Acela to the End of the Line — 2
A flashback
Click here for part 1
While online conspiracy theorists only need one letter tQ signal their affiliations, the élite require two. Although the destruction of standards made pj’s in public stylish, the true pj — private jet — never went out of style. I first encountered this term back in 2015, when my single serving friend at Bathtub Gin casually slipped it into our conversation. The subtle net worth reveal is perhaps New York’s signature art form; paradoxically, the largest mind-blowings are executed with the subtlety of an ex-Soviet soldier slipping polonium in a target’s afternoon tea.
I myself was witness to one of the most brutal blasts in history, where the full force of a flex gone wrong was reflected in triplicate back at the offender. I was playing “Macallan 18 Pong” with a group of financiers when one naturally pulled out some blow. Seeing that he was about to start portioning and snorting with some ungodly combination of a Discover cashback card and a crumpled up one dollar bill, I jokingly called out “there’s no good cards to do coke with.” Fun fact — every banker’s favorite movie is American Psycho, endlessly perpetuating the recursive effect of satire that’s ironically embraced by its subjects. To my right was Brad, a gamely sort of pre-2008 stereotypical Ivy banker who didn’t get the memo that, it being half a decade later, the proper blue blood entry level job was West Coast tech PM. Sensing a real-time performance art piece developing, he naturally leaned in, as Sheryl Sandberg instructs one to do, and made a big show of pulling out his Platinum card and a hundred dollar bill while saying “try this on for size.” Across the table, a hedge funder whose name I can’t recall — let’s call him Paul — mumbled “hold on a sec” and reached into his pocket. He slid his Black card across the table and said, “I think this one gets better rewards.” To this day, Brad still winces every time he puts his card down to pick up a check.
The difference in the subtle flex versus the outwards flex could be interpreted as the difference between New York and Miami. In Miami, you felt poor, but in New York, you are poor. No amount of financed boats and flashy designer outfits could wrest the aesthetic coolness of anonymously walking by, where you only knew if you knew. Flexing was similar to satire — just because someone got the flex didn’t make it a good one.
It didn’t matter at the club, though. American clubs were notorious for existing for the sole purpose of the outward flex. Roy and I were headed to Mura, a Korean club in Midtown East (yeah, weird place for a club) that Nomura must have lost the full naming rights to after Bill Hwang blew up their prime brokerage. The only difference between Korean clubs and regular clubs in New York was that you drank brown instead of clear and the chasers were actual fruits instead of juice. And the clientele (and, by transitive property, the music) of course.
After about the fifth K-Pop song (this one was by WJSN, and honestly, to me it all sounded like Korean Taylor Swift but sang by multiple girls) and my twelfth drink, I told Roy I’d had enough and took to the streets to wander around. If you’ve never wandered around New York on a Saturday night at 3:30 AM, it’s certainly an experience. It’s a mix of people who are too drunk to walk home waiting for cabs, people throwing up to rally, and people headed to someone else’s place to make a questionable decision. Nobody ever “just goes home.”
And then there was me. Pre- and post- Airpods New York was transformative — they weren’t headphones, the noise cancelling made walking a different mode of travel entirely. My particular affliction was putting on a particularly contemplative song on repeat and writing ill-advised postulations to my contacts. The difference between me and Erofeev was that I had the First Amendment (and the internet.) When I was younger and traversing the streets of Greenwich Village, the song of choice was Positively 4th Street while stumbling home, but when I graduated to a SoHo walkup, I’d put on Cigarettes and Coffee and perch at the top of the street-facing stairs, of course, with a pack of Reds and a cup of bodega coffee. Having just spent a few months abroad and understanding what it felt like to be the jilted lover, though, I was in a contemplative mood the likes of which a kid just returning from studying abroad might experience. No, this walk’s music would be Le Sud, a song that certainly came into my purview from a novel, though I could not remember which one.
As Nino Ferrer crooned, I started the walk from Midtown and typed some thoughts out:
The thing about nostalgia is that it’s a pleasant memory that has to come with the pain of knowing you can’t experience it again. Last year, we spent my birthday in the south of France, paradoxically in white, tropical outfits when it wasn’t the season for it, with you in a sundress like it was Labor Day weekend at the US Open. This year, I spent it at Sapphire, staring at my glass of whiskey like I was Tony Soprano with Session playing. At least the music was better in those places back then.
<SEND>
Tant pis pour le Sud
C'était pourtant bien
On aurait pu vivre
Plus d'un million d'années
Et toujours en été
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In psychiatry, the hardest thing to convey to normal people is that it’s not like treating a broken bone. You don’t just take your pills and go about your life. When the base unit of care is self-reporting and the neurochemistry and relief felt are correlated at best, it’s less of an emotional attachment, sure, but the same “jilted” dynamic happens with a pill that’s fallen out of favor as well. And when that does happen, you look back at the time you spent with it in the same nostalgic manner — it’s not going to happen again, but you’re glad it did.
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On dirait le Sud
Le temps dure longtemps
Et la vie sûrement
Plus d'un million d'années
(Here, I stopped at CVS for a Perrier.)
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Similarly, I don’t know if I can ever do it again. In my own life, I’ve always felt that it’s a “letting the genie out of the bottle” thing — I can’t put it back in. If I spent five days a week for the rest of my life going to work, coming home and going to the gym, watching The Show That Everyone Is Talking About™ while eating dinner, and going to sleep, I’d think I’m in some elaborate version of hell. I’ve always wondered what people do with all the TIME they have. Do you remember being in college and asking someone if they wanted to get dinner on a Tuesday night, and they say they’re busy studying, and yet the green bubble next to their name on Facebook (back when people still used it) was there for the next 5 hours? Did that person really not have time to go to the dining hall and grab some food?
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Di-di, di-di, di-di, di-di
Di-di, di-di, di-di, di-di
Di-di, di-di, di-di, di-di
(Here, I walked into one of those poles that provides wifi and lets you charge your phone.)
And yet, for that brief period, I *was* fine with making the adult lunchables and watching a movie. I learned the importance of fresh produce. However, the wine mom all of a sudden made perfect sense to me. If you drink a bottle of wine in the evening, you don’t think about the fact that you’re not actually doing anything with your life. Fun fact, did you know I almost opened a wine bar at one point? I was looking around in my childhood neighborhood and saw a massive supply of wine moms with no bar at all to cater to them. In fact, I found a location and everything, but the licensing didn’t seem timely, so I let it slide. When I returned 3 years later, however, two bars had appeared in precisely the location I wanted. I add it to my cope list, because nobody wants to hear about the stuff you never ended up doing that you OBVIOUSLY should have made money on, like that blackjack hand you *should* have won but for the person prior hitting incorrectly, or that poker hand your opponent *obviously* should have folded but ended up sucking you out on.
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I think reminiscing about failed relationships or “the one that got away” is pretty much the human equivalent of that poker hand. Other than mining it for jokes, I’m not sure what purpose it serves in the end, and I wish we’d all shut the fuck up about it, though it’s the basis of like, every college movie Bildungsroman.
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Having made it back to my apartment, I deleted all traces of the evidence and memories of the walk home and went to sleep, prepared to do it again after brunch the next day. After all, New Yorkers are the biggest small town people in the world.