by Joanna Coles
Wednesday, 9 September
Peter
Over lunch today, at Vong on East 54th Street, my friend Alan Charlton announces that after ten years in Manhattan media he’s finally decided to move back to London.
I know I should be telling him how we’ll miss him, but he and his family live in a lovely pre-war ‘classic six’ on the Upper West Side, overlooking Riverside Park, and I find myself blurting, ‘What’s happening to your apartment?’
‘Yeah, I’ll miss you too,’ he says sarcastically. ‘Why is that all anyone wants to know? You’re like a bunch of vultures circling overhead.’
When I get home I mention to Joanna that the Charltons are going home.
‘So what’s happening to their apartment?’ she asks quickly.
Thursday, 10 September
Joanna
I am poking hungrily around the kitchen to make myself a snack when I discover a loaf of bread with the sell-by date of 24 August – seventeen days ago – which we have forgotten to throw out. But when I come to examine it, it appears to be perfectly fresh and surprisingly springy to the touch.
American food lasts much longer than British food. I am suspicious of this, but as long as you don’t make a habit of studying the sell-by dates, it can be rather useful. A neighbour in Horatio Street once told me that she was convinced the reason so many Americans get colon cancer is because the food here is bursting with preservatives, which the stomach is unable to break down properly.
Dismissing this theory, I spread the antique bread with marmalade and find that it tastes really rather good.
Thursday, 10 September
Peter
The discount electrical store, The Wiz, has, I notice today, unveiled a new slogan. The old one was: ‘NOBODY BEATS THE WIZ!’, but since going into chapter 11 voluntary insolvency, to obtain protection from its creditors, that slogan has become inappropriate, it seems. Now its windows are populated with huge red letters which demand: ‘ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?’ The question immediately begins to haunt me. It pops back into my mind unbidden throughout the day, as I walk down the street in a state of some melancholy. ARE WE HAVING FUN YET? Well, are we?
I think that this would have made as good a national motto as ‘America – more of everything’.
Friday, 11 September
Joanna
‘Uh oh, bad news for Sean Puffy Combs,’ says Peter, scanning Page Six, the New York Post’s gossip column. ‘He’s been dropped from the new Oliver Stone baseball movie.’
‘Oh, why? Did he have a row with Stone?’
‘No, says here it’s because he “threw like a girl”.’
Friday, 11 September
Peter
I have been nagged into accompanying Joanna to the first session of her Maternal Fitness course at the New York Sports Club on 34th and Fifth Avenue. Our instructor, a sporty, twenty-something blonde in a grey Kansas University sweatshirt and white Lycra shorts, points to the self-conscious men: ‘You’, she yells, ‘are the foetus police. It’s your job to ensure that your wives do their daily exercises. It’s like training for the New York marathon – the marathon of labour!
‘The main point of all these exercises’, she continues, ‘is to keep your recti muscle – the one down your belly short. Now remember a short muscle is a good muscle! I’ve seen some women whose recti muscles have separated so badly that I can fit my fist in the space between them. Their bellies have gotten so flabby and pendulous, that there are pockets in there and their bowels can bulge into that space. But not you, right?’ The women look aghast.
‘You’ll be told later by your Lamaze labour coaches to bear down as though you’re having a bowel movement. So everyone bear down now like you’re going to the toilet.’
Fifteen people sitting against the wall all strain. I sit there, refusing to participate.
‘Now, it’s time to do those kegels. I want you all to squeeeze your vaginal sphincters.’ She eyes the mutinous men. ‘You have pelvic floor muscles too – come on, everyone, squeeeeeze!’
I decide this is to be the last time I attend Maternal Fitness. Empathy can only go so far.
Saturday, 12 September
Joanna
Though we are keen on inheriting Alan and Sophie’s rambling apartment with its extra room for a baby, we have only ever been there at night and have reservations about the area. Do we really want to swap our trendy West Village location for the Upper West Side?
‘Darling, the Upper West Side is so over,’ proclaims Meredith in alarm, when I mention our plans.
She, of course, is safely installed in a rent-stabilized, child-free, TriBeCa loft across the block from JFK Jr, his wife and their mongrel, Friday.
