On an errand last week, I made the mistake of taking an uptown C train at rush hour. When I arrived, the platform was already congested, and as the minutes crawled by with no train arrivals, it only got more crowded.
Deep underground, it was muggy. I started to sweat.
When the train finally pulled up, I was annoyed. I had a package to mail, and I hadn’t asked for any of this inconvenience.
The train, when it finally arrived, was already bursting with passengers, and plenty more were rushing toward the doors as it slowed.
I ended up in the middle of a car, just far enough from any poles that I had to bend awkwardly to grab one to keep my balance. I was contorted around the baby stroller of the couple sitting beneath me, fighting to avoid stumbling into the group of twenty-something men nearby who were chatting in another language—Arabic, maybe.
This was an older train, with no automated maps and questionable air conditioning, and it was sweltering inside. I clung to my designated pole and gritted my teeth.
This is one side of New York: crowded, pushy, and prone to testing one’s patience.
But the other side is this: One of the men near me paused every so often in his conversation to do a squat, because it made the baby, strapped in the stroller behind him, giggle. From my vantage point above the child, I could see his or her big inquisitive eyes brightening each time, and it made me smile too.
Falling in love with New York is falling in love with the goodness of strangers. It’s having access to a vast sampling of humanity in the span of seconds as you walk down the street, catching snatches of conversation and glimpses of personality and collecting them in a mental quilt of human beings.
Living in a big city means treating your public life like it's private; once you’ve adjusted, you stop being squeamish about discussing your sex life and your existential crises while strolling down Broadway or through the park. You live life like no one is watching, and so does everyone else.
But when you do watch, it’s beautiful. Everyone, unguarded. Coexisting. A million chance meetings waiting to happen. Destinies written by traffic and track work.
On Halloween night, cars sail down the streets blaring music as adults in costume pass each other, calling out praise to the most creative among them. On Valentine's, both men and women carry brilliantly-colored flowers or strings of balloons.
When the weather finally warms, the lawns of Washington Square are speckled with bright beach towels, people on their own cloth islands as they read from their Kindles and rub their dogs’ bellies and tilt their faces to the sky, welcoming the formerly shy sun.
Eight million heartbeats that do not beat in time but make music anyway.
Perhaps this is not the bared-teeth, clenched-fists version of New Yorkers you have always imagined. It’s true: New Yorkers are not known for being friendly. They have a reputation for being aloof, smug in their own ability to endure the uglier parts of their city—trash rivers in the gutters after it rains, delayed transit, crowds so thick escape is impossible without shoving—better than you.
But while living here takes a certain kind of toughness, it also takes a certain kind of love. This city has enough downsides that choosing to stay means sacrificing something: space, privacy, quiet. People live here because they love it more than anything it takes from them.
And maybe admitting this means forfeiting any chance I have at being a real New Yorker, wielding irritation like armor, but I love this place, and I love these people.
I am honored to tangle my life in theirs, even for the length of two stops on a crowded subway.
