Tired of "Edginess"

February 25, 2014

     Someone who left Manhattan to live in Minneapolis and returned two years later once told me that Minneapolis had no "edge".  Somebody else told me that when you leave New York for parts west, those places just don't have "edge". "Edge" I was told once, is the quality that attracts you to something, but that simultaneously, makes you afraid of the attraction.  Well, I'm afraid that I'm tired of "edginess", so defined.  New York has a great deal that attracts me, but its edge is beginning to feel more than I want to handle.

     Case in point: Around 7:00 p.m. this evening I was on the subway returning home from a trip to 96th Street.  The car I boarded was crowded, but there were still three or four seats to choose from scattered around the center of the car.  I chose to sit between a large African-American woman all dressed in black and a young man in a noticeably new red baseball cap and baggy light tan trousers immaculately pressed.  He was listening to hip-hop and mouthing the words.

     His legs were, as is often the case with some men on the subway, spread so far apart he was taking up more than a seat, although he was far from overweight.  He was also sitting slouched, legs projecting into the center of the car, further maximizing the space taken up.  There was just enough space left for me to squeeze in and sit.  So I shimmied onto the seat, but the wide "V" the young man had made of his legs prevented me from sitting securely.

     So I said, "Honey bunch, would you move a little so I can sit?"  I could not have asked more sweetly, I think.

     Nothing doing.

     I actually touched the side of the trousers with the fingers of my hand to put a bit of space between me and the young man, something I know most people would never dare do on a New York City subway.   When I did, the young man's head shot straight up and I realized --the boy was a young woman.

     Based on long experience riding the New York City subways --more than half a century-- the young woman behaved exactly as her male counterpart would have in the same circumstance.  That is, she ignored me, except to mumble something under her breath I could not make out. I was, however, able to sit until I needed to get off, and when I got off I did not hear her yelling obscenities at me --which has happened over less on other subway rides.

    The young woman's look was certainly edgy, but in my book, that someone looks interesting ranks second to their ability to accommodate themselves to riding on a New York City subway car with other people.  That's a skill this young woman clearly does not possess.

     "When the daily rudeness, the incivility and the expense of living here are not compensated for by what you get out of being here, New York isn't attractive anymore." So said another friend, who stays because he can't leave --yet.

      Edginess is a young person's game.  Rather than edginess, I want "Fantin La Tour moments", as the writer Mary Cantwell called them in "The Mauve-ing Of America", an article she wrote for The New York Times in 1991.  In the article, Cantwell gently lampooned the "cult of the beautiful" Martha Stewart and her then-rival, Alexandra Stoddard, celebrated, evoking the name of the French painter of cut flowers in cut-glass vases.

     When we are young, we want excitement.  When we are older, we want peaceful moments.  Or so a psychologist told me.  Edginess's stock is tending lower in my eyes, while Fantin La Tour is looking better and better, there's no denying it.