Brooklyn in Love

by Amy Thomas

  Early on, our go-to spot was Terrior, an irreverent wine bar in the East Village (now in Tribeca). We’d rock out to the Stones, Beastie Boys, or whatever they were blaring and let the incongruously scruffy bartenders, who really know their stuff, guide us to some undiscovered Greek or Austrian vintage. Fun + boozy = sexy times.

  My favorite movie theater in the city is the subterranean Angelika on Houston Street. Not only do they get the best movies, but you can also hear the rumbling of the subway underground, and it feels like it could be any year in New York City. Ditto for Arturo’s, the coal-oven pizzeria just down the street. After seeing a great film—Blue Jasmine and Before Midnight come to mind—we’d walk over to Arturo’s and complete the “timeless in New York” experience, listening to the pizzeria’s live jazz, drinking Chianti, and splitting a large pie. Nostalgic + cozy = happy place.

  Once we moved to Brooklyn, our date nights were less frequent but no less satisfying. Henry Public became a favorite. The charming Cobble Hill bar serves up an obscenely good turkey leg sandwich and masterful cocktails, and has a jazz trio that plays on Sunday afternoons. Rustic + humble = warm hearts.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hot Toddy to the Rescue

  As the next couple of months unfolded, I was surprised by how much my independent self loved living with Andrew. All those months of pushing him away, fighting for space and to maintain my own life, I had worried that I might, I don’t know, freak out once we moved in together. Thankfully for both of us, I didn’t. Merging our furniture and belongings was as easy as pie. Our living styles and decor sensibilities totally meshed. We didn’t battle for the bathroom or a certain side of the bed. Moving in together was the loveliest nonissue in the world.

  So much so that I started thinking maybe I didn’t want a baby after all. I’d look around our brand-new, uncluttered, elegantly decorated apartment, or think about the trips to Buenos Aires and Charleston we had taken that year, and realize a baby would put an end to all of that. It would interrupt our newly formed, comfy routines and habits. It would destroy any notion of freedom and spontaneity. And forget about keeping our first joint furniture purchase, a gorgeous gray velvet couch, stain free. A baby would mean no more romantic weekend getaways. No more buzzy nights out over fish bowl–sized manhattans. No more weekends that magically unfolded hour by hour as we trekked from bar to restaurant to park to another bar to another restaurant, until we wound up back home having great sex. Would I be okay with a life without these luxuries? Was I ready for a whole new reality and world of responsibility?

  Contemplating these questions brought up some deeper-seated ones. What did it mean that I had never pursued getting pregnant in my twenties and thirties? Was I even supposed to be a mom? Did I want to be one? Maybe I wouldn’t be good at it. Maybe I’d have a kid and then lament the decision, making all of our lives miserable. Maybe I was just too selfish. I’d been living a carefree life for decades now. Aside from career obligations, I didn’t have to make many concessions or compromises for anyone. I wondered if I would ever be happier than I was right there and then: in a new job, a happy relationship, baby free.

  I didn’t say any of this out loud; I didn’t feel like I could—not even to Andrew. The subject of parenthood had been broached, actions had been taken, and the journey was underway. But after the miscarriage, I was more than a little ambivalent about trying to get pregnant again.

  I found it easy enough not to dwell on it for too long. I knew my body needed time to recover. And I frankly doubted that my system was capable of successfully conceiving. I figured the miscarriage had been a signal that I was too old to have a baby, that I had pushed my luck, waited too long, and that if I tried again, I’d have the same fate waiting. So rather than think about how potentially reckless I’d been in thinking I could have a baby in my forties, I put it out of my mind and focused on Andrew and the falling-in-love phase I was re-experiencing now that we lived together.

  On weekends, we took long urban strolls, crisscrossing Brooklyn on a more organic level, discovering the cool neighborhood spots that weren’t touted on local blogs or magazines and had nothing to do with real estate recon. We went to Speedy Romeo, an Italian restaurant that has a pizza topped with Provel, a processed cheese popular in the Midwest that was virtually unknown in the Northeast. A Bed–Stuy B&B that hosts jazz concerts followed by fish fries in its town house parlor on weekend nights. And Cacao Prieto, a rum distillery that doubles as a beans-to-bar factory, producer of killer single origin 72 percent dark chocolate bars and rum-filled truffles.