‘Oh, no way,’ I say defensively.
‘Way.’
The truth is that neither Peter nor I have ventured much beyond Café Luxembourg on West 70th Street. And Alan’s apartment is another thirty streets further north.
‘It looks OK,’ I say, unfolding my laminated Streetwise Manhattan map. ‘I mean, how bad can it be? It’s got Riverside Park right next door, and Central Park ten minutes east, and the Columbia campus is just up the road on 115th.’
‘Why don’t we take the C train to 96th and do a recce of the neighbourhood?’ says Peter. ‘And look, we can walk through here.’ He jabs his finger on a grey square bordering Central Park, called Park West Village. ‘That sounds pleasantly bucolic. Maybe we could grab a latte there.’
But when we leave the subway it becomes clear there is nowhere to ‘grab a latte’. Park West Village turns out to be a series of high-rise, low income apartments, proving once again the unwritten law of public housing – that the more urban the estate the more rural the name.
The only store in sight, a small food shop, has its grey metal grille semi-drawn, as if ready to disappear within it like a nervous armadillo. On the corner of Columbus, a gang of black youths in puffa jackets, swollen-tongued trainers and sail-wide jeans are strutting and shouting. Across the street a dozen Hispanic teenagers, all wearing CD Walkmans secured by red bandannas, are performing wheelies on mountain bikes, yelling obscenities at the black gang.
‘This isn’t quite how I imagined it,’ I say.
‘Mmm, it is a bit grim,’ admits Peter, as we cross Columbus and pass two overweight NYPD officers leaning against the bonnet of their patrol car, sipping Diet Cokes and eyeing the rival gangs.
We turn right up Amsterdam, past a row of scruffy bodegas which look as if they have never known direct sunlight.
‘It’s true what they say about Manhattan changing block by block,’ sighs Peter as we slip west onto 99th Street and then hit a bustling Broadway, where every shopfront seems to offer cheap take-out.
We head west until, finally, we arrive in front of Alan’s building on West End Avenue, quiet and genteel as a maiden aunt. With no commercial zoning, the solid, middle-class apartment buildings stretch for more than thirty blocks.
‘It reminds me of Budapest,’ says Peter, as we give our names to the liveried doorman, who buzzes up to announce our arrival.
Alan greets us at the door.
‘Bloody hell, the area’s a bit dodgy,’ says Peter.
‘Which way did you come?’
‘We walked from CPW through Park West Village.’
Alan snorts with laughter. ‘No wonder, man, you should never go east of Broadway that far north. Anyway,’ he continues rather archly, ‘if this block’s good enough for Richard Dreyfuss, I’m sure it’s good enough for you guys…’
The apartment, with its warren of separate rooms, is far better suited to a baby than our loft and we agree to take it, notwithstanding the fact that it is poised on the edge of the badlands.
‘Wow, I can’t believe Richard Dreyfuss lives here,’ I exclaim in the lift on our way out.
‘It’s only Richard Dreyfuss,’ grumbles Peter. ‘I bet you can’t remember anything he’s done since Jaws.’
‘Close Encounters,’ I retort. ‘And he was bri
lliant in Whose Life Is It Anyway? He’d be handy for an interview.’
Saturday, 12 September
Peter
I return somewhat unnerved from our recce of the Upper West Side. It’s not so much the fact that we will be nudged right up against the ghetto. It is the preview of domestic life that the visit to Alan and Sophie’s has offered. The image I have taken away is of Alan sitting on a plump Shabby Chic sofa, while his two high-spirited young daughters stand on either side of him using the sofa as a trampoline. On every downward bounce they pat their daddy on the head, while he struggles to talk as though nothing distracting is happening. Tiring of this, they then embellish their move by yelling; ‘Pee-nis head! Pee-nis head’ on the downward bounce. Alan gamely chats on, ignoring them, while I struggle to keep a straight face. Is this what fatherhood has in store for me, I wonder? Reduced to a penis-head in my own home.
Monday, 14 September
Joanna
I am using our move to change obstetricians for a third time. I’m fed up with the squabbling Russian receptionists in Murray Hill and still smarting from the nurse’s accusation that I’ve put on too much weight. So I plump for an all-female practice on Central Park West with a low C-section rate, the medical equivalent of a Michelin star.
