It’s September in New York City. Mercifully, the sweltering heat is abating. The putrid smell of trash is lifting ever so slightly and the kids are back at school after what feels like 100 years of overpriced summer camps with mortgage-worthy price tags.
For me, it also means swapping my usual attire – best described as “I’m a freelance writer and can therefore wear whatever the hell I want” for the more publicly appropriate slacks and a nice shirt as I head back to the classroom to teach graduate students about the art and absurdities of communication. I’ve been co-teaching two of these classes every fall for the past five years and enjoy the structure they bring to my otherwise higgledy-piggledy week. I also enjoy meeting young people embarking on their master’s degrees and, in many cases, encountering the mythology of New York City for the first time: blinking into the fluorescent lights of promise and thinking, “Ah, so this is what Alicia Keys was on about.”
Much of what passes for rudeness is actually an unusually sophisticated understanding of traffic flow
Of course, my primary responsibility is to follow the syllabus and prepare them for successful and lucrative careers in the real world. But I consider my mandate to be dual, especially for the out-of-towners: to teach them how to survive New York. It requires a particular combination of suspicion and selective friendliness that allows eight million people to live on top of one another without too much angst, bloodshed or tears. So here are some unyielding rules.
Never, under any circumstances, stop at the top of an escalator. The same goes for the other side of a subway turnstile, the entrance to a deli or, indeed, anywhere another human being might conceivably be behind you. New Yorkers are regularly accused of being rude. Much of what passes for rudeness is actually an unusually sophisticated understanding of traffic flow. We don’t dislike you. That’s a misunderstanding. We just need you to keep moving.
The same principle applies when ordering food. A New York diner is not the place for a voyage of self-discovery. Decide what you want before the waiter arrives and communicate it with the precision of an air-traffic controller. Eggs, toast, coffee. Done. Your lactose intolerance is regrettable. It is also your problem alone.
Don’t be a snob. This is a big one. By all means, cultivate novelists, financiers, artists and people who describe themselves as “founders” if it makes you feel good about yourself. But learn your doorman’s name. Befriend the guy at the deli. Know the woman at the dry cleaner. These are the people who actually make New York function, and – if you’re fortunate – can and will perform small miracles on your behalf. Don’t be the reason Ivy League students are labeled elitist twits.
Above all, get to know your building’s super. He’s almost certainly more important to your wellbeing than your doctor, accountant or, let’s face it, many members of your family. He knows why your radiator sounds like someone is murdering a trombonist. He knows what to do when water starts coming through the ceiling. He also knows whether your predicament merits immediate intervention or the phrase “I’ll come by tomorrow.” Treat him with respect. Consider it an investment in your sanity.
If you have an apartment large enough to accommodate visitors, choose your furniture carefully. The ideal New York sofa is comfortable enough for friends and family to sleep on for a night, maybe two. It should also be sufficiently hostile to the human spine that nobody is tempted to stay for a week. Hospitality, like everything else in Manhattan, requires steely boundaries.
Learn something about sports. Not a lot. Nobody is asking you to memorize batting averages or acquire sincere opinions about the Jets or the Nets or whatever they’re called. But you need enough basic knowledge to survive a cab ride or an unplanned wait for your tuna salad bagel. Knowing that the Knicks are doing well is currency. Say “Brunson” a few times. Nod intensely. Raise your eyebrows knowingly. Shake your head. But slowly.
And finally, do the readings for my class. Turn up on time. Don’t ask for an extension because your roommate’s cousin is visiting. No, I didn’t know Mercury was in retrograde. Work hard, because that is the most useful New York lesson of all.
This city is glamorous from a distance and somewhat disgusting up close. It is expensive, exhausting, noisy and overwhelming. It will charge you $24 for a cocktail. It will make you chase a cockroach around your bathroom at 2 a.m. And yet, on the right evening, around this time of year, when you emerge from the subway and the gentle dusk catches the facade of a building just so, it can still convince you that nowhere else on Earth will ever come close.
As E.B. White – who, by the way, is listed on my syllabus – observed, there are three types of New Yorkers: the commuters, who “give the city its tidal restlessness”; the natives, who “give it solidity and continuity”; and the settlers, who “give it passion.” That’s quite a responsibility for us settlers. It’s also quite a privilege.
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