New York is My Sanctuary

"Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.” – John Steinbeck

New York City in the late eighties was a mix of crime, poverty, wealth, and an intense focus on work. Women in suits and sneakers were everywhere, people getting into limousines, and people sleeping on grates and in the parks. It was noisy and dirty, and if you found yourself walking across Morningside Park after dark, a NYC cop would say, “You looking to get killed, lady?”

Brooklyn was crack central. During my second year of grad school, I ran a tutoring program in Bedford Stuyvesant, where every other building was either a crack house or condemned and boarded up. The train there felt like being a bit player in a horror movie, although most of the danger was psychological. However, on my commute from Manhattan to Brooklyn College, I saw muggings, someone pulling a gun on a lady with a diamond ring, and numerous people who actually lived on the subway. I loved it.

photo by David Nieto

I had a rent-controlled apartment on 69th and Broadway, a book deal, and enough money to pay the rent and eat. Sort of. Back then you could be poor and still manage to have an excellent time. Especially if you were the recipient of dinner invitations from wealthy, would-be suitors. They found my edgy poverty endearing, and being in my twenties didn’t hurt either.

I still wasn’t speaking to my father. My mom kept calling and trying to put him on the phone, but I would hang up before he spoke. Finally, he called me. This was very rare. Each time I called home,  he immediately handed the phone over to my mother, even when I told him I wanted to talk. But this time he called me.
“I heard your news,” he said. “You should be very proud of yourself.”
“I am,” I said.
“We didn’t know you were writing a novel.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. It just happened.”
“And Harper & Row is publishing it?”
“Yes.” There was silence. “Why did you call me a loser?”
He sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that. You have so much courage.”
“I’m terrified,” I said. “I’ve done this alone for so long.”
“Well,” he said, “You will always do this alone. It’s being a writer. I’m very proud of you.”

The thing was, calling myself a writer seemed ridiculous. At the first publishing industry party I was invited to, I brought a friend but felt incapable of mingling with the famous faces around me. Finally, a woman asked me what I did, and I answered that I was a teacher. I didn’t mention the book deal. “She’s a writer,” my friend blurted out. “Harper & Row just bought her novel.” After the woman walked away, my friend shook her head. “What’s the matter with you?” she said. “People who have never published anything go around calling themselves writers.”

I felt like killing myself, but graduate school started, so I did that instead. Jonathan Baumbach, Noah’s father, and Peter Spielberg were the two professors in the fiction writing department. Jonathan ran the workshop the first year and constantly asked me whether my work was based on real life or whether I had a boyfriend and other personal questions. My classmates were already wary of me because of the book deal, and his obsession didn’t help. The criticism I received was a mix of mean and petty comments with a few really helpful suggestions. But it was wonderful to return to higher education after years of working. My other classes, deep dives into Faulkner and nineteenth century British novelists, were good.

Jonathan’s attention became so overt and embarrassing I received a call one day from Noah asking me to meet him for coffee. He said his father talked about me frequently at home and that his new wife, after a hard divorce, was angry. “He talks about you at dinner,” Noah said. I told Peter Spielberg I would not spend a semester alone with Jonathan working on a new book, so he took over my tutorials, but still, nothing was done.

When I met with my editor at Harper & Row, I took advantage of her checking something with the art director to look at the manuscript on her desk to be sure it was really my book. When she talked about the plot and my characters and why she loved my writing, it seemed like a dream, leaving isolation and entering a room that had been closed for a long time. Honestly, it wasn’t the advance or the status of getting published; it was the idea of having readers and being able to go on as a writer. I never felt entitled to be an artist and there was always fear about money.

The teaching fellowship alleviated some of that worry during my second year at Brooklyn College. The tutoring job in Bedford Stuyvesant reminded me that I lived in a world of privilege and that other people would do anything for an education. Gratitude for my life, for my sobriety, and for the luck of being published kept me from my usual wallowing in self doubt and pity.

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach