I’ve spent this summer ‘auditioning’ cities – Paris, London, and now New York – seeing which one, if any, I would like to move to next. I am tempted to spend a month somewhere else too, Mumbai, Singapore, maybe Tokyo, just to see if they’re a better match. Why not? I keep saying to myself. I don’t have children or a partner. My parents are more than willing to take care of my dog for a few weeks at a time, so I know Cooper is in good hands. I have a job that I can do from anywhere in the world as long as I have my laptop and WiFi. I have the kind of freedom and privilege that many people only dream of, isn’t it… I don’t know, my responsibility to take advantage of it?
But New York hits different. Some of that could be the mythology that was created around it when I was a child, how much my father loved it, the stories he would tell about his time playing Gaelic Football for a club here. My mother too; it was such a culture shock, arriving to New York in the eighties, and she would talk about the size of the cars and the height of the buildings, the women on the subway in their power suits and sparkling white trainers, their heels in their bags, like extras from Working Girl. She told me about when she was pregnant with me, and they were staying with Gerry, a school friend in Manhattan. She told him that she had such a craving for pizza but didn’t have the energy to go get it, she was too tired, the weather too hot. And half an hour later, the buzzer rang and Gerry told her to answer the door. And what was waiting for her?! Delivery pizza. For a woman from rural Ireland in 1984, this was beyond exciting, it was almost fantastical.
I was twelve the first time I came to New York. As a surprise, my father had arranged for a white stretch limo to take us from the airport to our hotel on Lexington Avenue – that might seem tacky now, but it was the HEIGHT of glamour for two country girls in 1997 – and as we drove over the bridge and that iconic skyline came into sight, I had the strangest feeling of returning home. Again, it’s hard to know how much of that was because of how recognisable the New York skyline was after years of consuming American popular culture, or if it was due to my parents’ stories about the place, but I felt a connection with the city that has never really dissipated.
When I left New York in 2011, I assumed I would return but then life got in the way, as it tends to do. Moving back became an impossibility – firstly because I had no money, and then when I had money, I had no time, and then, afterwards, there were other responsibilities, relationships, commitments. A mortgage. Roots. Ties. Things that felt like they could not be untangled until they were. I was free, I was free, and I could hear the city calling to me again. A month seemed like a reasonable amount of time to spend here to determine if I was still in love with New York. There are some differences, of course. Living here as a 39-year-old woman with some disposable cash is not the same as being a 26-year-old intern – I’m finally able to go to all the cool restaurants and bars that I saw on my boss’s receipts when I was doing her expenses – and when I last lived here, I was in a long-distance relationship. The concept of formal dating didn’t really exist in Ireland in those pre-Tinder days, not in the way it did in the States anyway. (Or maybe I was too young for it? Comment below if you disagree) In New York, men would ask for my number in the line at Starbucks or when I was sitting on a bench outside the retail store where I worked part-time, eating my lunch, and I was always thrown by the interaction, confused by such directness. When that boyfriend and I broke up, a little over a month before I was due to leave New York, I remember feeling