A lot has changed since I moved to New York City twelve years ago to pursue a life of “making art” and “being cool”—remote work is a thing, every comedy venue I ever loved has become a Blank Street Coffee, and I am no longer capable of staying up past 10:45 P.M. But against all odds, and despite my dad asking me once a month, in a leading tone, “Where would you live, if you could live anywhere?,” I keep choosing to live here. These are the reasons I can’t bring myself to leave New York.
I haven’t taken the Roosevelt Island tram yet. Every once in a while, I find myself in a cab, on the Queensboro Bridge, and I see the people in their little red tram car, and I think, They look like they’re having the time of their lives! And yet, even though I’ve been meaning to ride the tramway for at least eight years, I have not found the time or motivation to actually drag myself to the Upper East Side to do it.
My rent is only fourteen hundred and seventy dollars a month. And only in New York can I say that and have people gasp and respond, “Oh, my God, that’s so cheap!”
I want to be able to wear Victorian-orphan bloomers as shorts. Or sometimes I want to carry a literal bucket as a purse. And occasionally I’d like to be able to wear an old-fashioned swim cap as a hat. You cannot do these things in the Chicago suburbs. I have learned this—your brothers will make fun of you.
I’ve gotten too used to crying in public. I could never live somewhere where there is literally any chance that someone might come up to me and ask me what’s wrong.
I don’t want to deal with having a car. Everyone acts like New York is so expensive, but anywhere else you live you have to have a car. It cannot be possible that you are saving money—there’s car payments, insurance payments, gas, car washes because your car is dirty, car washes because the car wash is so much fun, and all the random crap you buy at Costco because you have a car to carry it home in.
My boyfriend lives here. My boyfriend was born and raised in the city, and, while I think he’d be open to a move, he doesn’t have a driver’s license and I don’t think our relationship would survive him seeing how much I go, “Wooooooo!” (in a nervous way) while driving.
Broadway. I am not yet ready to give up the chance to see Tracy Letts say, “They were all my sons,” in the play “All My Sons.”
Parties. To my knowledge, they do not have these in Westchester.
Pilates. In New York, I have the opportunity to spend four hundred million dollars per class to do a workout that doesn’t really make me look hotter but makes me aware that (a) I have something called “obliques” and (b) mine are extremely weak. If I left the city, I would just have to start “running.”
New York is a walkable city. I appreciate this for many reasons, chief among them that I have based my personality on my love of jaywalking and my belief that “cars are always trying to hit me.”
I don’t have enough money to leave. I have to stay until I am rich enough that I am leaving to go live in a church I renovated in Germantown.
I want to keep my finger on the pulse. Specifically, the pulse of when and where “The Equalizer” is filming.
“Seasons.” Ever heard of them?
New Yorkers. Last week, an older woman came up to my boyfriend to tell him that he has a beautiful face. She asked him if he was an actor, told him that he looked like a young Kevin Kline, and then recounted a story about playing Kevin Kline’s love interest in a film. I went home and Googled her, and it turns out that this woman once won a Tony. My boyfriend basically did not care about this exchange; it absolutely made my year. I’m supposed to give this kind of thing up for, what—Montana?
I’m spoiled by all the opportunities to point to a helicopter. And say, “Helicopter!” ♦
