My First New York (11 page)

internet publisher
arrived: 2002

I
once made a spreadsheet comparing San Francisco, London, Budapest, and New York. I assigned different weighted scores based on different criteria: old friends, business opportunities, Hungarians, Jews, nature (that one had a fairly low weight). I was living in San Francisco, but I've always liked the idea of that city more than the reality of it. So I would play with the
spreadsheet, and when I didn't get the result I wanted, I adjusted the rankings. One factor that tipped things in New York's favor was that New York had hotter guys. (San Francisco is fine if you like blond hair and fleece.)

I finally decided to come here after 9/11. The foreign press was full of love letters to New York. Writers like Martin Amis were waking up and thinking, Oh my God, we almost lost it! I know it sounds sentimental, but no one would ever write a love letter to San Francisco. I drove across the country with Christian Bailey, who would later become famous for getting all that money from the Pentagon. He had arranged for a two-bedroom apartment in the SoHo Court building, a standard building for junior analysts at Goldman Sachs. It was a wonderful summer. I wasn't really working. We launched Gizmodo in August, and Gawker in December. Most days I would go to Cafe Gitane and sit outside eating waffles with fruit. I was early for every single lunch, because I was banking on San Francisco time—traffic, looking for parking—or London time—two train changes, a delay, time to wipe the sweat off your brow once you're out of the tube.

It was the year of the Hungarians. I was mainly
hanging out with friends I already knew, and feeling socially awkward after living in San Francisco. I remember going to a party with a bunch of Broadway and film gays, and the one-liner one-upmanship felt like a scene from
Will & Grace,
which at the time was my lame yardstick for what passed for New York salon conversation. My HTML skills had improved in San Francisco, but I'd lost my edge. I thought I was being really witty, but at one point on a ski trip to Tahoe, it became clear that everyone thought I was just an asshole.

artist
arrived: 2002

M
y daughter, Octavia, and I took the bus from Maine, where we had been living while my husband, Klaus, was teaching at the Maine College of Art. It was slow and arduous. There had been a blizzard. Getting off the Greyhound with a small child at the Port Authority, I felt like a woman of another era. We looked for a cabstand. A gypsy cab driver offered to get us a
car. I wasn't sure if we wanted to do this, but when he showed us where the yellow taxis were waiting, it became clear that he was not a driver: he was a guy with no money who wanted a ride. Octavia was suspicious and scared. I didn't know how to say no. We all got in the cab, the man talking at me and thanking me. I spent the drive hoping Octavia wouldn't ask me, “Who is this man?”

I arrived in New York a sad wife and a successful artist and a weird mom all mixed up into one. I was thirty-two. I had an air mattress and, thanks to Columbia faculty housing, a two-bedroom apartment on Riverside and 116th Street with a partial water view. I wish I could say I loved New York when I got here, but I was afraid of it. I was exiting a protected phase in my life, and this was compounded by the insecurity of post-9/11 New York. I woke up on that first crisp January morning, gorgeous but freezing, and heard a horn going off across the Hudson that sounded like an air raid siren. I remember holding myself and saying, “Okay, is this it?” I waited a half hour and nothing happened. Then I thought, I'll get up and get through things.

That winter, Octavia spent two weeks in New York
with me, and then two weeks back in Maine with her father. There was a heat wave in March, and I remember taking Octavia back to Maine, where they still had icicles. The contrast was extreme.

In the spring, Octavia and I were at the playground, sitting on the low iron railing and waiting to use the swing. There was still tension in the air, the fear of any kind of terrorist attack. Suddenly, something happened. I couldn't tell what it was, but two police cars pulled up right outside the playground. I saw the police heading toward us. A man got panicky, grabbed his child, and ran. The screams of the children around me seemed to increase, so I threw Octavia to the ground and jumped on top of her. Then I looked around and saw…nothing had happened. The guy was getting a parking ticket.

All that year I was trying to force myself out of some kind of shell, and doing it in extremely awkward ways. I taught a couple of days a week. It was my first time teaching, and there were moments when I felt unqualified and angry with myself for making a move that was so hard. At Columbia, it felt like I was a little lamb who was befriended by all these really nice tigers and wolves. My colleagues were nice to me and gave
me special favors, but I was always a little on edge, wondering what I was going to give back.

One day, I invited some colleagues and students over for drinks at my unfinished apartment. As drink parties go, it made me aware of the people I was not going to like, and also that I had a power I was not completely able to own up to. It was that feeling of being “on.” I recognized that there were people in the room regarding me with envy and suspicion. One woman who used to be on the adjunct faculty would look at the way I broke open a bar of chocolate and say, “Do you always do it like that?”

In August, Klaus moved in. The sofa didn't fit in the elevator, so we had to throw it out. It was the first article of furniture I had ever bought, a cushy sofa that was great for falling asleep on. We could only salvage the pillows. That's a true New York moment: the eruption of frustration and capitulation when you have to saw the sofa in half.

It was still summer, and we were trying to understand the new family dynamic. New York was beautiful: the parks were in full swing, the little fountains were on in all the playgrounds. One of the unspoken tensions in the household was that this living in New
York thing was my project, so I had to make it work. We did everything the city had to offer: museums, street fairs, SummerStage. Or I was going to my studio and trying to fashion art, or at least seem like I was being the responsible breadwinner, which I resented.

