I’m Glad I Stayed In New York

Where better to ride out the first global pandemic of the century?

We started watching the sprawling documentary about New York City that Ric Burns started in 1999. The full series runs over 17 hours making it ideal viewing for this particular point in time. After all, it’s not as if we’ve got much else on the dance card these days.

I actually watched the first installments of this fascinating and dauntingly exhaustive documentary when it first aired on PBS in 1999. I was still living in Cleveland and silently playing around with the mad notion of moving to New York. Little did I know.

The first episode starts with the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609, a dark day indeed for the clueless Lenape people who watched in awe as his ship, The Half Moon, glided into their bay. To be honest, there’s a lot about the rah-rah-this-is-the-Greatest-City-In-The-World boosterism in the documentary that leaves me cold. That most of the talking heads are older white men adds to the dated feel of the thing.

And yet…

I’ve lived in New York City for nearly twenty years now and it’s the only place I’ve ever felt completely at home. Even though I grew up right in the middle of this country in a town that reeked of Wonder Bread, mayonnaise, and Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, I never fit in there (go figure). But here, here I fit right in and I’m staying.

Exodus

Several friends and acquaintances made it out of the city before they closed the gates. Some went to stay with family, some with friends, some with their partner’s families. I see the occasional post from one or another of them, saying how grateful they are to have made it out of the city before the worst of the virus hit. My most fervent hope is that none of them carried the virus with them.

And that’s it. None of my business. We all do what we think we have to do and that goes double for situations like this.

But there’s no way I’d consider leaving my city now.

For one thing, I can’t even imagine staying in someone else’s home for a month or more. Maybe you’re different, but I hate staying in other people’s homes. Even staying in an extra room in a lovely family’s apartment through Air BnB in Barcelona was excruciatingly awkward and a complete drag. Add to that the uncertainty of when this thing will have run its course and I’d be climbing the walls!

From 9/11 to the 2003 blackout, Sandy and now this

I’d been in town nine months when the catastrophe of September 11 hit us. If I’d been sensible and completed the academic year in Cleveland like a normal person, I would have only just arrived weeks before the disaster but I’m not sensible. I got my acceptance letter from Columbia University in October 2000 and was on my way east two days before Christmas that year.

Because I’d only been in the city for nine months at that point I didn’t know anybody who died that day. But I was here with the people I’d come to rely on like family through the confusion, the horror, the aftermath.

When the power went off in August 2003, I thought it was just a local break and that it would be resolved quickly. Wrong. In three minutes entire swaths of the eastern United States and Canada went dark and some of it stayed dark for over a day. I was home and I stayed home. I wanted to go out. I could hear people partying and music playing out there. It was hot that night and I kept thinking Times Square would be awesome to see in a blackout. But the thought of walking all that way in the dark, then having to walk all the way home and then coming home to no elevator? Yeah, no. Didn’t happen. I missed the fun but I may have missed some real shit as well even if most of the city just had a big party.

AleXander and I were in Reno, heading out to my first Burning Man in 2011 when we watched the television weather warning the east coast about Hurricane Irene. As it turned out, Irene wasn’t all that.

Sandy was.

And when Sandy hit the next year, we were home. We cleaned the bathtub and filled it with water. We stood in line at the grocery store to make sure we had milk and toilet paper (the important things, right?). We were ready. That storm knocked the bejesus out of the eastern seaboard and left much of the city without power for over a week. Up here in Harlem, we just had ourselves one very stormy night. There were a couple of wind gusts that shook the entire building but we never lost power up here and didn’t need that bathtub of water after all. Neil wasn’t so lucky when he found himself living in a 15-story walkup with no heat and no water at all so he became our Sandy refugee.

I stayed for those, I’m staying for this

If it weren’t for the frightening daily updates I read online, our current state of emergency would feel like an odd holiday.

Buses aren’t running very often, not many people out on the streets, lots of businesses closed. Friends in other parts of the city tell me that people are applauding and pounding on pans and yelling at 7 pm each day to show their appreciation for the incredible bravery, resourcefulness, and resilience of our doctors, nurses, and first responders. That’s not happening around here.

In fact, until this past week, most of the people around here were ignoring the social distancing guidelines.

The real horror show is happening about ten blocks from us at Mt. Sinai hospital and at every other hospital in the city. Franklin Graham’s sketchy crew showed up to build a 68-bed tent hospital in Central Park and hotels around the city are being turned into temporary hospitals. The Navy has provided a hospital ship, The Comfort, and the massive Javits convention center on the west side has also been converted into a temporary hospital.

Again, all this information comes to us thanks to the fact that many New Yorkers (yes, ConEd, you get extra dessert tonight) continue to work to keep the electricity on. Because of that, we’re not being cavalier about any of this. The last thing these two seniors need is to contract a virus that could kill us or at least make us really sick. But neither of us ever considered leaving the city.

No way. Since I can’t say with any certainty that I’m not carrying the virus, I’d never put anyone else at risk because I was afraid to stay in my city. I’d also go nuts not knowing what was happening to our apartment, our neighbors, our friends, or Giovannie’s Pizza at 110th and Columbus (thanks for staying open, guys).

After all, there are confirmed cases in every other state and every other city. Small towns and rural areas may be escaping the worst of it now, but that’s not guaranteed to remain so. There are no safe places.

That’s always been true but an enormous number of people in this world seem to be getting the memo for the first time. This is especially true for white people living in this country where many of us have grown up in a comfortable bubble of security and abundance. So many of us have never gone hungry or had our lives brutally and unexpectedly threatened by wars or pandemics. It’s confusing AF now to be facing mass infections and rising death tolls.

But I’m not leaving my city in some misguided bid to find someplace where the virus can’t get me. In fact, I can’t think of another place I’d rather be right now than The Greatest City in the World (cheeky grin).

© Remington Write 2020. All Rights Reserved

More rah-rah boosterism if you’re up for it:

Thanks for reading and go wash your hands.