Last night I went out for a few drinks at Blue Ribbon Brasserie with 3 others, all of whom are not native to these New York parts. At some point during the conversation, in which I felt unintelligent and uninformed (I had to explain what the company I am temping for does, which my drinkmates think is amazingly cool, and I think is painful and confusing), college came up. I hate when this happens. Everyone talks longingly with a gleam in their eye for the days of yesteryear when they drank beer upside down and slept in dorms of various stages of renovation. I don’t. College was purely education and 3 hour subway commutes. So I always dread the college conversation every time it comes up with transplants.
This time, however, when I tell the Boy in the bar where I went to college, his eyes open wide and he says, “So you’ve never lived anywhere else besides NEW YORK?” Yeah, Condescension. New York City — it’s not like I’ve been living in Greenbow, Alabama my whole life.
But it still brought up old ideas that I should be taking this show on the road. My New York is not the New York of my peers. And how do you explain this to the kids of the East Village? That we grew up with families that required us to stay close, and that we went to high schools that probably gave up on us long before we ever enrolled, and that financial aid was our only passport to college, and choosing to go to schools in other states, let alone other coasts, was not even really an option. I’m not trying to say that we were disadvantaged, and I’m not asking for pity. It’s just striking to me to see this difference. Maybe we are an anomaly?