After checking out www.wehealnewyork.org again, I am now certain that I want to give birth at Roosevelt Hospital, on 59th Street and Tenth Avenue.
‘Excellent, both Elle McPherson and Uma Thurman had their babies there,’ says Meredith, who attaches great importance to such celebrity endorsements. ‘And I heard that when Uma was in labour she was so hungry the doctor accompanied her and Ethan Hawke to a Chinese restaurant across the block and they all had dim sum.’
My new doctor, who has privileges at the hospital, recommends I sign up for one of Roosevelt’s birthing courses.
‘When are you due?’ asks the course director when I phone.
‘Oh, not until late January.’
‘Oh, you’ve left it kinda late,’ she says. ‘I’m not sure we have anything that soon.’
‘But it’s still four and a half months off.’
‘Most people book up as soon as they know they’re pregnant,’ she scolds. ‘Let me see, November’s full, December’s full … The only thing I have left is the Weekend Intensive Lamaze at the beginning of January. But that may be leaving it too late. Do you want to risk it?’
‘Well, if it’s the only thing left…’
‘It’s all Saturday and Sunday, nine-thirty to five p.m., and you bring a packed lunch.’
‘All weekend? I thought it would take an evening.’
She laughs. ‘Oh no, we like couples to earn a minimum of nineteen and a half hours’ credits.’
‘Nineteen and a half hours?’
‘Plus there’s a film night we like you to attend. Your instructor will be Sigrid, you’ll find she’s one of the best in Manhattan.’
Monday, 14 September
Peter
I am wrestling grimly with my novel when I am saved by the ring of the phone. But it is a false salvation, for I am greeted by the voice of Amanda ‘Binky’ Urban, my American mega-agent, who wants to know how the book’s going. I should really admit to her that my book is not going at all well. The problem, I have decided, is the research. I have done too much of it. I can talk knowledgeably about sexing a hyena, about the cannibalistic, post-coital foibles of the praying mantis, and antisocial behaviour in teenage orphaned elephants, in particular their worrying propensity to rape rhinos.
What I cannot do is make my two main protagonists fall in love, though this is essential to the plot. One is a forty-seven-year-old game ranger based in South Africa, a sort of Inspector Morse of the bush. The other is a thirty-five-year-old advertising executive and environmental activist from New York. Though the ranger can be quite charming, in a gruff, acerbic sort of way, he unaccountably begins to behave badly as soon as he has to share the page with her. Understandably, she finds him truculent and unappetizing. Nothing I can write seems to be able to thaw the emotional ice between them.
‘It’s going great,’ I tell Binky. ‘I’m really very pleased with it. Just smoothing out a few last things now.’
‘When can I expect to see something?’ she asks.
‘Well…’ I try to think of an arbitrary date sometime quite soon. ‘Christmas. You can expect the first draft by Christmas.’
Tuesday, 15 September
Joanna
‘Where’s the bloody phone,’ asks Peter irritably, searching for the cordless. ‘You had it last. I wish you’d put it back on its base when you’ve finished with it.’ He dials our number on the other line so that the ringing will reveal the hiding place of the missing handset. ‘I mean is that really such a difficult thing to remember?’
‘Shhh. You’ll frighten the baby,’ I appeal. This is my standard riposte now whenever we are heading for a row. But today my nagging that Peter should read my pregnancy manuals rebounds on me.
‘Oh, it won’t frighten the baby,’ he says, picking up a copy of Miriam Stoppard’s Conception, Pregnancy and Birth. ‘In fact, rows are good for it.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Listen to this.’ He starts reading from a chapter called ‘In Touch with Your Baby’. ‘Short periods of intense anxiety or anger (caused by … an argument with your partner, for example) do not appear to have any long-term negative effect on your unborn child. In fact they may even be beneficial as they help her begin to develop the ability to cope with future stressful situations.’
‘See?’ he says triumphantly. ‘Far from hurting the kid, it does it good. In fact, I think we should row more often.’
