The Free Pied-à-Terre That Spoiled Me
It was the most generous gift anyone had ever given me.
When people hear I’m a writer and New York City expat, they tend to automatically assume I lived in Brooklyn, but I never did—not officially.
A couple of boyfriends lived there—one in Fort Greene, another in Park Slope—and while I was going out with them, I became a sort of defacto part-time resident. The rest of the time I was situated in various Manhattan neighborhoods, primarily the East Village, until 2005, when my husband Brian and I got evicted from an amazing place on the corner 8th and B.
A decade after that eviction I came the closest to ever being an actual Brooklynite: For nine months in 2014, I had unfettered access to a largely absent couple’s apartment in Brooklyn Heights. With the exception of one or two dates when they were in town, pretty much whenever I needed—or just wanted—to spend time in the city, I had my own prime piece of real estate right around the corner from the promenade. It was incredible. I made the mistake of getting used to it.
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In January that year, Brian and I had taken the Trailways bus down from Kingston for a perfect Brooklyn weekend. We attended the Zlatne Uste Golden Festival, an annual Balkan music and dance extravaganza at the old world Grand Prospect Hall in Park Slope, a now-defunct catering hall with several different ballrooms, all with massive crystal chandeliers, which bounced perilously from their ceilings as revelers danced. Brian had been wanting to take me there since we met in 2003; he’d effectively lost the festival in a breakup, and wanted to take it back for himself. It was an interesting scene—crowded, frenetic, lively. (Maybe too crowded and frenetic. I’m glad we went, but I’m not sure I ever need to do it again.)
We stayed that weekend with friends in South Slope. Sunday morning, before heading back to Port Authority, we met up with friends for breakfast in Carroll Gardens. Our friends invited along a couple I’d met a few times before, but didn’t know well. They mostly lived elsewhere, but had recently started renting a place around the corner from the promenade because they’d been coming to New York a lot for business.
I mentioned off the cuff that I was spending a fair amount of time in the city, still occasionally doing events for the first edition of Goodbye to All That, and working on its follow-up anthology, Never Can Say Goodbye. When I had a lot of appointments, I told them, I would stay over at 3B B&B, a bed and breakfast on Lawrence Street in Downtown Brooklyn run cooperatively by a bunch of writers, artists and musicians, which sadly no longer exists.
There, I could rent a bunk bed in a hostel-style room for $50 per night—and sometimes, with an event-night discount, for just $38. It included a homemade, delicious breakfast tailored not only to my dietary needs (I have celiac) but to my weird pickiness as well (I hate milk and bananas and am viscerally repelled by any preparation of eggs in which the whites and yolks are separate). I really loved that place and wish it was still around—especially given that these days I’m lucky if I can find a shitty room on Hotel Tonight for $200.
I talked about how I often purposely spread my appointments over two or more days so that I could stay in town, as opposed to the super depressing alternative: traveling in and out of Port Authority on the same day, a two-hour-plus ride each way. The worst was (still is) having to catch a late bus home, walking through the station after 9pm, when it transformed into the more dangerous, lawless Port Authority of the 1970s.
That admission prompted the woman to take a set of keys from her purse, reach across our breakfast table, and hand them to me. “We aren’t here as much as we thought we’d be,” she said. “You can use the apartment any time we’re gone.”
I was stunned. It was one of the most generous gifts anyone had ever offered me. “Are you sure?” I asked. They were. The only caveat was that I needed to leave a set of my own sheets and towels to use when I was there. (There was a washer and dryer in the basement so I could easily keep them clean.) That, and I needed to occasionally rush down to the apartment from upstate to do an errand for them—search their desk drawers for a lost document and FedEx it to them, for example—which I was more than happy to do. I always prized an excuse to visit the city.
In the beginning I would leave them gifts to thank them—bottles of wine, candles, flowers—but they insisted I stop. My “keep” there was literally free.
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I have only happy memories from that period when I intermittently stayed at the couple’s apartment. Typically I went down there a few times a month.
Brian joined me only once. I like occasionally visiting the city with him, but he doesn’t relish the time there like I do, and doesn’t love walking around. Arthritis be damned, I can amble all day from neighborhood to neighborhood, but he gets cranky when we’ve been out too long—his feet hurt, he needs a nap. So, the rest of the time I went alone.
On the occasions I went down to Brooklyn Heights, I truly lived my best New York life. I made lots of work appointments, met colleagues and friends out for meals and karaoke, went to see shows and hear music, and attended many book events. It was an embarrassment of riches—every night, there were more enticing events than I could possibly attend. Nothing could be more thrilling for a writer who’d lately been feeling stifled and stagnant—and lonely—upstate.
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In the late fall of 2014, the couple delivered the sad news: they realized they almost never came to New York, and were wasting money maintaining an apartment there. They decided not to renew their lease, and thus drew an end to my brief, sometime Brooklyn existence.
Of course I couldn’t blame them, but I was so disappointed. I took the bus down to grab my sheets and towels, and spent one last blissful night. I didn’t meet friends. I didn’t attend any literary events. I just took myself out for really good sushi, then went to a karaoke bar all by myself. (I channeled Liza and sang Kander and Ebb’s “City Lights.”) Just the city and me. A perfect evening, by my weirdo loner New Yorker standards.
I’ll always be grateful to that couple for letting me share their apartment for the greater part of a year. It was a wonderful gift, but also a bit of a curse, providing just enough of a taste of city living for me to get hooked on something I can probably never again afford to have.
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I lived on the edge of Brooklyn Heights in the 1980s, on a very unposh stretch of Schermerhorn street. It was gritty and magical. These days, when I hear of all the writers and artists living in Brooklyn, I can hardly bear it. I left the party way too soon (1988).
This lovely story brought me back to my old neighborhood...and made me happy and sad at the same time.
So much of this piece resonates with me.
I was offered an apartment in Cobble Hill in the summer of 2017. My marriage had ended the year before in a maelstrom of coercive control, gaslighting and, finally serious physical abuse.
I was living in London at the time and I was devastated. Writing (my job) was impossible. Brooklyn was a lifeline. I walked that promenade daily. Visited the nearby restaurants and bars on my own. Slowly I started to feel myself again.
Here I am, nearly 7 years later to the day, remarried and living by the water in Hoboken.
Those BK days, however, will stick with me forever.
PS. Hard agree on the bananas. Total devil’s food.