One Manhattan...on the rocks(Part 1)

It's been one month now and the new-ness has not worn off.

Contrary to the expectations of this eager urbanite- newbie, getting adjusted to Manhattan life takes time. Suddenly, the immediacy of what she understands to be a New York minute has been defied, collapsing with the rest of her former convictions regarding what it is to live in this city. After just one month - four swift weeks of moving in, setting up, settling in - she still finds herself at uncomfortable odds with her new-New York City home. She's embraced New York with open arms, but New York responds by a diffident front. It's always there though, knocks on her door each day and makes itself heard: the taxis and open doors of the jumpy streets, the Burberry Scarves on Madison Avenue walking their tiny dogs, the nasal buzz of her apartment intercom. (She jumped the first time she heard it. What is that noise? What should be done? …Oh, it's just the UPS man downstairs.) However endearingly the city reveals its lovely face and often callous realities to its new-comers, it remains an arms length away. Wary of strangers, it confidently does its thing, but is sure not to get too close, too fast.

But, New York is certainly at liberty to upstage all that comes between it and the harbor. After all, it's been here for a long time. A much longer time than she and all of its inhabitants. There's a reason the warmly lit restaurant on Lexington is called "Willow", respectively sharing the same 19th century name as the upper east side neighborhood in which it sits. She can read the city and its tumultuous, romantic life even in the facial lines of its oldest occupants; the other day she glanced at small history when the wrinkled gentleman and his scarlet handkerchief tasted a Glenlivet scotch over ice (the Glenlivet, smoky scent and caramel on the tongue). That same day October in New York was in full effect, as stiff, chambrays collars outside marked the start of fall.

Indeed, this novice New Yorker (can she call herself a New Yorker?) has arrived, for lack of a more self-effacing verb. But, for her, it feels and seems to be that and that accomplishment alone - a verb. She's physically present on the island of Manhattan, holds a New York, New York mailing address, can walk to Central Park in about ten minutes, and can cab it home from a night bar-hopping in the East Village. But as the city continues to move and breathe into the next season as it has all these years, will it move and breathe picking her up along the way? Will she be able to make her own waves within this great wave of a city, integrate into its distinguished rhythm? Or better yet, maybe she can conduct her own music with that of the city's, harmonizing her piccolo-aspirations and New York's grand symphony.

It's frequently these thoughts that wake the fresh-faced New York resident at six in the morning. Weighty ideas push her to get out of bed and make her cheap, bad coffee. Caffeine provides the ammunition needed to undertake her metropolitan antagonist. Bare feet landing on the hard wood floor, there is no break for preparation before the obstacles begin. On the wall, reachable from the bed, is a water bubble twice the size of a quarter. She traces a wet line in both directions from the bubble, one way up to a yellow stain on the ceiling and the other that goes straight down to the floor. It's a leak. (Thank God it's not flooding, like what Christine from 4c said happened to her.) Management is helpless, and the building's super is incompetent. Both speak English with accents that are barely audible, so thick they start to sound like strange, ringing melodies. On the phone with Juan again and she simply can't make out his words. ("What was that? I'm sorry? Once again? You're doing what to her toilet? The gravit? Gruit? Ah, the GROUT…") And so the gutting begins one Tuesday morning, evacuating her bedroom completely and leaving only her ivory mattress under a cloudy sheet of plastic. A Polish plumber joins the super and begins drilling into the wall. Chunks of plaster and white paint and cement fly everywhere. All of her belongings, including a picture from sunny, graduation day, are shifted into the kitchen area and her roommate's bedroom.

Both light bulbs having quickly burnt out in the remainder of the apartment, the only light now comes from outside and the small bathroom. She sits amidst the mess, waiting. Work is expecting her in an hour, but her little home - the only place she knows of diversion from the New York pavement - is in total disarray. She can only notice that there seems to be a trend occurring since she first started living full-time in the city: two steps forward and one step back.

The new kid has now fully developed an unfamiliar skepticism in the face of New York. She may not necessarily notice the symptoms of this, shall we dare to call it, cynicism? But somehow, amidst the repeated cases of the worst scenario, her trust in the Great Metropolis gradually dissipates. A nodding head is curiously beginning to appear as an antithetical no, and appointments are sketched only in pencil. She heads out on to the streets a bit more dubious and a lot more on guard, remembering to take a bat in hand this time around.

Read Part 2