Yesterday's Lament

Yesterday as we came up out of the stinking subway on to the soaking, noisy, littered, windy streets of our neigborhood, Nicole said "A bad day in New York is like the worst day ever anywhere else."

Ain't it the truth.

This is not an easy city to live in. I can't imagine packing up and moving here with nothing, like zillions of people do every year. Yesterday was one of the days when New York City just pissed me off, from the time that I got out of bed until I finally made it home to collapse onto the couch.

See, part of the madness stems from the apartment that we are subletting. You guys, this place is a shithole. I'm not joking. If you saw this place in Fresno, you'd either laugh out loud or ask where the crack dealers were hiding. It is huge by NYC standards, I'll give it that. But it's shitty. I'm talking floorboards-haven't-been-cleaned-in-8-years kind of dirt around here... The bathroom (which is in the kitchen, about 3 feet away from the table) has this door that might as well be attached with masking tape, and it doesn't close all the way. The lights flicker, and I always suspect that a fire is going to break out in the walls at any moment. I guess the worst part (other than the dirt and danger and exposed bathroom) is the "subletting" aspect of it all. When we got here, there was stuff everywhere. Bad art on the walls, food in the cabinets, books and jewelry and clothes and stuff, all of which was not mine, laying everywhere. I know that subletting means taking over someone else's space. I know that. But if I am going to pay you that astronomical rent that you are asking --and for several months, you'd better fucking move your shit out of the way so I can bring mine in. Is that too much to ask? So I have been shovling all this random stuff into cabinets and drawers and just trying to get it out of my way, so for the next month or so I can at least pretend that we live here.

The living situations here, they blow my mind. I have always thought of home as a nest, a retreat... somewhere you want to go. But people here, they compromise that so that they can live here in this city. Why should a landlord bother cleaning and repainting and repairing his apartment when he knows that there's someone out there who will take it as-is? And for ten times what it's really worth? I know there's great places here in New York. I have seen them, they exist. And we can afford some of them. I just have to get one. Which is not easy! GOAL: To be out of this place by Halloween at best, Thanksgiving at the latest.

So anyway, yesterday's crappy day involved going into Manhattan to try and meet Nicole after her audition and of course getting lost, and of course it was raining and windy and generally it felt like the city was taunting me. (Let me just say that I thank the gods above that my eventual move to this city was not to be an actor. I always thought it would be the reason I came here, and it is very freeing to not worry about headshots and auditions. I will live vicariously through Nicole's acting career. That's enough for me.) So the morning was crappy and no one seemed to care when I was standing in front of Starbucks in midtown screaming and kicking the wall as hard as I could (while Nicole, ever my friend, stood sliently by and understood my need to kick the wall.) Not to mention that I have successfully navigated subway systems all over the world (Chicago, London, Washington DC) and my inablity to get from point A to point B on the NY Metro frustrates me greatly. It shouldn't be this hard! I have a feeling I am making it more difficult somehow...

Eventually we met up with yet another Fresno State theatre alum who lives here and together we three ate Mexican food and drank margaritas like any good Californians should on a cold, rainy day in New York. And once we got back to Brooklyn, I retrived Jack from doggy daycare and we had to make the long, wet trek home. I changed out of my soaking clothes, dried off the dog and passed out on the couch, exhausted from having accomplished absolutely nothing.

But I'm not angry at New York this morning, as the clouds have cleared and I know in my heartest of hearts which subway stop I am supposed to get off at for my errand downtown. But I can see easily why people get tired of living in the "big city." Sometimes, all you wanna do is hop in your car and drive to Target for a cheap, suburban thrill. And that is not an option here.