The More Things

O. Henry once famously said of New York “It’ll be a great place, if they ever finish it.” More than 100 years later, the place still isn’t done changing. I suppose that is both the best and the worst part about the city. On the one hand there is always something new and exciting going on. On the other hand, there is the constant inconvenience of scaffolding or being awakened to the sound of jackhammers.

For me the hardest change is when good friends leave the city. As hilarious as The Onion article about everyone deciding to the abandon the city simultaneously was (and it really, really was), the truth is that once you live in New York, it is really hard to imagine living anywhere else. It's the city of more. Everything happens here. When Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada dresses down her frumpy assistant, chronicling the genesis of her sweater from a kernel of an idea in Manhattan to a dusty sale bin in a discount store, she isn’t just talking about fashion, she is talking about the whole world. Everyone comes here because this is where things start. The people here make the decisions that alter the course of humanity and that is no small thing. Even with the shackles of winter, the noise, the near constant smell of urine, the inconvenience, expense and a million other vicious slices that make the death of a thousand cuts look like child’s play, the decision to walk away from it all is not an easy one.

But Michelle Collins is leaving. Sometimes people leave because they just can’t make the city work. Those people, like my sexy new friend Denton, end up returning home. For other people like Michelle, the only other reasonable choice of a city (term used loosely) is Los Angeles, which if Faust were modernized, would be the new storyline. When it comes to TV, Michelle has hoop dreams and Hollywood is the place where those dreams come true, and also die. In Michelle’s case, I see giant heaps of success in her future. She is one of the funniest people I know and pure talent in Hollywood is set upon like a limpy gazelle on the Serengeti. I think she will be fine.

Tonight I journeyed downtown, way downtown, for her going away party at a small bar called 151. This is part of clever New York where the bar is actually the street number of the bar’s address (151 Rivington). On my way there from the F train, I passed an old establishment with a great old sign above the windows that said “Alcohol Bar” as if there were other kinds of bars once upon a time in New York and they needed to distinguish that this was the place to drink. The more things change in this city, the more odd things linger. This is what passes for charm.

The only other bar in the area I ever go to is The Boiler Room, but 151 was even more boiling. It is a bomb shelter of a basement bar where neither cell phones nor apparently air conditioning are able to function. I met Michelle at the door and immediately whipped a bag of mint Milano cookies out of my backpack. This was a nod to her birthday party some years back when her mother, who is an amazing force of nature, delighted everyone by wandering through that swanky basement bar downtown offering up Milano cookies from the deep recesses of her tony Hermes bag. “You’re a friend of Michelle? Have a cookie.”

Michelle read my mind when she leaned over to lament parties like this, where everyone knows only the same one person. Being the center of attention in a situation like that must be like being Octomom at feeding time. But when you are moving 3000 miles away, it is a necessary evil.

I didn’t stay very long and on my way out, I ran into Michelle’s insanely adorable gay friend Tim on the sidewalk, while he was on his way in. This is New York. He is so cute and I really do need to start making excuses to hang out with him, especially now that Michelle won’t be around to make that happen. But I have a waiting list of other friends I need to blow the dust off of first. Case in point: Terry Goldman.

Terry and I have been friends since the first term of the Clinton presidency way back in Los Angeles before both of us make the big upgrade to Manhattan. Terry has a wonderful boyfriend now so I don’t see him very often. To be fair, I didn’t see him that much before. Our rut is IMAX movies and our thing is to see them together, hence why I haven’t seen him since July when Inception opened. But Doug is out of town on business and Terry was free and drinking free at Vlada and sent me a text message to find out what I was doing. Drinking with Terry at Vlada, that’s what!

So after leaving lower Manhattan, I dashed off to a second location, fulfilling my goal from Thursday. Terry and I had a great, nostalgia-fueled time catching up in the sleek coffin that is the downstairs of Vlada. There was some kind of fashion week related party happening upstairs. I don’t know who was throwing it but I saw one of those clowns who is an annual staple on Project Runway. You know the one with the crazy name, the wild opinions and the look of shock when they get eliminated half way through because all they are is personality filling time on a show about talent.

From there, we went to Therapy, which was packed with young people dancing on the stage, a marked improvement from the Peppermint show there just two days earlier. That’s the great thing about New York. If you don’t like the weather, those shoes, the bar patrons, that building’s façade or your boyfriend, just wait. It will change. The young men at the bar were doing that thing they do now where all their clothes are two sizes too small. And it isn’t like when gays gain weight but don’t know it and keep wearing the same thing they have always worn, even though the seams are busting. These are skinny adults who look like they shop in the boy’s department or everything shrunk in the dryer but they decided to wear it anyway, and with a hideous bow tie. Maybe I resent them because absent famine, I will never be as skinny as they are, or I was when I was 22. But mostly I think they look silly.

Terry ran into others friends there: two gays and a tall woman who seemed distracted. I didn’t get any of their names but when I met them, I shook hands with them using the hand that had been holding my drink all night and, as an opener declared, “Sorry my hand is so cold. I’m a mortician.” The nice thing about meeting strangers is they don’t always know if you are kidding. Later as I was leaving, I made the excuse that I had to run because I had an early embalming in the morning.

I left early enough that I could stop and get some food on my way to the last train of the night. Lacking other alternatives at one am, I ducked into the McDonald’s just north of Times Square. I was pleasantly surprised to walk in and discover a remodeled interior that was almost genuinely cozy! The nice kid at the counter was polite enough to listen as I complimented the remodel and confessed that the old place had been downright skanky. The McNuggets were as delicious as always, and now there were chairs to match. I guess the more you embrace the shifting nature of the city, the better the experience is. I will miss Michelle but something tells me she will be back. And when she returns, the city will be better than ever, in that same way it always is.