Today is my nine year anniversary of moving to NYC. I look back and I can’t believe how much that move changed me irrevocably. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I stayed back east of the CT river. Perish the thought!
The most painful thing, and one that will stay with me forever, is how many people thought I couldn’t do it. I had many supporters, in fact tons, but it’s always the few that try to ruin it for you. Because of them (and my thin skin in those days), my first few years of “making” it were the hardest; harder than if everyone knew how difficult it was for me to settle in. It reached the point where I felt I couldn’t reveal to anyone how much trying to survive was taking a toll on me. It’s those few that make you think that everyone has the same opinions as they do.
Looking back, I recall feeling lucky, so lucky in fact because I found temporary lodging right away at a women’s residence that doesn’t exist anymore (well in name, but the building is still there operating under the name Hotel Thirty-Thirty). The Hotel Martha Washington was a women’s hotel, and a throw back to the old days of temporary residences exclusively for women. Back in the day, when a woman arrived in the “big city”, these establishments provided a safe haven and protected these young fresh faced girls from the “ills” of city life. Whatever that means! The hotel was featured in the movie “Valley of the Dolls”. When I arrived, it was so past its prime that even Miss. O’Hara, Welles and North would never approve. There were no chicks dressed like it was the 1940’s with pencil skirts and smart hairdos that had secretarial or modeling jobs like you see in the movies. It was more like a passage out of the Bell Jar without the antics being committed behind closed doors.
Back in the summer of 97, you waited outside the newspaper vendor on Astor Place every Tuesday night for the first batch of that week’s Village Voice. You would grab your free copy, scamper to the nearest pay phone, and begin calling all the roommate ads, crossing your fingers and hoping that would be the one; the one that would get you out of the situation you didn’t want to be in.
I saw what felt (at the time) like a million apartments and got many approvals, but something inside of me held out. I’m so glad I did, because five months after moving here, I landed my one bedroom (an alcove studio really) rent-controlled apartment in Gramercy. Knowing what I know now, would I have done things any different back then? Sure! Hell yeah! But I have what I have and I accept what I have.
