A Word from the Battlefield of Manhattan Real Estate

Once upon a time a person named Mary was born on a Monday morning on the fifth floor of Beth Israel Hospital in Gramercy Park, in the city of Manhattan, in the State of New York, USA, the World.

She was brought home to an apartment in Greenwich Village where her parents had been living. Years passed and she began to walk, lost her first tooth, learned to read, went to school, and before anyone knew it, she had a bachelor's degree. She lived in the city during the rough and tumble 1980s, when graffitti was all over everything, even the trees, and she still remembers the huge celebration for the Statue of Liberty's 100th birthday. She was a student in the public school system during the asbestos crisis of the 1990s and she was there when a man named Giuliani came to town and seemed to make all things better. The twenty first century cast a shadow over old New York, and she still aches for the lost towers of the World Trade Center.

Through it all, one thing was certain. The city was more than Mary's home, it was her birthright. And when she finally decided it was time to live in it on her own, well, it should have been a joyous situation.

You're still reading? Good. I'll stop writing about myself in the third person because I know it's irritating you. I write to you from a shelter in the bitter wasteland that is the War of Manhattan Real Estate. I have embarked on an intrepid task: to find a decent sized apartment that I love with a budget that is more than I EVER imagined I'd be saying I would pay. You'd think the sky would be the limit for me. My friends: this is not the case. I have been to the battlefield, and the sight...it is not pretty.

Apartment hunting is like dating. They say when you see the apartment you're supposed to live in, you just know. It's love at first sight. Well, I can sum up my experience thus far with this metaphor: I'm at the single's bar and I've got a lot going for myself and I'm all gussied up. So far all I have found are the toothless, jobless, 55 year old psychopaths with Attention Deficit Disorder. In other words, I've been in hallways that smell like everything from 'elderly person' to outright 'toilet.' I've ridden shoddy elevators, praying for my life, as they rumbled and jumbled up to 8 foot by 10 foot apartments. Yes. You read correctly. Eight-feet-by-ten-feet. You could fit a whole lot of nothin' into eight feet by ten feet. Actually, my parent's living room rug would be too BIG to cover the floor of this apartment. Lately, though, the hunt seems to be getting better. Today I saw an apartment that didn't completely suck, but the neighborhood made me a little lonely. It's like that guy that seems to be into you, and he's wide open and available and begging you to give him a shot, but at the end of the day the two of you somehow just don't fit.

The ironic thing about all this is that I've given up dating while on this search. I literally do not have time to put up with a guy right now. As was recently heard coming from my mouth: "The only guys I'm interested in at the present are guys with keys to apartments that don't remind me of my parent's coat closet." And I've been using my double X chromosome status to its full advantage. Don't tell anyone this, but if I know I'm going to go meet with a male broker I'll add an extra coat of lip gloss and dust off the push-up bra. This ploy has met with reasonable success thus far (although still no apartment). One broker magically produced free passes to the New York Health and Racquet Club after I flashed my pearly whites. Another broker kept telling me how nice I looked, asked what my sign was, and dragged me to lunch and Starbucks while we were on our fruitless journey. And it was a fruitless journey. I'm almost ready to break up with him, but he hasn't had the chance to show me Tudor City.

I haven't figured out a tactic for female brokers yet, but I suspect that going in armed with enormous bars of chocolate would be a wise strategy. The other thing, as you might have already noted, is that I'm cheating on all my brokers and they all think I only have eyes for them. But to extend the metaphor further (why not!), my friend Leah is credited with noting "If you can't get what you're looking for from one man..."

And so the war continues, battle by battle. Some people fight wars with guns, I fight them with dating paraphrenalia: lipstick, Godiva, curling irons, credentials, and wily charm. And as in dating, I usually end up back at home with Mom and Dad, curled into the fetal position and sucking my thumb.