Tuesday, 15 September
Peter
We are idly watching the Robin Byrd Show – a hard-core sex programme that takes over the neighbourhood public access Channel 35 late each night.
About twenty years ago, Robin Byrd, then a pneumatic blonde, pioneered the TV sex show. Now she is well into her fifties, and looks like a cross between Suzi Quattro and Rod Stewart, with a 1970s feathered blonde fringe drawn low over her forehead. She appears in a crocheted bikini, and looks rather out of place among the porno actors who parade across her show. Neither does she have anything much to add by way of commentary, besides her catch phrase, ‘Lie back and get comfortable,’ which she repeats interminably. Occasionally she cackles with random laughter.
Next up it’s Holly Wood.
‘Holly would if she could, eh?’ More crazed cackling from our hostess. ‘Holly Wood features in this month’s issue of Bust Up magazine.’
Holly Wood has breasts like inflated airbags. Her head looks tiny in comparison. The scars from her boob job are plainly visible as she sashays earnestly to Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’.
Next up is Crystal ‘all the way from Kentucky’, where she is a ‘feature dancer’. In no time Crystal has her kit off. She bends over to touch the tips of her shoes and the camera zooms in until the screen is entirely filled with bulging pudenda. She looks back at the camera and winks, then begins pursing her pubic lips in time to the music.
‘Well, she’s certainly got her kegels off pat,’ says Joanna.
Robin announces that she wants to perform a number called, ‘“Baby Let Me Bang Your Box” – a little song that I sing about a piano.’
The show cuts to commercials.
‘1-888-557-SLUT. Are you ready to rise to the occasion?’
‘1-888-874-SUCK. Oooh! Yesss! Please call now!’
‘1-800-TVTS. The original Chicks-with-Dicks, for the best of both worlds.’
‘1-888-970-STIL. For spiked heels and more!’
‘And now back to the show. First up is Kaylin Cleavage…’
Wednesday, 16 September
Joanna
I am staring out of the window watching a black transvestite and a young, bald, white man furtively negotiating sex behind a meat dumpster, when Peter comes up behind me singing the Lou Reed transvestite classic:
<
br /> ‘A hustle here, a hustle there,
New York City’s the place where,
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side,
Hey Jo, take a walk on the wild side.’
He is singing it to annoy me, since I was dispatched to interview Lou Reed shortly after we arrived here and failed absolutely. He was supposed to be promoting a re-issue of his single ‘Perfect Day’, but in New York parlance, we had a disconnect.
I’d read in previous interviews of his tendency to be awkward, but often the people with the worst reputations turn out to be the most interesting. From the start, though, it was clear that his rap was not a bum one. He hated Time Café on Seventh Avenue South, the meeting place arranged by his PR, and insisted on trekking over to Les Deux Gamins, a cramped French bistro nearby.
‘Do you live around here?’ I asked, making small talk as we set off.
‘That’s your first question,’ he said, looking at his watch, ‘You’ve got twenty-nine minutes left.’
Once we sat down, I produced my tape recorder. ‘Why are you using that piece of crap?’ he asked. From then on he either repeated my questions blankly back at me or yawned as if he hadn’t heard them.
After ten minutes, I’d had about as much humiliation as I could take. ‘Look, this isn’t going anywhere,’ I said and got up to leave. As I fled, he called after me, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then he added penitently, as if we were lovers just splitting up, ‘Can’t we at least be friends?’
Wednesday, 16 September
Peter
I am puzzled by our local Pakistani newsagent. He has been consistently unfriendly to me, though we spend hundreds of dollars with him, and pay our account on time. It’s not as if this is a natural coolness on his part, for he bequeaths loquacious smiles to almost anyone who comes into his cubby hole, and dispenses chirpy inconsequential chit-chat quite liberally. Just not to me. I have tried on many occasions to improve relations – trailing many conversation openers, from Test Match scores, to Benazir Bhutto’s latest travails, the Indo-Pakistani nuclear race, law-and-order problems in Karachi. And I’ve been careful never to display an opinion in these gambits. But he just glowers at me suspiciously from behind his old-fashioned till, or starts sorting out his cigarette packets. I think I may have inadvertently offended him in some way and I am on the verge of asking him point-blank.
