Finding New York

The massive London Terrace complex, in Chelsea, 

between 9th and 10th Avenues, 

on 23rd and 24th Streets.

Since late 2006 I’ve spent time with Jim, my significant other, in NYC. His place is just north of Greenwich Village. It’s known as Chelsea or, as the New Yorker once dubbed it in jest, Gaymanistan.

Jim’s apartment is in London Terrace, a pre-war complex that takes up most of a big city block. Life runs smoothly with the help of elevators, concierges, a secure package room, valet services, laundry rooms, even doctors, physical therapists and a number of shrinks including the actress Lorraine Bracco, who once played a shrink on “Sopranos.” Tim Gunn lived here for a time and so did Sam Waterston, star of “Law and Order.”

We have a post office where I sometimes spot Wallace Shawn, from “My Dinner with Andre,” looking unkempt and sounding nasal-y as he mails off his packages. We have a deli with a great salad bar, a grocery store, a Joe’s coffee shop, a lively hairdresser and a barbershop, even a podiatrist. And if you don’t want to take an elevator to the ground floor and venture outdoors, most anything can be delivered. This is the New York City that many experience some version of, and part of why it’s heralded as great. A city block is a neighborhood with everything you could want in your day-to-day life mere seconds away. Everything else is a subway ride away, though I prefer to walk.

Jim moved here 40 years ago. 1974. It was a rough neighborhood back then, but things have evolved. Chelsea now boasts a five-star quality of life, with high rises sprouting up everywhere to take advantage of all the perks. Banks and drug stores populate many of the corner lots, the High Line is half block away, and scores of galleries draw boatloads of well-to-do people from all over the world. Chelsea Piers, a block away on the Hudson River, has a state-of-the-art athletic club that hangs out over the river. Cruise ships, always a spectacular sight, come and go. There’s a driving range, skate board park, a carousel, and yachts owned by people like Diane Von Furstenberg. Jim’s rent stabilized apartment has positioned us in a place that, while quite extraordinary, feels pre-destined: banks, luxury housing that crowds out the High Line’s sun, yet another yogurt shop. There are few surprises here.

Before our neighborhood gas station was demolished 

to make room for more luxury apartments, 

some artists erected this installation. 

I ask New Yorkers, “What do you mean when you say you love ‘the energy’ of NYC?”

Is it the honking roil of traffic, the masses crammed on street corners waiting to cross, the lines at Trader Joe’s that are so long they are delineated by workers holding up big signs that say, “Line Starts Here” or is it the palpable stress every time the monthly rent bills come in the mail?

Again: What is meant by New York City’s energy? What am I missing? Or has it come and gone?

I finally glimpsed what people are talking about. I went with Jim to an industrial section of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, to look at a window restoration job. The building is an old three-story farmhouse — a gem — hidden in the middle of hundreds, if not thousands, of run down factory buildings. Many of the buildings are empty and others are taken up with a mix of small businesses like a one-man upholstery shop, party spaces in warehouses and trades like window making. I saw a smattering of artist studios taking hold, surrounded by an exuberance of graffiti. And then, of course, this holdout farmhouse that’s about to become a gorgeous organic restaurant imagined by two young restaurateurs from Sydney, Australia.

You can feel that something about to happen and it’s that promise, that creative force amassing in this blank canvas of a neighborhood, that’s utterly thrilling. It makes you want to stake a claim — so that when we met with the young couple with the pages of dreamy architectural drawings, I said to Jim, “Let’s help them make this happen.”

Here's what we saw in Williamsburg...

A window maker's completely fetching storefront.

Three loading dock bay openings tell stories we can only guess at. 

And so much amazing graffiti it was hard to stop looking and get to the meeting on time...

 "Speak your mind" pretty much says it all!

  

The end of my excellent NYC writers group

As obvious as it was, 

I didn't see the storm coming.

My NYC writers group imploded. The implosion happened in mid-June, out of nowhere, and it caught me by surprise.

Sometimes writing about something helps me understand it, or put it into perspective or, when necessary, let it go. Maybe I’ll land squarely on some nugget of truth we can all benefit from.

The breakup was ugly and wrenching, with accusations and tears and hurt feelings. Not only did our group break up, but at least one valued friendship ended. Since then, none of us has communicated. Our Thursday afternoon writers group was very good and now it’s very gone. I am still in disbelief.

