I am at a serious loss for anything interesting to say. I'm pretty happy at the moment and that never bodes well for creativity. So to keep my fans (both of you - hi, mom) interested, I dug up this old story I wrote, oh, probably eight or so years ago. But it's kind of fun. And long.
Welcome to New York. Now Find a Home
The idea when I moved to New York from Arizona was to go to hip parties, meet celebrities, become an Executive (didn’t matter what field), meet a Nice Jewish Boy, get married and move to a suburb.
But first, I just wanted to get my dog back. My mom was keeping her in Arizona until I found my own place, since dogs were not allowed in the pristine Fifth Avenue building my uncle lived in, and off of whom I was mooching. So I wanted to find my own place as fast as possible. Plus, I was rooming with my four-year-old cousin who was going through a breast fetish and I never felt completely safe.
Finding an apartment in New York is a challenge few are made for and if I had known how difficult it would be, I would probably still be roaming the desert. This was several years before the internet, so searching was done the old-fashioned way – by getting up at the crack of dawn on Sunday mornings, hitting the real estate section of the paper, and making a round of calls to agents who inevitably told me, even though it was still dark out, that the apartment had already been rented. I don’t know how that kept happening. There are a lot of psychics in New York and I suspect they are probably in the nicest, rent-controlled apartments, because they could beat out all of us who had to wait for the paper.
I went to countless open houses. Dozens of people would gather outside the building where it was rumored an apartment was for rent. A real estate agent would show up as late as he liked, and we would sign a book that made us declare salary, date of birth, pets yes/no, etc. We would file up the stairs, usually 3 or 4 flights, and cram into the narrow doorway of an apartment of approximately 200 square feet. Sometimes there would be no windows. Sometimes there would be no stove. Sometimes there would be no bathtub in the bathroom. Sometimes there would be no bathroom.
I saw an apartment with windows overlooking the venting system of the building next door, which puffed black smoke directly into the apartment. I saw a place where, by strategically placing myself in the center of the room, I could touch all four walls without moving. One apartment had a bathtub in what I guessed was supposed to be the kitchen.
I learned after about a week that anything in my price range was uninhabitable and decided to try the roommate route. Roommate Finders was the most widely-known and respected roommate service in the City. They were located at Columbia Circle on the 28th floor in an office about the size of my walk-in closet back home. In this room they had three desks and piles of paperwork like I’d never seen before. I wondered how they could organize my life, and thousands of other lives, when they couldn’t organize this tiny space.
After filling out vital statistics I was given a stack of cards of available apartments and was encouraged to call the people who seemed compatible.
My first visit was to a woman in the East 70’s. Her apartment was listed as #12A. The buzzer had a #12, #13 and #14. I buzzed all the buzzers hoping somebody would just open the door for me, but there was no answer. I wandered around the block and came back and buzzed them all again. This time there was an answering buzz from the door and I pushed my way through into a dirty linoleum-lined entryway.
At the top of five flights of stairs was a very dazzling, very tan young woman in a bikini top, with a flowing scarf tied around her waist. Her hair was up, and she was posing in the doorway. “Hi! I was on the roof but I heard the buzzer. Come on in.”
There were plenty of rooms, but all the doors in the apartment were of glass, which meant no privacy. Also, in the bathroom you had to squeeze between the sink and bathtub, which practically touched, in order to reach the toilet. Although I didn’t try it out, it appeared that you would have to bring your knees to your chin in order to sit on it. Since there was no floor space between the toilet and the tub, I assumed men would have to stand in the bathtub and aim very carefully.
I was then provided with a hand-written questionnaire to complete that, as near as I can remember, read:
1. What is your astrological sign?
2. What is your sun sign?
3. Have you ever had your chart done?
4. Are you very religious?
5. On a scale of 1 to 5, how religious are you?
6. Which of the following religions best applies to you? A) Christian B) Jewish C) Catholic D) Buddhist E) All living beings on this planet are equal and we must live with each other in harmony
7. How would you best describe your eating habits? A) I eat meat and vegetables B) I am a vegetarian C) I eat only natural foods directly from Mother Earth and would never eat a fellow living creature
8. What type of music do you enjoy? A) Pop rock B) Classical C) Rap D) New Age E) I only listen to the soothing natural sounds of Mother Earth, for example the sea or the chirping of locusts
It was pretty obvious what the “right” answers were but since I had no intention of eating granola for every meal until I died or moved out, I quickly filled out the form and ran away.
The next place Roommate Finders led me to was a beautiful, brand-new building in the east 50’s. I checked in with the doorman, glided across the marble floor and soared up in the elevator (an elevator!) to the 8th floor. I was so in love with this place already. It was clean, spacious, and convenient. I was determined to get it.
I was greeted by two women who on first glance appeared to be twins, or at least sisters, but on closer inspection were just very, very alike. I was to come across this type in my second job working in the Public Relations field, after ditching recruiting, but that’s later.
“HI!” they chimed together. They both wore very short, very tight black skirts and sweater sets, with the cardigan draped over their shoulders. One pink, one blue. And very shiny, very high heels. They both had straight long hair with blond highlights and, although I do not claim to be an expert in this area, what must have been fake boobs. They were both ridiculously skinny.
