Unbuttoned
Dear Diary:
One day last spring, I was walking west from Alphabet City to Pier 34 to watch the sunset.
Somewhere in the West Village, I noticed a young woman walking the same direction a few paces in front of me. I watched for a block or two as she kept reaching one arm around behind her to try to button a loose button at the back of her blouse.
I wanted to help her, but I was nervous about asking and I didn’t want to bother a stranger, especially over something as personal as a loose blouse button.
After a while, we both wound up at a corner waiting for the light to change. I took off my headphones.
“I’m sorry to bother,” I said, “but could I help you with that?”
“Oh my God,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to ask you for blocks but was too nervous to ask.”
— Perry Khalil
In Tompkins Square Park
Dear Diary:
I was fresh out of college, it was my first summer in New York and I was spending a gorgeous day in Tompkins Square Park with some friends.
The park was filled with people and picnic blankets and music and laughter. An older man on a bicycle rode up next to the tree that my friends and I were sitting near. He had on a large shirt that was tucked into his shorts. It looked lumpy and odd.
I watched as he reached down the neck of the shirt and pulled out three chinchillas, one by one, and placed them onto the tree carefully.
He lay in the grass as the chinchillas played in the branches. After an hour, he tucked in his shirt, popped the animals back down and rode off.
— Charlotte Vari
The Old Place
Dear Diary:
As I walked across 11th Street to visit friends in the Village, the Larchmont Hotel caught my eye. An S.R.O. 50 years ago, it had been refurbished as a boutique hotel.
I had rented a room there while I was in graduate school. Living just opposite the elevator, I heard clanks at all hours. Feet shuffled. High heels clacked. Doors closed.
Two toilets and one shower served seven occupants on each floor. Five rooms opened off the corridor, with a more spacious room at each end. I coveted the larger room with tall windows overlooking the street.
In my room, a twin bed took up one wall; a sink hung on another. Most nights I cooked a little meal on a two-burner hot plate.
Days come clearest now. Grilled cheese sandwiches at the Joe Jr. Diner, occasional tea with a classmate. Each morning I walked to the New School library, where a flow of students returned to the same seats.
Fifty years later, my home now feels huge. Maybe it’s expanded since my husband Jerry died. Through the window, I glimpse the Taconic Range. Geese traverse the sky. Yet the hotel resides within me: radio, hot plate, stacked textbooks.
Morning stillness links my ranch house and the Larchmont, a silence heightened by refrigerator rumblings, furnace clicks, a snowplow passing.
I’ve been alone before.
— Cecele Kraus
‘You Again?’
Dear Diary:
“You again?” the ticket seller at the Cloisters said.
I smiled.
It was my first year of college. As part of my effort to adjust to New York City, I had started to retreat to the Cloisters whenever I felt stressed-out. Since it happened pretty much all the time, I was heading to Inwood almost every week.
I loved taking the elevator from the grimy subway station up to the street and then walking through Fort Tryon Park, with the Cloisters appearing like a hidden castle out of the trees.
When I got to the museum, I always seemed to get my student ticket from the same woman. By this point in the semester, she had started to print my ticket before I even got to the desk.
Normally, she didn’t do more than nod in response to my hello. Not this time.
“Are you studying art or history?” she asked. “You’re here all the time.”
“Well, I was raised Catholic, so I love the religious art,” I said, shrugging. “But I’m really here because I feel calmer among the peace and quiet. New York is draining. I love coming to the Cloisters to sit and think away from the constant honking and shouting of the city.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“It sounds like New York isn’t for you,” she said. “Have you considered a nunnery?”
— Maeve Flaherty
Soda Here
Dear Diary:
It was a hot, humid night at Yankee Stadium in August 1960. I was working as a vendor selling sodas. Business was brisk, and I had lost track of how many sodas I’d sold.
By the time the seventh inning came around, I was exhausted and so, so thirsty. There was one soda left in my tray.
I looked at the soda; the soda looked back at me. That was all I needed. I decided to drink it.
As I brought the cup to my lips, I heard someone in the grandstand shouting.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “You’re drinking up all of your profits.”
— Robert Seidenstadt
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