New York, New York

When I was growing up in Muskegon Heights, Michigan, pretty much everybody on my block was a Detroit Tigers fan.  Most of us had never been to Detroit — most of us had never been north of Ludington, south of Kalamazoo or east of Grand Rapids.  (And of course, being right on Lake Michigan, we couldn't travel west.)

Oh, hell, I can't resist.  The starting lineup for the 1968 World Champion Detroit Tigers:

• First Base:  Norm Cash
• Second Base: Dick McAuliffe
• Shortstop: Ray Oyler (except during the World Series, when he was benched in favor of center fielder Mickey Stanley for better hitting)
• Third Base: Don Wert
• Left Field: Willie Horton
• Center Field and Right Field: a combination through the season of Stanley, Jim Northrup, and ultimate Hall-of-Famer Al Kaline (injured for some of the year)
• Left-hand pitcher: Mickey Lolich
• Right-hand pitcher: Denny McLain, the last pitcher to win 30 games in a season
• Catcher: Bill Freehan
• Pinch Hitter: Gates Brown, whom the Tigers recruited while he was in prison in Ohio.  (They did that again six years later with Ron LeFlore, another great ex-con ballplayer.) 
• Manager: Mayo Smith

You think I had to look any of that up?  Please.  Sunoco gave away fake Tigers' uniform t-shirts to Michigan kids that summer, and I defaced mine almost immediately with a big black felt pen, putting Kaline's heroic number 6 onto my own jersey.  The lineup of the '68 Tigers will be the very last thing I lose to dementia.

There were certainly other cities in the world.  Chicago, most notably, where we went for our 8th grade class trip.  Rome.  Beverly Hills, where the Clampetts lived.  Moscow, which we were sure had nuclear missiles aimed at Muskegon because of the strategic centrality of our foundries.  But really, Detroit was my childhood image of "city," because I imagined the definition of "city" to be a great big version of Muskegon — lots of houses adjacent to lots of factories.

I'm still not an especially urban person, even though I've lived in Oakland/San Francisco and in Milwaukee and in Boston.  I'm intimidated by city people, all of whom I imagine are sharper and quicker and savvier than I.  (They're certainly all more beautiful... major cities seem to have a magnetic pull for physical attractiveness, which dwindles rapidly once you get out to the immediate ring of suburbs.)  Garrison Keillor once said that when he moved to New York, everybody thought he was stupid because he spoke slowly.  Reticence is NOT an urban trait.

When I've traveled in my life, it's almost always been to rural places or small cities.  I've spent some time in Seattle and DC and Vancouver and Calgary, but not much.  Nora wants to take me to Paris, and I get that, but I'd just as soon go to Limoges.

So it's only been in the past four years that I've set foot in New York City.  I never had any reason to go there before Nora and Estelle.  I can watch David Letterman and Seinfeld and Saturday Night Live on TV and get all the New York I could ever stand (which, based on those three examples, is a city based on cruelty, mockery and backstabbing).  But now I've been there probably 20 times.  I know how to navigate Amsterdam Billiards and Blatt Billiards and Oren's Coffee, where you wait on the sidewalk if there are more than three people in the store.  I know how to get to my bank's ATM, know where to stand to place an order at Grey Dog, know who understands how to make iced tea and who doesn't.  I've had dinner at Blue Hill and Cafe Loup and Pommes Frites, which may be the only restaurant in America that makes nothing but French fries.  (Belgian fries, actually, with 26 different dipping sauces.)  I've had a beer at McSorley's, know not to turn right on a red light, walked the High Line, and seen half of the street names mentioned in Steely Dan songs.  I've gotten a haircut, bought books and toothpaste.  I'm competent in about a fifteen-minute walking radius of Mom's apartment, and can rely on logic to help with the rest as needs be.

But as of August 31st, I won't be visiting NYC as often as I had used to.  We have good friends there, and we will get down to see them, but not as often as we saw Mom.  And Nora's not teaching in New York now, and I didn't get that job...

I'm finding that I'm prematurely nostalgic for a place I don't especially like.

Part of that nostalgia is due to a very specific framing of New York provided by that apartment.  On the 18th floor of a pre-war highrise, it has big western views to the Hudson River and smaller but especially powerful northern views that give a straight-on vista of both the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.  You can look nearly straight down onto the public life in Washington Square Park, or onto a wilderness of rooftop equipment — air intakes and exhausts, chillers, ducts, water towers, service sheds — on buildings which actually seem pretty tall from the sidewalk.  You can look across at an infinity of similarly elevated apartments, imagining William Powell and Myrna Loy and Asta living the luxe life behind each illuminated window.

And the building itself is located in one of the most desirable neighborhoods (Greenwich Village) in the most desirable borough (Manhattan) in the city, surrounded by an ocean of beautiful, brilliant children attending NYU or Cooper Union.  It's the distillation of how New York presents itself.  If Mom had lived at 90th and Liberty in Ozone Park, my New York experience would have been pretty different.  More like Medford.

It's like I've been on a cruise for a few years.  High luxury, every detail of every need attended to, food of all descriptions available at a moment's notice 24 hours a day, whether we go to the dining room or have room service bring it up.  Uniformed staff in the building, services immediately at hand.

Here's a description of the cruise experience that feels like my experience of New York.

...there are about 73 varieties of entree alone, and incredibly good coffee; and if you're carrying a bunch of notebooks or even just have too many things on your tray, a waiter will materialize as you peel away from the buffet and will carry your tray... even though it's a cafeteria there're all these waiters standing around, all with Nehruesque jackets and white towels draped over left arms that are always held in the position of broken or withered arms, watching you, the waiters, not quite making eye-contact but scanning for any little way to be of service...

There's a reason that the late David Foster Wallace entitled this essay "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again."  I know that it's possible to live a more normal existence in New York, but the circumstances surrounding my visits meant that I rarely did.  My time in the city was always disorienting, in that sort of pleasant way that the cruise or the amusement park can be disorienting; it was a lot to take in, for someone who never thought of looking past Detroit.

We'll be finishing the move-out this week, and having an evening with some of Mom's friends, and sitting by ourselves in the empty apartment, with prosecco in paper cups.  Then, in the immortal words of Don Meredith, "Turn out the lights, the party's over..."  The cruise will end, and when we visit that port again, it'll be under our own power and into a different pier.