New York City is home to 8.3 million people, and sometimes I’m pretty sure I know every one of them.
I’m not particularly popular or cool. I am not affiliated with a “scene,” I don’t go to a lot of parties, and I’m sort of a stay-at-home girl. But it’s gradually become impossible to leave my apartment without running into people I know. I imagine it’s like this for everyone, but, judging from the shocked looks I get (“Oh my God, wow! It’s so crazy running into you!”) it’s still exciting for everyone but me.
It started even before I moved here from Ohio, when I came to visit a friend in the Bronx. He threw a little party for seven or eight friends, including a musician he’d met on the train who was also visiting from out of town. This musician had, of course, been a year ahead of me at my small Kansas high school.
No amount of wonder felt sufficient. It was too strange to have actually happened, I thought. Neither of us had ever been to New York before, and he had almost thought better of accepting an invitation to a roof party from some obviously insane German dude who talks to strangers. It must mean something, right? Like we should get married or something? In a movie, that would be the only logical course of action.
So we caught up with each other. I mentioned having had a crush on him as a teen. He admitted to having felt the same about me. We had each been terribly intimidated by the other. I used to lurk around where the jazz band practiced, hoping I’d someday make friends with the hot drummer. He came to all the plays I was in, and never had the nerve to tell me how much he admired my acting. Suddenly our host interrupted by tackling me to the ground and putting a knee in my back. The magic dissipated, the guy disappeared, and everyone got stoned and watched Koyaanisqatsi.
When I moved to Brooklyn, I quickly learned that this shit happens all the time, and that it is meaningless. I could not go anywhere in the city without running into a guy I knew from Ohio or a woman I’d met at a party. If anyone I knew from anywhere in the world visited New York City, I was sure to pass them on the street or reach for the same six-pack at the store. If I dated someone and things had ended awkwardly, it did not matter how pointedly I avoided his neighborhood or favorite bar; he would inevitably materialize, especially on days when my hair looked stupid. “How are you?” he’d ask. “It’s amazing running into you like this.” Simply amazing.
Any time something strange happens–the weather turns odd, a psycho is threatening people on the train, an alarm goes off–I look around in total certainty that someone I know is within eyesight, witnessing it with me. If I see a guy standing on a street corner crying his eyes out, he will be one of my old roommates’ friends. The farther I am from campus, the more likely I am to run into students. I can only not run into people I know if I am actively looking for them.
What I love about the city is also what makes it claustrophobic. Everyone you meet and know is connected to you forever, following you around in an endless cycle of train rides and long walks, crossing paths again and again. If you are here, no matter how lonely you feel, you are known, seen, and heard. Coincidences that seem impossible become mundane and emptied of meaning. How strange it feels to run into someone I haven’t seen in years, and rather than being filled with emotion and wonder, I say hello and move on along. We all live in public. It will happen again.
Or maybe it won’t. I consider the possibility that work will take me away to a place where people drive around in cars and disappear into private homes, where I won’t run into people, and they will cease to think of me over time. Maybe I will forget to look for familiar faces. Maybe there won’t be any. How liberating! But also, how dreadful!
I too have run into tons of old friends, exes, people I was in a Spanish class with in 9th grade, etc. I walk downtown from midtown most days, and almost always run into someone I know.
Even more odd is seeing the same strangers more than once though. Sometimes I will notice someone on the subway and then see that same person walking down the street later in the day. I can’t remember who said it, but someone else referred to this as “God running out of extras.”
“I find that a) extremely comforting that we’re so close and b) like Chinese water torture that we’re so close.” –this is from Six Degrees of Separation, a play whose title has become a cultural piece of overchewed gum, but that at the time (my god, can it be twenty years?!) was very new and searching. Well, the play itself doesn’t have that much to do with what you’re talking about except in the broadest sense of ambivalence about connection and uncertainty about what really constitutes it, but I couldn’t help but think of the line.
I’ve always found it more comforting than torturous, makes me feel some sense of belonging in a place, but really something more like a happy surprise and less blandly comforting than that.
Anyway, I enjoyed this. For what it’s worth, I imagine we have never met.
Welcome, A White Bear! We have never met either–though I imagine we eventually will. (Sorry.)
Hmm, maybe I’m just a homebody or have no acquaintances, or maybe I just keep my head down too much, but I hardly ever run into people I know. The “God running out of extras” happens all the time, though.
ETA: …except for Sunday. And Saturday. And that one other time. I am occasionally one taco short of a combo platter. Not infrequently, it might be said.
On Sunday, J-Man, LP, RB, and I went to see a friend do a one-man show. Sitting next to us was the asst. director of the non-profit I work for. She sings in the same church choir with our friend who was putting on the show. Sitting in front of us were a couple who are friends with LP and RB, and also friends with the friend who was putting on the show. None of us knew beforehand that the others also knew our friend. It was a little weird, but, yes, sometimes LA seems like a small town, too. Occasionally I feel that if I were to live long enough, I’d walk into any restaurant, coffee shop, or concert and know every person there.
Also, Tim, remember when I ran into you and Jen at that show on Friday night? (Oh yeah, right, I forgot that I came down there because I heard you were wearing a cape… Jen too! Capes, both of you!)
I don’t run into people that often either, though I live in LA and work in Orange County. We’re all totally hiding from each other.
new york can be really weird like this. knowing someone from brooklyn and seeing them in mid-town, it’s happened to me, frequently enough, like once a year, 15 times in 15 years. it can really be alarming.
“hey, you’re not supposed to be here.” it is weird.
I, too, find that I run into people I know all the time, even in this vast, sprawling city. I’ve come to realize that even though we live in huge cities, we still travel in the same circles, which are relatively small compared to the general population. So it doesn’t surprise me anymore, either, that I see the same acquaintances, and strangers, over and over again. It’s just that we all like to do the same things, more or less. I find it more surprising when I go someplace and I don’t see someone I know.
imagine life in dc…a tiny metropolis. i came here as a foreigner and within 18 months was running into people with whom i had connections. (whom for you, Rachel). now i am practically related to them all.
but perhaps it says something terrible about how we all stay in homogenous social groups. someone called facebook the suburbs of social media. but perhaps we all create our own suburban social niche in spite of ourselves.
And welcome, AWB.
AWB, it’s great that you write for TGW now – you always have such a cool point of view.