Weekend Essay: The Least Romantic City in the World?

For me, the world is all romance. I look for magic and mystery in the ordinary, find layers of meaning in places they never intended to inhabit, and endow stock moments with significance. See any of my previous columns — especially my latest, Eulogy for a Tree Swing — for reference. Yet, despite my inclination toward the rose-colored, I can’t seem to romanticize New York City. In fact, I believe it to be one of the least romantic places I’ve ever lived. To be clear, I’ve fallen in love here several times — just never with the town itself. The Manhattan skyline fails to inspire awe in me; Central Park feels too manicured; and, though any body of water tends to calm my spirit, the befouled Hudson barely beckons.Lately, I’ve been trying to decode my indifference to this place. Deemed more important than any other metropolis in the world, New York, for most people, is a rite of passage or raison d’etre, whereas, for me, it’s somehow inaccessible and muted — like a sort of numbing antechamber. For years, I thought that my immunity to the city’s charms had something to do with the inevitable contraction of life after graduation from university. I had attended undergraduate and graduate programs in other cities, wherein the mind’s intoxicating scholastic growth and wandering was made possible, and then New York, understandably, paled. Now, though, I’ve been here for years enough to have redeemed that initial slump, and, still, New York and I remain estranged. Like so many roommates across its boroughs, we’re companions of circumstance. So I wonder — what is romance, such that I feel its absence so acutely in this city? What lends a romantic experience or place its dreamlike quality? And what calls resoundingly enough such that fantasy and whimsy color a moment?In a letter to their daughter, F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote of Zelda, “I love her, and that’s the beginning and end of everything.” I wonder if, perhaps, that’s why this city fails to stir me. Things don’t begin or end here as much as they are forever in motion and quickly supplanted. Things aren’t born and founded as much as they come to replace what preceded them. As I walk the streets, I feel as though I’m interrupting. Our steps, the faltering and uncertain steps of individuals, fall alongside the automatic and unyielding traffic of crowds, trains, the stock market, drug stores, and delivery people — definite, mass and perpetual motion that interests me far less than the variable and wavering movements of a single person. It’s as though we’re all vying for space in a place that refuses to renegotiate occupancy. I think, in romance, one has to feel as though a discovery has been made. One has to feel as though one has lighted upon something as yet hidden, and it’s got to be personal and singular, somehow. But New York is so very shared, so very trodden, so very lacking in privacy, and so very ungenerous. In such a place, how does one find a corner that she may call her own?I confess: I’ve seen glimpses of romance over the course of my near decade here, and they all bear a similar sort of pitch and frequency. One night, deep in winter and Covid’s clutches, a friend and I walked to Grant’s Tomb, climbed over surrounding caution tape and barricades, and poked around the site. Nimbly slipping up and down the mausoleum’s steps, we thought aloud about its oft-ignored dignity, and spoke of our dating lives, work, adventures away from Manhattan, and a pandemic-saddled world. That night remains vivid — encased in some sort of protective, daydream-like memory film. I remember a raccoon, still but alert, blocking the pavement on Riverside Drive and startling us both. I remember wondering if anyone had ever been there, at that time of night, with a friend like mine, speaking of the things about which we had. I remember being stunned by the way my friend asked if I was ready to leave the tomb. On the way there, more than an hour earlier and fairly unrelated to the conversation that ensued, he listened to a diatribe about seizing opportunities and an ex-boyfriend of mine who refused to hold a newborn chick at the state fair. When it was time to leave, he turned to me and said, “You good? You got your chick for the night?”Lest we attribute the romance of it all to the cloak of night, I remember, too, a Manhattan morning ritual that always struck a charming and idyllic chord. Knowing that I was far too sleepy a person to join him for morning tennis, my ex-boyfriend would wake somewhere in the 6’s, bike to the Riverside courts to reserve our afternoon slot, and then come by to collect me for breakfast and a languorous stroll to the courts at 125th. There, under the shade of some of Manhattan’s taller trees, we shared in our quiet and secret ritual. He taught me the sport, excused my poor form, applauded my speed, and, for that one hour, we forgot all the rest — the court and our confidences lending a reprieve from the urban racket.When I scan these and other similar-feeling moments, New York’s density and din are absent. The memories are vivid but humble, living softly in my mind’s eye, unavailable to anyone else. There’s stillness enough to find myself there. Stillness enough to detect my own heartbeat and to feel as though the world specially arranged and revealed itself, in these moments, just for me. Just for us. It is often said to “never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” When Manhattan does that — corrals us for congested commutes and coffees-to-go — I can’t love her. I can’t feel the weight of my life when that weight so faintly contributes to Manhattan’s mass.There are nevertheless times when I can steal a corner — when, with near imperceptibility, Manhattan yields, giving me space and stillness enough to register life’s more enchanting moments.As I began this piece, I messaged an acquaintance about it along with well wishes for his birthday, and he wrote, “I’d be happy to collab on research … let’s meet at the most unromantic place in the most romantic way and see what happens.” Up until that point, he was a near-stranger with whom I’d spoken fewer than a handful of times but whose writing made me weep.Nonetheless, we met. Settling at a cozy table in one of the city’s far-too affected book cafes that shall remain nameless, we had one of those sweeping, hours-long discussions, equal parts funny and grave. I can’t recall all of the particulars (there was talk of messianic theories, therapy, religion, relationships, and writing), but I can conjure some combination of memory and feeling. I was at ease and undistracted, he was wearing flannel, and, for a while, I forgot the city around me. It was a night that registers in my mind’s eye like a spike or dip in the otherwise steady audio wave.So, perhaps, romance enters when and where we make space for beginnings, discoveries, and deviations. Perhaps it winds its way around cultivations of privacy. Perhaps it finds us when we’re awake to it and deliberate about our living. I think, maybe, it’s harder to notice its beckoning amid Manhattan’s chaos than in the quiet of a country cabin. It’s hard to hear and feel one’s own quickening pulse alongside the unrelenting urban thrum. Ultimately, though, that’s the point. Romance is dynamic. It lives and breathes, advances and retreats, and it doesn’t characterize a place as much as it strikes a heart. It’s a visitor to the mind, washing over moments and memories, and leaving behind tender echoes.So, though it may be more challenging in a megapolis such as this, be sure to listen for romance’s knock, soft and seldom though it may be. With enough visits, it may manage to transform even the most unforgiving place into one laden with hopes and happily unpredictable avenues._______________Correction: An oft-cited expression is “never love anyone who treats you like you’re ordinary.” The expression was misattributed in an earlier version.

Weekend Essay: The Least Romantic City in the World?

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