The life we dream of
Everyone has a fantasy life. Or should. Come on, even you have one.
It may be seeing yourself with a body weight long passed, having the perfect job with the corner office, living a life on the stage or driving a bus, celebrating winning a triathlon, even having the problem of what to do with a million dollars, meeting that person who made fun of you way back and pretending that you forgot their name…a life not lived.
Mine? Well, I have two.
One is living in a rustic cottage on Cape Cod (by the way, not the Cape Cod that now exists. Even the Cape is different in my fantasy) during a snow storm. Don’t ask me what that is about. I have no clue. And the second? Well, let me explain.
I can remember walking down 55th Street, passing the Flying A Mobile station where I filled my bicycle tires, and wondering if I would miss the chewy kind of air that was typical in my Brooklyn two blocks from the bay — a blend of salty bus fumes. Unique!
I never, having recently turned 13, wondered if I would miss New York City. When you live in Brooklyn, you are also living in the municipality of New York City, it being made up of the boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island and the Bronx but “city” meant Manhattan and all it portends.
We lived our lives mostly on 55th Street, surrounded by family and friends. It was very much like living in a small town. There were no places to hide. Eyes everywhere and permission to criticize and inform understood.
My paternal aunts, uncles and Godparents lived across the street. Neighbors on either side of us were also a kind of family, a family that subscribed to the same codes of conduct, neighbors who had eyes. No place to hide. My mother was very satisfied with this. My father had more cosmopolitan goals for his children, at least his two oldest daughters.
My father tried very hard to educate us in how to go beyond 55th Street, to navigate to and in the “city.”
With careful instruction and the correct carfare, we, my sister Kathleen and I would be sent off to visit Rockefeller Center, eat at the automat and come home safely. I was 11 and Kath was 10 at the time. My dad wasn’t crazy. You see, there was also the fact that the B&O, the company for which my father worked, had an office in Rockefeller Center right next to the subway exit.
It did seem odd to find ourselves meeting one of my father’s work friends “by accident”as we stepped off the subway. But we made the trip many times and supervision waned as we demonstrated our ability to travel safely from one borough to another.
At one time, emboldened by my vast knowledge of surface and subsurface transit, I escorted a group of elementary school friends to the St. George Hotel (no longer in existence) to go swimming. The St. George Hotel was within the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge with a clear view across the river to the “city.” For a preteen, that was special.
Still, it was only after I had moved to Carmel, NY that I spent time visiting Manhattan and enjoying its treasures. School trips brought me to the ballet, the opera, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my favorite, the American Museum of Natural History.
Those were the days when a trip to New York City meant you dressed up. Not school clothes. Your best. Your most adult raiment. You dressed for the occasion. The Firebird Suite, Tosca, lunch in the oh-so-chic-to-me restaurant at the museum.
Such fodder for fantasy for a nattily attired adolescent. A favorite memory and so diagnostic of that teenage girl, was a trip that the National Honor Society made during my senior year in high school. All 10 elegantly dressed, at least we thought so, members of the Carmel High School National Honor Society descended on Toffinettis on Broadway and with great daring, being still underage, we ordered cocktails. All kinds of frothy, sweet delights like Pink Squirrels, Brandy Alexanders and Grasshoppers… while nervously fearing that the police would suddenly appear and take us away in handcuffs. All except Bunny Duhrels who was 18 by then.
So, what does this have to do with my second fantasy?
Well, I’ve just subscribed to the New Yorker, a magazine that I have loved for a very long time. It’s an expensive subscription. The New Yorker has world class writers, whose words are clear, powerful and evocative. It’s a joy to read. Even its sometimes obscure cartoons are fun.
But, it’s the notes in the beginning of each edition printed in much smaller font than the articles, that describe the goings on in the world of the true New Yorkers, or at least that is my take.
These little descriptions may tell you of a new art exhibit, a one person show off- off Broadway, a small restaurant tucked into a side street that serves exotic fare. Reviews of movies that you have never heard of and those you have, some productions damned with faint praise with just a mention.
The column entitled “Night Life,” enticing, conjuring images of rain washed streets, neon lights and places where the glitterati gather in very chic clothes to listen to exotic music or dance to big bands or openings of obscure and exotic art shows, all of it enticing. Catnip, veritable catnip to me, that just turned teen who wonders if she would miss the air on 55th Street, who, when she reads these “in the know” paragraphs can pretend that she is right here as sophisticated as those who attend any of the events or write these sometimes critical observations of the life of the “city.”
I know that I never will be that sophisticate, but once a week, when the New Yorker arrives, I can slip away fantasizing in my very best but have never owned adult clothes and become someone who I’ve never been.