  Or we’d just stay home all weekend, trying new recipes from Bon Appetit and settling in for a marathon session of Girls, House of Cards, True Detective, or whatever our latest obsession was. Life was comfortable. With Andrew, I learned that “doing nothing” was awfully fun. I intentionally dialed back my freelance, a colossal shift after building it up for so many years, but I now felt more protective of my time, inclined to spend it with Andrew rather than keeping up with and writing about the city’s evolving restaurant scene. My book launch was also now well behind me. After birthing that enormous project, then dealing with the frenetic apartment hunt and still feeling depleted from that toxic job, it was a relief to let some of my ambition slide. My old life across the river felt years in the distance, and I was okay with it. After all, who needs flashy nights out and trendy new restaurants when you have Netflix and the man you love?

  • • •

  After all my worrying about moving in with Andrew, who would have guessed that my existential crisis would be about living in Brooklyn?

  This move was exactly what I had wanted. For years, I had dreamed about it, planned for it, fought for it—and apparently had done it all wearing rose-tinted glasses. I had been naive and idealistic in my fantasizing of the borough and the life I’d have there. I didn’t realize that in moving forward, I’d be leaving certain things behind.

  First, there was the pain of missing Manhattan itself. It was the city that had been my home for over a decade, so dazzling and filled with excitement and promise that it had lured me back from Paris. It was my love and muse, representing energy and possibility, stimulation and desire. It was a safe harbor in a world that seemed to value freethinking and diversity less and less. It was also magnificently, overwhelmingly, ridiculously dirty; maddening; and irrational, which was often its very thrill. That and the constant rotation of new bars, restaurants, bakeries, boutiques, exhibitions, and performances that you could never keep up with. Manhattan’s intensity is nonstop—the wailing taxi horns, swerving buses, aggressive pedestrians, and the general neuroses, attitudes, and craziness that emanate from all the people that occupy every last square foot of space. As much as it can wear you down, it’s addictive. It’s a reminder of what it is to feel alive. Like a physical presence, when you’re not near it, you crave it. And now that I didn’t wake up in Manhattan’s thrum every morning, I felt like I had gone through a divorce, like I had been cleaved from my former life.

  It wasn’t only the physical move from Manhattan, but also what the move to Brooklyn represented. When I packed up my 550-square-foot apartment in the East Village and toted all my belongings to consignment shops and, in the end, the curb, I was saying goodbye to ten years of my life—my “swinging” thirties, no less. It had been an era of being single and carefree, hitting the town with AJ, carousing in packs of partygoers, having no obligation except to have a good time and make it to work the next day. All those epic moments and memories of randomly falling into conversations with strangers and winding up going to parties in penthouse apartments with them until 3:00 a.m. were now history. Despite wanting this new life in Brooklyn and intentionally steering myself toward it, despite all the anticipation, it felt shocking.

  Then there was the disappointment with Brooklyn itself. It felt sacrilegious to even think it, what with all the fawning the borough now got in newspapers and magazines, both locally and abroad,
not to mention all those other former Manhattanites who now lived in Brooklyn and insisted it was the only place where cool things were happening, but it was true: I was disappointed. Brooklyn had become mythical in my mind—this amazing place where I envisioned a fabulously bohemian lifestyle, sipping rosé at outdoor cafés, and brushing elbows with the literary set. I thought I’d be going to underground dinner parties, meeting editors and doughnut makers, surfing waves of the next artisanal food trends, and listening to an indie synth pop soundtrack throughout it all. I thought I’d feel as cool living in Brooklyn as everyone, including me, had made the borough out to be.

  But instead of walking to work as I had in Manhattan, I now had to fight my way onto a jam-packed subway twice a day. Instead of being a stone’s throw away from Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, and the biggest, best farmers’ market in all of New York, I had a measly bodega on my corner. Instead of a charmed, cultural utopia, Brooklyn felt like the burbs. I felt middle-aged and alienated. Irrelevant and defeated. I knew I couldn’t stay out dancing all night with AJ forever, and truthfully, I no longer wanted that life. But the emotional part of my brain still had to catch up with the rational part.