I was led to the two couches; they sat on one and I sat on the other, facing them. To my right were huge picture windows and a dining table. The place was airy and gorgeous, with beautiful parquet floors and long, uninterrupted white walls.
“Where do you work?” asked one, and they both leaned forward intimately, very interested in my response.
“Are you dating anyone?” asked the other.
“Can you get in to any of the new clubs?” asked the first.
“Know any good parties this weekend?” asked the other.
This line of questioning, and the way the questions were posed, reminded me vividly of my first day at elementary school, surrounded by sweet-looking girls in pristine dresses with their hair pulled back in be-ribboned pony-tails while I faced them in the purple knit shirt and polyester bell-bottoms that my mom had dressed me in.
“I’m a recruiter,” I told the Twinsets. “And I have a dog.” Usually this turned people off immediately and was a good escape mechanism.
“I love dogs!” screeched the Blue Twinset, clapping her hands together. “Does he pee in the house?”
“No,” I said. “But she ate my coffee table.” Which was true, although she was a puppy at the time.
But this didn’t phase them. Next question:
“Did you go to that fabulous opening for Taboo in Soho last weekend?”
“Of what?” I asked.
The first Twinset, who seemed a little more optimistic, tried, “Whose suit is that? It’s adorable. Very retro.”
“Um, I got it at the JC Penney outlet,” I said, with that feeling you get when you know you just filled in the wrong bubble on the SAT at the same time the teacher calls time’s up.
“We’ll call you,” they said, and showed me to the door.
I met with a woman who had an apartment at Sixth Avenue and West Fourth—you can’t get a better location. She was four flights up, but at this point that was no longer note-worthy. The apartment was like a miniature version of a real apartment. The bedroom that would be mine was only big enough for a double mattress. The living room had everything a living room should have, but everything was very close together. You had to sit cross-legged on the couch, for example, because there was no room for your legs between the couch and the coffee table. The television was so close I was surprised she wasn’t cross-eyed. I asked her to consider me for the place anyway, but the dog ruled me out.
My aunt suggested exploring Brooklyn. Despite my snobbery regarding Manhattan, desperation forced me to reconsider. I was told Park Slope is a particularly up-and-coming hip area, so I made an appointment with a real estate agent and bore the 45-minute subway ride across the
East River.
“Right now we don’t have anything in Park Slope that will allow a dog, but if you’ll consider Crown Heights we have several places.”
“Where is Crown Heights?” I asked suspiciously.
“Right next to Park Slope, less than a mile from here,” the agent assured me in a friendly manner, leading me by the elbow to his car.
Back then I was too naïve to know what the difference of one block, let alone half a mile, could make in the safety and aesthetics of an area. Crown Heights, I learned later, had more murders the previous year than
Harlem.
The building the agent showed me was huge, and extremely dirty. Despite the size of it, there was no doorman (probably got shot the night before and it was too soon to find a replacement) so the agent used his keys. The floor of the lobby was cement, and several runny-nosed children who didn’t speak English were playing in the dirt on it. We took an elevator reeking of urine and straining under the difficulty of doing its job to the third floor. The narrow hallways also smelled of urine and I swear I saw actual puddles.
The apartment itself was fantastic, naturally, but I was too busy groping blindly for the mace in my purse in preparation for my walk back to the subway to really notice or care.
I was just getting frantic enough to try New Jersey when I got lucky. Which, I have since learned, is truly the only way to get an affordable apartment in New York—luck.
From the Sunday want-ads I called about an apartment which was, of course, no longer available, but the agent informed me she had just gotten another apartment on the Upper East Side and if I hurried it might still be available by the time I took the train up there.
I took the number 4 to 86th Street, immediately started walking briskly in the wrong direction, hit 85th and turned around. (Eventually I learned how to tell where I was when emerging from the subway by looking at the sun—I felt stupid, but it saved my walking a block in the wrong direction.)
As I approached the building I grew more and more excited. There was a cute awning over the stoop and the entryway was clean and well-kept. I took a seat on the front steps to wait for the real estate agent when I noticed some clothing hanging from the tree right by the front door. After I’d been sitting there a minute or so a thin homeless man shuffled up, tried on a pink ruffled blouse from the tree, then politely asked me, “Dese yours?” I shook my head and he shopped the tree a little longer, found a jacket he liked, and shuffled off again.
Despite the floor being ripped up and the kitchen only half-completed, I liked the place. There was a wall running across the middle of the apartment, separating the back half which officially made it a bona fide, rent-controlled one-bedroom. There were windows all along the South side, facing the street, and they even had screens. I couldn’t afford it, but I couldn’t afford it less than I couldn’t afford any other livable place I’d seen, and by that time that was good enough for me. I’d learn to like Raman noodles is all.
Once I was established in my new apartment, I summoned my dog, via my mother, who put her on a plane.
Theo arrived one night shaking from limb to limb and covered in shit. Apparently the tranquilizer had not worked. She was hysterically afraid of the traffic and noise and would not go down the linoleum stairs (although up was okay). Any time anyone in the building made any noise at all, she would let loose with a piercing volley of barks, which would eventually, after an hour or so, taper down to growls. She determined for some reason that streets running East to West were acceptable but refused to walk on the North/South Avenues which made getting to pretty much anywhere with her impossible. But I was so happy to have the company.
And that is how I found a home in New York City! The End.
