One Specific Kind of Idea
- Samantha Hoback
- Jul 18, 2016
- 3 min read
Yesterday I started reading a book called Rich and Pretty by Rumaan Alam. The book tells the story of two friends--Sarah, "the only child of a prominent intellectual and a socialite, works at a charity and is methodically planning her wedding," and Lauren, "beautiful, independent, unpredictable--is single and working in publishing."
Yes, you read that second part correctly. "Independent, unpredictable . . . single and working in publishing." Ring a bell?
I've read countless books about single twenty-something women working in Manhattan (magazine editors, PR executives, aspiring artists, the occasional lawyer) but none of them have come this close to a reflection of my own life. It's creepy.
What's more, the author's description of Lauren's apartment could literally be an ad for my own humble abode. Take a look at the eerie similarities:
"Lauren's building has a Realtor's office in its storefront level": Replace "Lauren" with "Samantha" and fiction just became reality.
"Lauren's [apartment] is lovely and inexpensive, a quirk. It's very small but delightful for its smallness, like a dollhouse": By New York standards, my one-bedroom UES apartment is considered inexpensive. And the quirk--my apartment is only a one-bedroom because the building manager put up a wall dividing the "living room" and the "bedroom," effectively making a studio into a one bedroom without increasing square footage. So it's small, very small. Although, I admit, I've seen smaller.
"The floors aren't level, the windowsills are black with soot, one of the living room windows' top panels doesn't sit right": Check, check, check (although in my case, the window in the living room is just a transom so that light and AC from the bedroom flows into the living room)
"Kitchen, fridge that hums too loudly, hallway that's four steps long, bathroom too close to the kitchen": I didn't notice this about my refrigerator, but when I'm not watching TV or listening to music and the apartment is quiet, the hum is, in fact, quite loud. Also, I measured my hallway, just to see how close in length it was to Lauren's. Guess what? Four steps. Exactly. (Cue creepy horror movie music.) Oh, and the kitchen/bathroom situation--you can't have the bathroom door and the refrigerator door open at the same time; so yeah, I'd say they're too close together.
"It is, though, one specific kind of idea about a city apartment, done perfectly, even down to the mice that appear every summer": Don't worry, I haven't had any mice. Just a half-dozen or so cockroaches (the landlord has been informed; they're working on it)
Everyone says that the way life in New York is described in books is false. Well, for the most part, it is. And that's a good thing: living in Manhattan (unless you are uber-rich and have a penthouse on Park Avenue) is not necessarily glamorous. It's loud and it smells and in the summertime you sweat through your dress on your way to work. People can be rude, dogs don't always watch where they do their business, everything is unbelievably expensive, and the subway is never on schedule.
So why do so many people (8.4 million and growing) choose to live here??
Because we love the food and the coffee and the nightlife. We love the theater and the music and the lights. We love picnics in Madison Square Park and rooftop happy hours. We love scouring well-loved paperbacks at The Strand and karaoke in the East Village. We love Saturday and Sunday brunch with friends and the sight of strangers dressed as Santa Claus making fools of themselves every December. We love the farmers' markets and the outdoor movies and colored lights of the Empire State Building. It's not logical, I know. We pay too much and put up with crap on a day-to-day basis. But we can't help it. We love New York.
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