  • • •

  Speaking of rational, wedding planning was anything but.

  “What about a restaurant?” Andrew posed. Two months after getting engaged, we were trying to figure out where and when we were going to get married. But thinking and talking about ideas so far hadn’t gotten us closer to any sort of promising plan. Unlike the apartment search, we didn’t have a clear idea of how to get what we wanted. Poking around the requisite wedding websites and magazines, not knowing really where to begin, I felt in over my head. Bridesmaids? Bouquets? A billowing ball gown and tiara? What was the point of it all? Send me to a country where I didn’t speak the language or drop me in the middle of a different culture anytime, but this? This was foreign territory.

  I was now forty-one—twelve years older than the average American bride. As much as I love going to weddings—tearing up during the vows, dive-bombing the cheese platter during cocktail hour, pogo dancing to Kris Kross with utter abandon—I didn’t take mental notes for when my day arrived. I never knew if such a day would arrive. But if and when it did, I knew it wouldn’t be your typical country-club setup. Despite watching umpteen hours of Say Yes to the Dress on TLC with my mom over the years, I myself wasn’t looking to find “the dress.” I found the show’s eye-rolling personalities entertaining, but it made me queasy every time I saw how vicious family members could be with their sartorial opinions, or how much pressure mothers and sisters and best friends put on each other. I didn’t want to look at invitations and party favors, create a Pinterest board of inspiration, or decide on thematically appropriate centerpieces. I was excited to marry Andrew, but I just couldn’t get excited about all this other stuff.

  Andrew and I shared a pretty simple vision for our wedding: we wanted it to be relatively intimate, have a sense of place, and be something that would not clear out what remained of our savings account. In our minds, this was a modest ask. We weren’t envisioning big bands, big limos, or big hoopla. We weren’t asking for anything to be “the ultimate” and had no delusions of having a “dream” wedding. Perfection wasn’t even part of the plan. We thought we should be able to throw a party for our families and friends without going into debt. Ha.

  That first book I had proposed when I moved to New York at the turn of the millennium? It was a nontraditional wedding guide. I had done tons of research on the wedding industry back then and saw that as soon as the word engaged passed your lips—cha-ching—prices notched up stratospherically. I knew Andrew and I were in for it. I just didn’t realize how much. Somehow, my brain had skipped over the fifteen intervening years, since I had done so much research and was still thinking in terms of 2001 costs. Once we started talking to facility managers and getting estimates, we were blown away.

  We focused our initial research and planning on Brooklyn. Despite my qualms about living there, it was our home together. It was part of our story. And, I still had to admit, it was charming. We loved the idea of bringing our families and friends here to see its rough-at-the-edges beauty and also figured it would cost less than Manhattan, the most expensive place in the country to host a wedding. And yet it was beyond our reach. At the venues we visited, everything was adding up to tens of thousands of dollars, was booked over a year in advance, or was just not our style.

  So, yes, in theory, a restaurant seemed like a great idea. The previous summer, Ben and Merrill had gotten married at one in South Slope called Lot 2. We had loved its intimacy, uniqueness, and delicious family-style platters of roasted chicken and chocolate cake. But restaurants posed a whole different set of logistical and financial challenges. “Unless we’re going to pony up what they can clear in a night, we’ll have to do a daytime wedding,” I thought aloud to Andrew. “Besides, Merrill was friends with the owners, and we’re not friends with any bar or restaurant owners.” I paused. “Are we?” I asked thinking maybe, miraculously, I was forgetting about some crucial relationship one of us had with a chef or restaurateur who had a place that could accommodate one hundred people on a Saturday night and would be willing to do so at cost. But then I realized, nope, I wasn’t.

