New York, New York
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They call it the city that never sleeps, but Rory Coen found it difficult to wake up...
"One hand in the air for the big city; street lights, big dreams all lookin’ pretty; no place in the world that can compare, put your lighters in the air for New York.”
As I walked from Grand Central Station to Times Square on my penultimate evening in New York, I got that feeling when you realise your dream isn’t real and you’re able to wake yourself up. The unmistakeable feeling of surrealism as I closed my eyes and took in the unique New York air was blurred out against the reality that the dream was over. I was going home to Tipperary the following day, and that’s a long way from New York.
I touched down at JFK in late January, 2000. I was on my own on the flight, which is to say that I didn’t know anybody else. There were other UL students on the plane who were very excitable up the front, but I didn’t know them. My uncle collected me at the airport and took me to his house in the Bronx. He loved doing this as he pointed out different landmarks along the route, from the Long Island Sound to the Tri-borough Bridge. He felt compelled to explain to me why that route was the most efficient. I was focusing my attention on the New York skyline, however, which looked energetic with the Twin Towers and the Empire State Building very obvious.
My placement was with an Insurance Company on 26th and Park, with six other UL students, one of whom I knew vaguely from my course. We had a quick orientation meeting the first morning, where we introduced ourselves and met our respective bosses. The Americans had been having great fun trying to pronounce the name “Aoife”, since they became aware she’d be working there.
The company gave an impression of being formal, but it was very laid back when the initial feeling of anxiety and intimidation had worn off. Whilst for the first few weeks you’d be checking for your wallet every few seconds on the Subway and apologising to everyone for the slightest contact, by the early summer you were pushing your way through the crowded trains, declaring confidently “hot soup, let me through”, to find a more comfortable standing area.
The Subway was a haven for incident and cheap anecdotes. I rode it every day to work. In fact, when I think of my commute back then, I shudder. A 15-minute bus journey to the local Subway station in Woodlawn, the No 4. express train would take me Downtown as far as 42nd Street, where I would then switch to a local No. 6 train which would carry me to 26th St.
I would wake up at about 7.15 am to be at work at 9. This hour of the morning wasn’t something I ever really got used to. I surprised myself every time I got into work on time. The amount of variables that were in play from my bed to my seat at work would freeze a NASA computer.
Once at work, my day slowed down and routine took over. Routine was blissful. You knew what to expect and when to expect it. On top of that, my burden of work never got too worrying, which afforded me the luxury of “leaving my desk”. The last thing you wanted was a surprise or the chance of a surprise, which my job most definitely didn’t have.
My desk was in a corner of the room, which I’m sure they used for storage before I started. It seemed to be a temporary arrangement for the Irish guy, but I didn’t mind. The last thing I wanted was preferential treatment. The desk was part of a pretty big office plan though, with maybe 40 other employees in ear-shot.
The guy sitting closest to me was a consultant whom I didn’t speak to much originally, but a heated telephone conversation with his girlfriend forced him to come and apologise to me afterwards.
He was gone the next day, never saw him again.
I eventually found my feet after a couple of weeks living with my uncle. Myself and one of the lads moved into a basement apartment with this old guy called Ritchie. He used to call the pair of us “guy”, an American term I never got used to.
The apartment had three bedrooms, a small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen. There was no living room, so we tried to avoid the place as best we could.
As luck might have it, a couple of girls from UL found an apartment up the road from us for four people and they asked us to move in. We naturally bit their hands off and so started six months of craic that contextualised Alicia Keys’ view, eloquently expressed in the opening quote, that New York is where dreams are made of.
- Rory Coen
