About the Surrealist Hellscape I Call Home
Yesterday I had an appointment with an orthopedist in midtown Manhattan. An unremarkable event on an unremarkable if bitterly cold afternoon. I left my Brooklyn home an hour before my appointment and waited for the F train. The announcer said there wasn't one. I got on the G and took it to the A; this was also unremarkable. By this time I was about 15 minutes late to my appointment — again, unremarkable. The office was on Madison Avenue. The A took me to Eighth Avenue, a 15-minute walk, so I walked very fast along Central Park South.
By the time I arrived at what I thought was the correct building, I was 23 minutes late. The building's receptionist told me I was in the wrong building, and that the right one was around the corner. I went around the corner and into the building with the correct address. There was an elevator bank. Three of the four elevators had water running out of them, like in The Shining, except there wasn't blood.
A man was also waiting for the elevator, and we looked at each other like, what do we do now? The woman at reception told us to take the fourth elevator, the only operational one, so we did, up to the third floor. The office was on the third floor. Except that it wasn't. There was a door, but it was locked, and there was no doctor's name on or anywhere near it. At this point I was 30 minutes late. I pounded on the door, wishing I could rip it from its hinges. No one came.
The man said he thought we should go to the fourth floor. I agreed, because this kind of situation creates what I would term uncertain solidarity. He pressed "four" and the elevator went to four but then it did not stop. (At this point I should mention that there was water dripping from its ceiling.) We kept going, up, up, up, right along with my blood pressure, until we hit the 19th floor. By luck there was a woman in the elevator bank. She made sympathetic noises when we explained our predicament, and informed us that the doctor's office was actually in the building next door. The man decided to take the elevator back to the lobby. I was about to get in with him, but my memory of the leaking, seemingly unstoppable elevator overrode any sense of solidarity, and I asked for the stairs.
I ran down all nineteen flights of stairs. One I got below the tenth floor I found the flooding: water everywhere, pooled on the stairs and landings. It was at this point I began to fear I would somehow be electrocuted, and also that I started laughing, because New York. New York! This is what happens when you live in New York. You leave your home for a routine doctor's appointment and you end up in a strange building descending nineteen flights of stairs through flood waters. I began to think about After Hours, one of the best films ever made about New York: it understands that something as ostensibly ordinary as getting somewhere in the city can in fact turn on a dime into a surrealist nightmare that may end with you encased head to toe in plaster. I think of it every time I'm stuck on the subway, and I thought of it as I waded through the flood waters, down to the lobby, and out to the street, where I found that yes, my doctor's office was located right next door to this building.
At last, I thought. I got in another elevator with another man and pressed "three." When the door opened, it was onto a construction site. I cursed audibly. The man got out. I wanted to lie down. Instead, I pressed "3R." That made the other side of the elevator open. Onto my doctor's office. I was 38 minutes late, but at that point I felt like I had been traveling for many lifetimes through several alternate dimensions.
All of this is to say that I love my home and also don't trust it. But I think this is what they really mean when they say that if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. By "it" they mean out of your home and to your destination. The rest is just cake.
