Pre-War

I met some of my neighbors tonight! It's pretty exciting. As I may or may not have mentioned, my building is largely occupied by one enormous extended family...relatives of the landlord. The landlord is actually the nephew of some uber-landlord, and somehow acquired this building from Uncle Ownesman-Hattan. So he lives on the second floor with his wife and daughter, and some other large portion of the family lives on the fourth floor (they're above me, so it's a little harder to tell who's where). We're on the third floor, in the smaller apartment, and Gertrude lives in the larger apartment. I've never met Gertrude, but Amy has. She seemed nice, I believe. As far as I knew, the fifth floor was totally unoccupied and currently under renovation. Not so!

I was coming home from transferring the laundry from washer to dryer when I see two men around 60 standing outside searching through their keys. I opened the door for them, and one asked me, "Did you just move in?" "Oh, a couple of months ago," I said. "You?" "We've been living here for 35 years." So a while, then. Actually, I believe my cousin Larry's done the same thing...stayed in the same Hell's Kitchen apartment since he first came to New York with the dream of acting. And the often rent-stabilized neighborhood changed around him, just as it changed around these guys. They've been here since 12 years before my landlord was born. Hardcore. Very hardcore.

But also incredibly endearing. To have that kind of immediate stability—same space, same person—for 35 years has an enormous appeal to it. It's almost like living a quiet country life in the heart of the nation's biggest city. I guess that's just what marriage is...the ability to have home, to have intimacy, to have a comforting anchor besides yourself in the most otherwise worldly of circumstances. I look at these guys, and I look at the couple from Thailand who runs the laundromat (I was teaching them some English words last week) and, even though they work together and live together, seem so happy in each other's presence and so comfortable in their banter, and I realize that I really, really do want to get married someday. And not just to any good guy, but someone I feel a real comfort and intimacy with. It's not about the structure for me...the picket fence (ew), the kids' soccer games (the hideous memories!), the community organizations. It's about finding someone who feels like home. I think that's a reasonable goal for the next 20 years or so...