklin had the best ten-dollar plate of jerk chicken, sauteed spinach and garlic potatoes in town. Otherwise, the default was deviled eggs and Guinness at Maggie Brown’s, a blue cheese burger and chipotle mayo, or a spinach salad with lots of roasted beets, butter beans and lemon (which has since been removed from the menu). If we were on the run, we’d go next door to Five Spot for chicken po'boys and black eyed peas. At Chez Lolas, all-you-can-eat mussels for twelve-dollars on Tuesdays, a pile of warm Italian bread. The Alibi, Sweet Revenge, Thursday happy-hour at Rope (though Robert claims the draft beer was only that cheap because it’d gone flat). That’s about it. All in the neighborhood, and all within walking distance. And in the short time I’ve been gone even some of those had changed. The Tejada Grocery, where Pedro used to strike Lotto three times a year, has been turned into a fine dining restaurant with low-lighting and a posh tin ceiling, candles on the table, a place I probably never would have had the wherewithal to eat at, but where I might in my future as a New York tourist.
Is that true? Will I become a tourist? I have had, over the years, a tremendous amount of bad food in New York City. There’s the diner eggs burned brown and flat, crappy pizza, watery soup with dehydrated carrots, old bodega milk. Even the nice cafes are like – really? Two dry bread wedges with a piece of old brie and sliced apple? A flick of arugula? Cooked coffee? A fast-food Chinese restaurant on every block, fit with halogen lights, a pair of knifed chairs, a drain (for what?) in the middle of the floor. But MAN, it’s always the worst of it that tastes best! Grabbing a slice on your way home from work, or an old bagel, or a hot dog slathered in sauerkraut and mustard, a greasy clump of lo mein, I mean these are are about as basic-bad as you get – but there’s nothing like it! You’re more tired, bedraggled, wound-up, humiliated, and abused by a city than you’ve ever been before, and then, magic! A moment of ecstasy, a pause, a New York relief second only to a fifteen minute cab ride home after a night of heavy drinking. Oh, yes, yes, I love it here, you think, right as some odious substance drips from the subway ceiling into your food; right as the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen walks by without even a glance; right as the craziest man you’ve ever seen nearly shoves you into the tracks. There’s no way this food would be satisfying anywhere else. It would be horrifying, disappointing at least. It’s a lot like how everything tastes amazing when you’re camping.
My father took us on a two-week camping trip when I was a kid, and he made Dinty Moore beef stew one night, and I thought it was the absolute best thing I’d ever had in my life. I was sopping it up with brown bread, raving about it. So, as a little joke, he brought a can home for dinner several months later, and served it to me. The greasy, tepid chunks of potato swirled around in my bowl. I spooned some into my mouth and frowned. Needless to say, I was pretty jaded about the whole thing.
Last weekend I went down to the city for a friend’s birthday party. It was snowing when I left Providence. I had to skid down hills to the bus station, and it was all white, everywhere. I took the passage around the canal and under the bridge, where various panels depict that river’s shrinkage over time. I read The Patron Saint of Liars the whole way down, and liked it very much. In New York, the snow looked more like a septic tank had emptied onto the sidewalks. But I was happy to be there against its flat, white sky. Good friends, weak drinks, elbow-to-elbow, a jukebox at some point later. Robert danced with me to “Waterloo Sunset,” albeit being let down because it wasn’t Abba. The next morning in Sunset Park’s Chinatown, I had the cheapest, freshest plate of squid, cauliflower, pork and chives you could ever dream of – in the coldest, starkest cafeteria you could imagine – under the most demented Chinese TV game show in history. BK 4 lyfe.
Out on the main drag, the Verazanno Bridge was stilled under fog in the distance. The sidewalks were crowded with families haggling over live crabs and toads at the open-air markets on every corner. I wondered where I should be, if my life would be any more sensical in this town I’d invested so much in. I don’t know. How do you know? I don’t think so. I wanted to be in Providence with Sweeney most of last year. Since leaving school, I’ve had five jobs. I’ve worked as an editorial assistant, a clerk at the RISD art store, a tarot reader at a metaphysical shop, a lackey at a high-end gift boutique and an assistant at an interior design firm. And what’s the next step? I guess that’s the wrong question. Be fruitful and productive at whatever’s in front of you. Take care of people, and be kind. I’m a writer, anyway. My friend Yanara said to keep my writerly goggles on at all times, perceiving every situation at all my service jobs as an extension of some story I’m working on. I think this is true.
That evening in Bed-Stuy, Amber and I ate mashed plantains, black beans and hand-cut tortilla chips on her coffee table over small glasses of whiskey, swiping at bits of cat hair and ash, debating things like, oh, whether morals can exist without theology. Then we watched a hysterical episode of Parks and Recreation. I slept on her sinking EZ-chair, my bottom-half on the seat and my head on the ottoman, needing nothing but a fleece throw because New York apartments are just always so warm.