The color of my life changed as I tried to undo my isolation, but it wasn't until the following fall that I would start to own my independence, feel more solid as an artist and a mother, and recognize that the most unstable portion of my life was my marriage. New York—the whole ambience of the city, its potential—was, in Klaus's eyes, a competition for affection. And he wouldn't join the party. But by then, I would be able to move in the circles that I wanted to move in, with or without him.

former escort
arrived: 2004

N
ew York was always my end goal, eyes on the prize. I was living in New Jersey with my grandfather, and commuting into the city to work doubles: eleven to five waiting tables at the Hotel Gansevoort during the day, then bottle-hosting at a club called Pangaea from ten until five in the morning. I got to be friends with a doorman there who would let me crash at his place
on Forty-sixth Street—right there in Times Square, near Little Brazil Street. But it was rough. I was sleeping whenever I could, barely. I hit a low point when I wrecked my Jetta going over the bridge back to Jersey. I was sober, but I had passed out at the wheel, exhausted. That was when I knew something needed to change.

One day I was at that guy's place on Forty-sixth, and the landlord told me there's an opening in 3A. My eyes just lit up, like in cartoons. I remember going to see the $2,100 one-bedroom, with its white walls and big windows, and my brain started working immediately on how to get this. A few days later, I shared a cab with an aspiring model—a total stranger—and within fifteen minutes we had decided to live together in this apartment. It was one of those things that happen like the city is working for you.

It always feels like that when you're young. I was eighteen, and it was the party scene: Marquee, Suede, Butter, and we'd always end up at Bungalow 8—that was our spot to regroup. Everything felt amazing. I remember thinking, Seriously, I'm getting paid for bottle hosting? I was this naive little girl, really. Because, honestly? You can all hang out and be buddy-buddy
and whatever, but at the end of the day you've got to make it work for yourself. When that model left the apartment, reality sank in, and I was always worrying about paying rent. My girlfriends and I could go out on a date any night of the week and get a free meal—there was always that option. But most of the time I was sitting at home eating peanut butter and apples. What else was I going to do, eat the roaches? Grab a mouse and fry it up?

I'd go to the stores on that stretch of Fifth—Chanel, YSL, Cartier, Gucci, Louis Vuitton—and I'd look and touch, but I wouldn't try anything on. Can you imagine how depressing? To try them on in the mirror and then have to put them back? I never did that unless I could afford it. I protected myself like that.

It's not like I was bedazzled by New York, but I do remember one time when I was eating at DB, I looked up to see Steven Spielberg, his wife, and Michelle Pfeiffer. I had grown up on
Grease 2
. Michelle Pfeiffer's life was something I had admired and always wanted for myself. She was so gorgeous. I just stared.

actress
arrived: 2005

I
fell in love with New York that year because I wasn't planning on staying. I had moved here because I wanted to be close to my boyfriend. I took a few classes at The Actors Center, and was planning to enroll in the Yale School of Drama the following year.

I had arranged my financial aid and shipped all
my stuff back to my parents' house in Los Angeles. But then I went back to visit them and had a panic attack. I had an agent at that point, and I couldn't figure out why I was going to grad school. I felt like I was going to die if I moved to New Haven, and I was so homesick for New York that I watched the American Express advertisement with De Niro talking about TriBeCa and I started to cry. I thought, I have to go home! I called the head of the drama school and told him I wouldn't be attending. And then I e-mailed all my friends: “I need an apartment.”

I stayed in a lot of places that first year, including a loft in TriBeCa I shared with Brazilians who would play music until five in the morning. But I eventually settled into my first real apartment in the East Village. It was heaven, and it felt like the beginning of my adult life. So I bought a bed, and the day I moved in I got my first real acting job: the role of Sandy in
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
. I was painting the wall of my room when I got the call.

It was such a hard year! I was trying to figure out how to be an adult. I made so many mistakes, and though I think I needed help I didn't know how to
ask for it. There was never a part of me that thought I wouldn't get work as an actor. And I don't think that comes from talent; I'm just one of the most hardworking people I know. I'd always been an “A” student and done six plays a year. But then I got to New York and I didn't know how to do it right. I didn't know how to feed or dress myself. I'd see girls my age on the street with impeccable boots with fur at the top, and the fur wasn't matted! How did they get there? I had to work hard to keep clean underwear in the house. I didn't know that when things go wrong you are supposed to tell the super.

I broke up with my boyfriend and spent the following months getting to know the men of New York. I slept with a lot of people. I'd never done something like that before, and I've never done it again, but it was definitely fun and it expanded my horizons. I wore a lot of eye makeup that year. I looked tough; it was like armor. It was definitely the most un-girly I've ever dressed. I didn't wear a bra.

I met a lot of friends too. We'd go ice-skating in Bryant Park in the middle of the day, or to clubs that only this person knows about or this person can get
you in. The funny part was that at the same time I was living this incredibly ascetic life—not spending much, taking money from my parents and feeling bad about that. I ate bagels three times a day, and a lot of yogurt. I started drinking coffee, because it's cheap at the bodega and it made me feel like a New Yorker to be walking around with a cup of coffee.

I felt so connected to my father that year, thinking about how he grew up in New York. And my grandfather and his parents came to America through Ellis Island, and even now when I see the Statue of Liberty while taking the Q train over the river, it's really moving. New York is like being in a good relationship, where you remember the first days—but it can also feel sometimes like the first days again.

In retrospect, I cringe at everything I did and wore that year. I wish I hadn't been so friendly with so many people, because I'm not good at making casual friends and ended up letting people down. But at the time, I thought I was having the best year of my life. Just walking around New York with my iPod was an adventure. I remember my first audition, for a two-page scene on a
Law & Order
episode. I was walking to Chelsea Piers because I didn't yet know how to take
the bus, and suddenly I realized, Oh, it's never going to be this good again. If I get the job, I'm always going to want to get the job again. But for right now, I'm just happy to have the audition. And I have to remember this feeling.