When I lived in Manhattan in the '80s-90s I was not really aware of class but of living in New York City after a lifetime in LA, and how diverse NYC was. In 1985 I lived on Mott St between Houston and Prince in what was then Little Italy and now is Soho-adjacent. I found my apartment, with my then very Italian-from-Long-Island boyfriend of a few months, Michael, by passing myself off as Italian. I still had the last name of my mother's Sephardic Jewish husband, Modiano, and like he did when it was convenient, I could pass as a nonJew Italian. We found the apartment because I had the idea of going to an area that I liked and asking in the bodegas and delis if anyone had a place for rent. We didn't even talk about moving in together when we hit the jackpot in an Italian sandwich shop on Mott. They knew the building owners and said right up front that if we were married and Italian they'd call over and say we were coming. Of course we were married and Italian!
Michael and I lived on the 4th floor of a 4-story walkup with 8 apartments. The building was inhabited by old Italian women and one young family direct from Italy across the hall -- since we were the only ones who could make it up the stairs. One of the old women, Maria, still had a husband. His name was Mike. They owned the building with their son, who paraded around like a hit man with this 90-mile-an-hour haircut, cashmere trench coat, black suit and tie in the middle of summer, and spit-and-polish shoes. Mike and his wife got into rip-roaring fights that you could hear all the way up to the 4th floor in which he would accuse her of being a whore and sleeping with black men (though he did not say it quite like that). This is a 70-year-old woman in a housedress we're talking about.
My relationship with Michael turned sour after a few months and we were the ones in a rip-roaring fight. After I took his keys, threw him out and locked the door behind him, he returned through the fire escape making all kinds of ruckus. The next day I encountered the usual assemblage of old women in lawn chairs in front of the building -- Maria in her housedress and the rest in black, mourning the long dead husbands. The one in the apartment directly below said, "I heard you last night. I'll bring up some macaroni and gravy." (translation: pasta and sauce). I asked why no one called the police. Maria said, "we thought you were having a fight with your husband. DID YOU HAVE AN INTRUDER?!" No no, just a fight with my husband. sigh.
I found a roommate after running it by the women and Mike. Yes, they said, but no girls who date "n*ggers." I felt a little queasy about not telling him that he and his prejudiced ass are going to hell but I had to keep up my ruse as a good Italian Catholic in her 20s soon to be a divorcee.
I met Russell at the end of '85 -- on the street and because of a book. One day I stopped to talk to Fred, a contractor, who I met while he was building a new Agnes B. store on Prince St. He looked just like I imagined the contractor to look in the book I was reading, House by Tracy Kidder (who years later, coincidentally, I lived near in Northampton, MA) and I told Fred so. It was a great pickup line. Russell, knowing Fred already had a girlfriend, crossed Prince St to see who I was. In short time I moved the few blocks over from Mott St to Crosby St into Russell's loft. He is an artist and Soho was then not the swank shopping mecca it is now, but an artist's area of studios, lofts and galleries.
We were married about a year and a half later. I was 4-months pregnant. I met lots of women who were pregnant in Soho at that time, several who are still my friends. It was right during the baby boomers' baby boom. I had my personal training business and was doing freelance copyediting. My friends were all college-educated, though I was not, and were artists and writers mostly. I was happy. I felt like I belonged although it was being pregnant and married to an artist that gave me the in -- not my lack of education nor, as it turned out, my sexual orientation.
In 2000 I moved to Northampton, Massachusetts. I envisioned a place where lesbians roamed free and met for coffee everyday and had intellectual conversations about things that went on in the 5-college community. I knew my children would be happy and I thought so would I. Soon after I moved my relationship broke down and once more there was a lot of ruckus. This time it wasn't a bunch of old ladies in lawn chairs but a street of uptight New Englanders in perfect houses with manicured lawns who did not want to associate with someone as excessive and prone to trouble -- with my mannish-looking partners -- as me.
Ten years I was an outsider on that street. My lipstick was just a little too bright, my heels a little too high. I knew they thought I was lesser than but I so much did not want to be like them that I was okay being the femme queer in the small imperfect house with the poodles and dykes and the menorah at Christmastime and the daughter with a nose ring and the crabgrass lawn.
But man o man was I happy to get out of there.
So here I am in Brooklyn. I live in a garden apartment in a lovely brownstone. Above me are the owners of the brownstone, my "upstairs people" as I call them, a little Jewish guy and his gorgeous black wife. Two of my personal training clients are on this street. They are upstairs people. The upstairs people in north Park Slope are the gentry and us lowly renters are the proletariet. We're the personal service people, the struggling writers, artists, musicians. They're the lawyers, business retirees, doctor, executives, Writers Who Made It Big.
Like when I first lived on Mott St. it's not about class but about being in NYC. I love having access to art, music, performance; the amazing food; random humanity; anonymity among the masses; not being easily readable or transparent; not clearly wealthy nor poor; meeting strangers over dogs or food or on the subway; passing the dancing Cuban man while running in the park; walking through hundreds of school kids to get to the train; wandering through bookstores; meeting my son for dinner; going out at night in a little black dress and feeling pretty, not like a freak; being so close to the ocean.
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