3: Kindnesses

That infinite, intimate currency

Hello from a subway car on the L train, running west, somewhere under Brooklyn. There are now 82 of us riding, in quiet conversation, all knowing just how much space to give each other. People are wearing scarves; it’s not such a cold morning, but the polar vortex has only just released us from its grip, and perhaps we still feel it in our bones. The snow has melted for now — but real New Yorkers know (and will tell you) that you shouldn’t count winter over until mid-March.

And yes, I have felt this winter bite a little sharper than back home. My peacoat from the UK wouldn’t cut it, so just before things got their worst I went to REI and found a bigger one. A real one. A duvet, if a duvet had 12 pockets and a faux-fur hood. I wear it round the neighbourhood, and it feels like I’m driving a car.

Paradoxically, this makes being at home feel chillier than being out. I’ve done a lot to make my (real, permanent) apartment here in Queens nicer, but there are certain things that should be beyond a tenant’s purview. Things like a hairline crack running around the balcony door next to the sofa, letting in a constant needle of cold air. But because, according to Peter at Platz True Value Hardware, “landlords aren’t legally required to keep drafts out”, it’s up to me.

This is a common enough situation that there is a consumer product for it: cling-film saran wrap for windows. You tape it over the space, then blast it flush with your hairdryer. And this how I find myself, after eight months in my (real, permanent) apartment block, finally knocking on the door of the couple down my corridor.

Could I borrow a hairdryer for my weird survivalist scheme? Of course! say Emily and James. And rather than passing it through the door, they invite me into their apartment.

The bones of the apartment are so identical, it’s like a different reality on the kaleidoscope. Here’s the glittery temp-dec remnants of a house party “that was about four months ago” (just then I remember the noise down the corridor, and wishing, just a little, that I’d knocked on the door then) “and we liked it, so we just didn’t take it down. Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess in here.” Emily catches me gaping at the — is that a wedding arch??? — under construction where my sofa would be. “We’re getting married in a week! There’s so much to do.” In the UK I would have taken that as a variant of “I’d best be getting on” and slipped away but now I’m being offered some of the massive salmon they’ve been cooking. And damn it, I just ate but I almost take some, just for the gesture.

We talk for fifteen minutes and colour fills in the sketchy outline I’d built up of these two people: the noises of the party and the laughing, and the small stuff; leaving post with my name on at my door if they’d found it in the hall, little waves in the corridor and a quick awkward hi if we rode the lift at the same time. And now, here’s the people, here’s their story, they’re getting married in a week, and their salmon is my salmon.

Two days later, when I bring the hairdryer back, we are that much closer to the wedding but the stress doesn’t show on them. “We have all sorts of friends pitching in. Actually we’re making wedding favors and watching Netflix right now.” A minute later, I am making wedding favo(u)rs and watching Netflix too. Take five sugared almonds from the basket, put them in a bag, tie a bow on the bag. As I make bag after bag, for people I will probably never meet, I wonder how I got here.

I have never depended on the kindness of strangers.

And yet, how else does the world really turn? America knows this, though it may try to deny it. Ben Franklin coined the Franklin Effect, the idea that if you get someone to help you they will like you more, because they will reason, “I must like that person, or why would I have helped them?” But to me this feels like only half the story. In asking for help you are forced to show up in your humanity. You are giving people a way into your world. How much of life is made of two people ready to connect, with no way into each other’s worlds? Arriving here I had no to choice but to ask and ask and grow closer in the asking. My best friend here (who the other night threatened to disown me if he didn’t get a mention here soon¹) arrived one week before me: our first interaction was me freaking out over how to get a Social Security Number.

Need is a language everybody speaks. And almost every spoken I need x is coded language for the base element, I need to connect. There was one other factor in the story of James, James, and Emily: in December, I bought a pile of Christmas cards from the MoMA. I sent most of them back home, but the last one I made out to them, and left outside their door. A few days later, there was one outside mine.

And so this week, I mean it when I say: I hope this letter finds you well.

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Meanwhile

☞ More people wrote back to this newsletter, in different spaces. I read everything and replied to every one, and I’ll keep doing that. I even had a real-world reunion: neither of us realised the other had moved to New York. So if you feel moved to say something, say it wherever you can, and who knows what might happen. If reading this makes you want to get back in touch with someone, trust that feeling and see what happens. Hell, you can forward them this and use me as an excuse. I can’t pretend I wouldn’t like this stuff to reach as many interested people as possible.

☞ Readers following from issue 2 will have noticed a time jump of about eight months; we have to allow ourselves to skip ahead a bit, otherwise you’ll spend all year wondering But James, how are you now?? Don’t be alarmed: as time goes by, we will take many more bites of the story-so-far-sundae.

☞ Finally, a coda. It’s Sunday night, the 28th of January, and I’ve been doing my final edit pass of the letter. About half an hour ago, I had a knock at my door and, since I did not order food on DoorDash tonight, that knock was something of a mystery. Well, it was Emily and James. The wedding was yesterday, the whole thing went off without a hitch (other than the obvious), and would I like these shortbread biscuits Emily’s mum made? Thank you so much for your help the other night. When we’re back from honeymoon, let’s do a dinner.

And that is me, for now: with a very hot cup of tea and a biscuit that tastes like friendship, signing off and thinking of you. Issue 4 will come on Monday, the 12th of February. Until then, may you ask for help, and welcome the help you receive.

James

From my sofa, among friends, Ridgewood, Queens.

1. but who is going to have to wait a little longer