How It's Going
First I take Manhattan
by Matt Nippert
Steel-capped combat boots are not practical in a New York heatwave.
Steve Maharey and Charles Swindells stand at the front grinning, looking for all the world like best mates. It’s possible that the Minister and the outgoing US Ambassador crossed swords in the elevator on the way out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Wellington headquarters, but during the Fulbright Award ceremony in May both were very well-behaved.
It was, of course, a posh crowd. The Right Honourable Jim Bolger was talking politics over the canapés. “As the only man who has negotiated successfully with Winston Peters, after the election I should offer my services to the highest bidder,” Bolger told me. “Labour or National? It doesn’t matter, whoever pays the most.” I wondered what Nigel Roberts, the bespectacled Victoria University associate professor of politics and collector of prime ministerial tombstone snaps, would make of that as he walked past.
We go way back, me and Roberts. He marked my honours essays in 2001, writing on one of them: “Your paragraphs are too short, your language too colourful, and your conclusions too glib. This is an academic essay, not a work of journalism.” Thanks for the advice, Nigel.
The May soirée was all part of the build-up to a year studying journalism in the US. Preparation also involved countless jabs during flu season, blood-tests (I’m negative for syphilis) and a rectal exam.
Finally, in late July, I passed through a metal detector onto US soil, only to be told: “Excuse me, sir, your shoes are alarming.” Eat your heart out, Carrie Bradshaw! Airport security give excellent fashion advice: black steel-capped combat boots are simply not practical in a New York heatwave.
Fortunately, luggage searches at LAX are suitably named. A birthday present from my brother, unopened until arrival, was found to be a Havana cigar. Breaching the Cuban blockade risks an $80,000 fine. The evidence is now ash.
As I leave the overnight red-eye flight to head into the city that never sleeps, I feel like a zombie. The temperature is 30˚ and humid, and my first-floor apartment, with its barred window overlooking rusty fire-escapes, lacks air-conditioning. First, I get a fan. Then I buy cold beer.
An Egyptian-born deli owner on Broadway greets me at five past midnight with a broken smile that flashes gold. “Ah, very good choice!” he says, as I plonk a six-pack onto the counter. Remembering a Monty Python line that’s always worked wonders in New Zealand, I quip: “I’m buying foreign, because I heard all American beer is like f---ing close to water!”
His smile remains, but the eyes are no longer friendly. The bottles in question are Kronenberg 1664. The label reads: “Bière – bottled in France.” First, I smear his adopted country’s beer, and then I take the piss.
Several nights later, I’m in an apartment in the gay district. It’s the Chelsea Hotel and, like Leonard Cohen, I’ll remember it well. This is the building where Jack Kerouac wrote On the Road, Arthur C Clark penned 2001 and Sid from the Sex Pistols killed Nancy. And for only $5000 a month, you, too, can have a one-bedroom studio in this cultural nexus.
I’m there with an Italian, well-connected and crashing for free, and we’re drinking duty-free J&B whisky, endorsed by Tony Soprano. Arthur Miller, another late Great One who lived here, wrote that being a resident of Chelsea was the “high spot of the surreal”.
As I come out of the lobby at well past 1.00am, starlight makes me blink. The building next door is abuzz as union film crew members hold back a gaggle of women who are wearing too much make-up and not enough clothing.
According to the head of security, a new Richard Gere movie is being shot. It’s due out next June, but I’m suspicious. Its title is The Hoax.
One week in New York, a mere 40 more to go of study leavened only by having an eccentric supervisor who moonlights as editor-at-large for Playboy. As Cohen also sang, “How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.”