  “How important do you think food is?” Andrew asked, shifting gears. We had discovered a private club near our apartment. It had two floors of old-school charm—carved mahogany walls, giant fireplaces, stained-glass windows—and it couldn’t have been more convenient or compelling. We kept trying to convince ourselves it was the right choice. It was a little run down, but it was priced well enough that we could invite everyone we wanted, plus their kids—which was another decision we were struggling with, especially since we both had older brothers with kids, and we wanted our own nieces and nephews there. But this place had truly sad food. We had been invited to dine there to help seal the deal, but after a salad drowning in sugary dressing, limp rings of fried calamari, and pasta and fish as uninspired as my college cafeteria’s, our hopes for having found our place were dashed.

  I looked at Andrew. “We can’t have crappy food. We just can’t.”

  “I know,” he sighed and leaned away from the dining room table that occupied half of our great room. We were both gazing at the Charlie Brown Christmas tree we had on the other side of the room: small and misshapen, it managed to be endearing with our motley ornaments hanging from it. All along, we had been talking about a summer wedding, but given how things were going, six months didn’t seem like enough time to pull it off.

  “Connecticut?” Andrew scrunched up his brow, so unwilling to be defeated that he was returning to earlier ideas we had explored. It turns out that I do have a traditional side and found the idea of getting married where I grew up pretty cool, so we had blasted through three venues near my hometown one recent weekend. It was fun to envision a fabulous celebration on a sprawling green lawn along the water, where all my friends’ and cousins’ kids would run around chasing fireflies while the adults got tipsy on gin cocktails. But those fantasies were also squashed once we learned we’d have to rent tents, tables, chairs, dishes, tablecloths, lighting, Porta-Potties, and valet drivers for our bucolic outdoor vision in addition to paying a venue fee. Connecticut would be just as expensive as any city venue we had seen.

  In fact, wedding planning was starting to have a frightening resemblance to our apartment hunt. Andrew and I started devoting all our free time to the search, developing strategies and second-guessing our choices. We felt like we were in fierce competition with other couples, duking it out for first dibs on spaces we looked at, all while trying to keep calm and carry on. Money became a weirdly distorted concept, as if paying $200 for one person’s dinner and multiplying that by 100 was totally reasonable, or spending $6,000 on floral arrangements that would die sad, lonely deaths after their five hours in the spotlight could be justified.

  We struggled with how
to balance our guest list and finances: to invite everyone we wanted, we’d have to torpedo our budget. But keeping it small meant we couldn’t accommodate children or even all of our friends. Since every venue was dependent on both capacity and budget, we went in circles, changing our minds and direction on a weekly basis. Nothing felt exactly right. And while we didn’t have delusions that the wedding would be perfect, we sure as hell wanted to feel good about it. We were going to drop tens of thousands of dollars on what was essentially a five-hour party and humbly thought we shouldn’t have to settle.

  There were plenty of times we were tempted to just throw in the towel and not throw a wedding. Plenty of times a hot toddy was needed to cool off. “Let’s keep thinking,” I said, as Andrew rose from the table, putting his warm hands on my shoulders. “Something will pop up. How about a drink?”

  • • •

  Overheard at Sharlene’s:

  “She has a rock collection.”

  “Facebook is for losers.”

  “Want to hear my mushroom story?”

  Every neighborhood should be so lucky to have a bar like Sharlene’s. Located on Flatbush Avenue, the same traffic-clogged street that we had nearly lived on, it’s been a no-frills, no-attitude neighborhood staple since 2009, though it feels like it’s been untouched for generations.

  Sharlene’s is so innocuous, it could be anywhere in the country: Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Fort Smith, Arkansas; Ramsey, New Jersey—we’ve all been to Sharlene’s. The bar is wood, and the floor is linoleum. The lighting is not too dark, not too bright, often glowing with strings of seasonal bulbs. There’s a token jukebox and pinball machine. The music runs from Motown dance tracks to angry nineties metal. Because it could be anywhere, it has universal appeal. Pop in on a week night and find an old-timer in khakis and a Hawaiian shirt, reading the paper and drinking a Red Stripe, a solo girl with Princess Leia braids sipping a gin and tonic, and a couple of big-bellied dudes in baseball caps, catching up over pints.