New York Conversations in Chicago

Oh, Possums, I’m not feeling so sprightly this morning. I went to a publishing house reception last night, had a wonderful time, met reviewers and authors from a top journal in my field, was invited by a young publisher to come back to her hotel room, and got slowly-but-surely smashed in the process. But the conversation was excellent.

Her hotel room was a disaster area. Now you know I’m not fussy about neatness, but I had to move a wet towel and some crumpled clothing before I could sit on her couch. I tried to fold her ironing board for her, while she tidied the piles of discarded outfits off her bed, but it was stuck, so I just moved it out of the centre so we didn’t have to stare at it.

She’d flown in from New York that afternoon, on a delayed flight, but was relieved to find out she’d arrived before her boss. Her day had been pressured and rushed. She lit herself a cigarette and joined me on the couch after ordering a bottle of wine from room service. Our fluid and rapid conversation ranged from her quest for matches when she arrived, to life from a New Yorker’s perspective, to differences between Australia and the US including gun laws, to September 9/11, to blogging and more.

She was keen to tell me about all of the sections of movies or TV shows that don’t make sense from a New Yorker’s perspective. According to her, when Carrie in ‘Sex and the City’ talks about being able to hear the M11 bus, this would have been impossible.

From where her apartment is supposed to be, the M11 route is five blocks away, so unless she has super hearing…

And in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, there is a scene where the young fashion exec. gets confused about street numbers when she is told, no sorry this is 800 West.

That part of the movie didn’t make sense to me. I thought about it later but it took me ages to work out what it meant. My friends who have been to Chicago had to explain it, she said.

Apparently in cities like Chicago, if the streets are called Michigan North or Michigan South for example then the numbering starts again, but in New York the numbering is continuous through the North and South or East and West sections of streets.

On living in New York, she explained that everyone loves and pays for designer lables.

Everyone wants to be seen to be carrying a twelve hundred dollar purse, she said, I see women carrying expensive purses riding the subway and I think, if you got that much money why do you take the subway? But that’s why they take the subway, so as people can notice them carrying the expensive purse. And if you don’t have a designer purse, then people think, oh she must be poor. So I carry an expensive purse too.

I explained that I thought this was ridiculous. We don’t have this sort of pressure in Melbourne (unless you’re from Brighton or Toorak). But the social pressure in New York doesn’t end with labels:

I always wore high heels and full makeup just to go to school. We all did. I’ve only just realised that there are other places where you don’t got to do this!

I was astounded and told her so. Where I come from a la natural (makeup wise) and thongs (footwear wise) are quite acceptable and wearing high heels to school is a bizarre and impractical concept from my point of view. I try to get away without makeup and high heels as a day-to-day preference. The last time I wore high heels was on Oaks Day and the experience made me remember why I gave them up. When I do remember to put makeup on, I usually end up looking like a racoon – I have never been able to figure out how to stop the mascara spreading – I rub my eyes too much because I’m not used to it.

She lived in Brooklyn, and lived with a fear of crime. To illustrate her objection to the US’s liberal gun laws , she offered personal stories of what it was like to live in a world where everyone takes it as their right to carry arms: four friends who were held up at gun point on a street, a boy who was murdered for his ipod…

I explained that this type of violent crime is less prevalent in Melbourne because of Australian gun laws, preventing ownership and possession of guns.

But our second amendment to the bill of rights is the right to bear arms, she said.

I was confounded by her contradictory position on gun laws. One one hand she abhorred living in a world where it was an accepted possibility that anyone could have a gun, including any guy who might try to talk to you in a bar. But on the other hand she accepted the constitution as necessary and unchangeable! I expressed this to her but she didn’t see the contradiction at all.

You can’t change the bill of rights, especially the first ten amendments, they’ll never change, this is what we live by! she repeated by way of explanation.

Then, Possums, we moved on to 9/11/2001. As she described her experiences of that day almost six years ago, she cried. Not only did she feel like she was living a holocaust, but her daddys best friend, with whom she was also close, died.

She also still misses the World Trade centre as a land mark. You could see it where ever you were. If you wanted to know if you were heading up town or down town, you’d just glance at the World Trade Centre and you’d know where you were, you know? I still look up expecting to see it. All New Yorkers do.

It wasn’t until this year that she had the strength to go above ground to see the site. She said she got angry when she saw tourists taking photos of the site. For those of you not from New York, this means hop off the subway and literally come above ground.

I asked her if she blogged. She laughed then and said she’d been blogging since the age of thirteen! Wow! I was impressed. As you know, I have only discovered it recently and none of my friends from Melbourne understand it. They all laugh or say what’s that? if I tell them I’m blogging.

Oh, we talked non stop until 2am and polished off a bottle of white wine. This in itself isn’t such a big deal, but we had already been drinking at the reception and the only food provided were crackers and cheeses, which became my dinner. So I’m regretting it now, and hoping that if I have a good breakfast and drink lots of water that I will be able to survive this last day of the conference. It’s an early finish, so that’s one point in my favour for survival. Then I’ll have the rest of today and tomorrow to sleep, shop and play before I leave Chicago.