Every week we listened to amazing stories — a handsome young husband’s cruel betrayal, a loving father’s midnight whiskey fogs, a single mom’s multiplying payday loans. We talked about the metaphors, the points of view, the sentences that worked and those that didn’t. We referenced other books. We brought luscious treats like chocolate chunk cookies and creamy gelatos from New York’s finest shops. Could it get any better?

We told each other how important this group was, how well it served us, how we wouldn’t know what we’d do without it and then … boom. Just like that.

Writers groups have to have rules. A few I’m familiar with are: Don’t debate another member’s critique; leave it to the author to take it or leave it. Be polite when you critique but by all means critique. Be on time. Don’t mistake the writers group for a pajama party. There’s work to be done and limited time. Yes, there are lots of rules and most long-lived groups end up adopting a few.

Sometimes you have to evict a member from your group. If you have to do it, do it right away. Better yet, have a very strict admittance protocol so that you induct only those who fit in. I’ve heard myself tell groups: This is not a democracy. She has to go.

If she doesn’t, the group will go down.

My NYC writers group evicted one of our members a year ago last spring. She was reading a very personal, powerful memoir about her life as a sex worker and her battle with acute depression and hallucinations. She was a dominant that specialized in kicking men in the testicles. She had good reasons to like this. And the men that signed up for what’s called ball busting liked it as well. Though her stories were hard to take, they were well written. I thought her book had a chance if she were to pull the various chapters together into a cohesive whole.

NYC is often called the creative capital of the world. 

It's easier to find and connect with writers here. 

But there's a volatility, too.

  

Our group took a retreat and spent a long night helping her produce an outline with chapter synopses. She wore us out and the next day one of our key members said she’d had enough. The schizophrenic had to go. We ousted her for being too needy and too oblivious to us. The previous afternoon, while we were in the swimming pool, the about-to-be-ousted member asked me to photograph her. I noticed that she was always aware of me, always posing, always turning herself toward me provocatively. One of her attributes was her beauty. If she was a narcissist, as some thought, she was oddly vulnerable and sweetly likable — attributes she used to her advantage.

This spring another group member got targeted as disruptive and insensitive. The complaint: She talked too much and she interrupted others to the point that some felt the quality of our critiques had suffered. The objecting member proposed a slew of rules meant to eliminate all the chitchat and keep things more orderly. In an instant we were to go from collegial and friendly to no-nonsense workshop. The transition felt undoable. The two members locked horns, laying down boundaries that essentially took both from the group.

With two of the four core members gone, that was it. Immediately prior to all this happening, I had recruited three new members who knew nothing of the dispute. I still haven’t had the heart to tell them. I’ve been hosting a virtual group with the new members this summer in hopes that all will be forgiven and that our group will miraculously reconvene this fall. This kind of protracted hoping is an example of me needing to work the serenity prayer:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.  

I think the clarity I’ve been looking for is starting to materialize.

There are good reasons this implosion happened. Groups need rules but rules are hard to implement after a certain critical point — specifically, when patience has dried up. Second, writers groups resemble therapy groups even if they’re not therapy groups. Lots of psychology gets revealed in the process of reading, critiquing and rewriting. In other words, we know a lot about each other. Thus, and third, trust and sensitivity are essential. Had we trusted each other, we could have brought up the issue of excessive chitchat a lot earlier and simply helped each other through the hurt feelings.

Our writers group retreat in the Hamptons 

felt like a gift till one member tried our patience. 

The rest of us planted the seeds of our eventual destruction.

I once started a writers group that functioned for years with me as host. We met in a conference room at the newspaper where I worked as an arts magazine managing editor. I invited the people. I disinvited them. Once, one of our long-term members plagiarized a short story. She put her name on another member’s story, changed the beginning slightly and got it published. When I found out, I did what I thought was the logical thing and told her to leave. I loved my writers group more than it loved me. When I took a job at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and asked if we could move the group’s starting time up 15 minutes to accommodate the train schedule, they said no and that was that.

Which proves to me that a writers group is not a family. It’s not a bunch of best buddies. It’s not therapy. And it’s not school. Its primary purpose is to help you produce good writing. If that stops happening — for any reason — expect an implosion.