The peeps I meet in NYC

So I’m staying in an enormous loft apartment on Broadway in NYC, with C a New Yorker for life who appears to be a wealthy Jewess who is in the process of divorcing her husband a well-known Italian Psychoanalyst and her son. From what I can gather C is a sociologist and has actually escaped the loft with her friend S for the weekend to S' farm (40 acres in upstate New York). Leaving me in C's words, "Lady of the manor' for the weekend. People, I feel like I’m living in a copy of Vanity Fair magazine.

Staying at the loft is also Mr S, from Brisbane, Highgate Hill to be exact who likes yoga, hiding in his room and owns a bunch of companies. Funny how you travel to the other side of the world to hang out with people who live ten minutes drive down the road from you at home. I haven’t seen much of Mr S, he keeps to himself and has a bunch of friends in NYC so only seems to pop home for showers and sleep (occasionally).

Since I arrived C’s friend from college M has also been staying here at the loft. I really like M. I’ve made a new friend, purely by accident. M is maybe mid forties, a Berkley graduate with most of a PhD in archeology who reads Latin and Greek (naturally), lived in Rome etc and now lives in Baltimore with her husband who’s in emergency medicine and her son. C hopes her son will continue Latin and Greek at school so they can read the classics together and go on archeological digs. M is really funny and has lead such an interesting life, everyday I end up sitting at the breakfast table yakking away while she makes me coffee and I don’t end up setting off ‘til 11am. C has left today since it’s raining anyhow, but has invited me to join her and her husband at their place at the ‘beach’ in New Jersey where they usually spend the ‘season’ i.e. summer.

It’s a bummer that I already have plans otherwise what an experience. Still as M says, if my itinerary doesn’t pan out to be all that I hoped for I’m welcome to join them at the beach for flounder and martinis until the end of summer. Hmmmm, very tempting.

As karma would have it I did something nasty to my ankle the day I arrived in NYC and until today have been hobbling and shuffling all over New York. Combined with the jaunty trilby, it’s been enough for most people to give me a wide berth. With American healthcare what it is, I bought the equivalent of a tube of deep heat and tried as much as possible not to walk on it too much.

Fortunately though, when you’re staying with a Drs wife, she can just dial hubby and shazam, an over the phone consultation with the good Dr in Baltimore. Nice, very nice. Met another lovely Dr today, a cowboy shirt wearing grey-haired chiropractor who stops by the bar at Grand Central Station every night on his way home to have a few martinis with the locals and his wife. Ah the life, I keep meeting people who have all the ducks lined up in exactly the right order. Today I was the good Drs unexpected guest for a light dinner of French martinis and aranchinis at the bar Grand Central Station. This holiday life would kill me eventually but how long would it take? Really? There’s vitamin C in the pineapple juice in the French Martinis, it’s not all bad.