There is a thing that happens in New York under unusual circumstances, a thing not widely understood outside the city. It’s not that we all pull together, exactly; it’s not that we get along better, although we often do and we often do. But a pause button is hit, at certain times, on the everyday sensory overload — by a power outage or a disaster, extremes of weather, jury duty. And because the everyday hustle is suspended, not necessary, the thousand-yard stare and the jockeying for position temporarily pointless, a space is left for indulgences like small talk and sympathy.

When I say this isn’t widely understood outside the city, I don’t mean that people elsewhere don’t know how to act that way, of course. I mean that people elsewhere tend to assume that we don’t — that the slightest disruption in the Gothamite routine will lead, without delay, to arson and fisticuffs, that any veneer of sophistication will melt like cheap laminate and we’ll all just go immediately and irretrievably feral. The news stories about New Yorkers pulling together post-9/11 invariably reported this development in a tone of gratified surprise, as though, after months of resisting toilet training, we as a city had agreed to clamber up on the big-girl potty, unprompted and at just the right cinematically symbolic time.

I won’t sit here and try to tell you that it’s like The Truman Show over here. It ain’t. Looting happens. Desperation happens. People lose their shit. Eight million people in one place, not everyone’s going to behave all the time. But when a transformer blows up on 4th Avenue at midnight and the city sends 30 trucks from 11 different fire houses, six black-and-whites, a transit van, a Salvation Army mobile transfer unit, the bomb squad, the K-9 squad, and a bunch of dudes in construction helmets, it’s not a riot situation. It’s an open a window, lean out to rubberneck, see your neighbor doing the same thing, wave and ask her what she knows, tell her what you know that you heard on a police scanner on the Web because you are nosy and a nerd, head downstairs to ask the deli guys what they know because the deli guys function like a subplot seismograph for your block (see also: nosy; nerd), buy some coffee, eavesdrop, swap theories with the lady with the Pomeranians who lives on 2nd Street, swap Pomeranian Lady’s theory with Afrika Bambaataa T-Shirt Guy whose friend knows a dude whose brother works at the Lyceum and the brother says it’s not the subway at least (“thank you, Simone”), bum out a cigarette to a cop, hear it’s not an evacuation deal, and go back upstairs situation. Jury duty, same thing. Five prospective jurors, one Times crossword…you find a way to work it out. Especially if it’s the Friday.

I’ve noticed, lately — and I think I probably noticed it in the past, too, but unconsciously, and just incorporated it without comment — that the same rule applies to heat waves in New York City. Temps in the eighties, it’s every man, woman, and purse dog for themselves, but the minute it hits ninety, it’s kind of like the day before Christmas vacation at school when the teacher is like, “All y’all candy-cane junkies can play Hangman on the board, because I? Give up.” Eighty-five, eighty-eight, everyone’s still in the game with the linen separates and the eye liner and the neatly knotted tie, pretending to ignore the convection current currently turning everyone on the N/R/Q/W platform into jerky. Any temperature starting with a nine, a collective decision is made, unwittingly, that any pretense of cool in the social sense is only contributing to the lack of cool in the weather sense, and it’s just out the window, everywhere you go — entrances into department stores accompanied by bursts of the Hallelujah chorus, Hiltonoids pulling out their camis from their chests and just blatantly blowing down between their boobs, pocket squares used to wipe armpits, moms putting bags of ice into strollers under the babies, married couples picking the longest movie out in theaters and catching some sweat-free shut-eye in the back row. You walk past a pod of teenage girls while drinking one Diet Coke and rolling the other one around under your tank top when it’s only eighty-four, you’re going to get mocked. You do it when it’s ninety-four, you’re going to get copied.

The city has rules — real ones, naturally, and unspoken ones we all kind of agree on as a group. One of those unspoken rules, evidently, is that a lot of other unspoken rules get chucked when it’s super-hot out. Normally, prying open a fire hydrant is cause for clucking, or uptight lecturing of grade-schoolers, or officious calling of 311 to report These Kids Today to the proper hydrant-closing authorities. Yesterday, which featured a high of 91, it was cause for crossing the street to walk through the spray and thank the junior delinquent responsible. Normally, a parked car blasting the thumping bass is annoying. Last night, it was fine, because everyone’s either inside, directly in front of the AC, and can’t hear it, or out on the street eating ice cream and in need of a soundtrack.

Thank God for that, really. Thank God for the come-as-you-are mentality when it’s gross out, because I don’t do well in the heat and I don’t do well at pretending otherwise, and sometimes I feel like everyone else in the city is cool and composed and put together, arching their climate-controlled eyebrows at me as I frantically (and vainly) fan myself with a copy of The American Prospect and a rivulet of sweat heads from my scalp to my butt crack without so much as a swerve, and when I feel like it’s just my thighs sticking to the seats on the R and it’s just me who thinks carrying a teeny tiny battery-operated fan is an awesome idea instead of, you know, amusingly tacky…it’s even more uncomfortable. But when everyone slept on the fire escape wrapped in wet towels? When other people grumble, to nobody in particular but also not caring if anyone hears, “Damn, this is a legendary case of swamp-ass”? When that happens, it’s still disgustingly hot, but then it’s also a truth universally acknowledged. Nobody’s giving you any “it’s not that bad today” or “I honestly don’t smell it, no.” Everyone’s sticky, everyone’s frizzy, everyone’s walking past reeking garbage with their arms over their noses, and everyone’s all, “If they fire me for wearing flip-flops to work, so be it.” It’s just easier to cope with when everyone’s on the same page — the page where, awesomely, old women buy plant misters and totally mist themselves while shopping. Old women, the younger women standing downwind salute you.

Today, it’s allegedly…let’s see here…it’s 78 degrees, according to Yahoo! Weather. According to my Aunt Fanny, it’s quite a bit hotter than that, and humid, and the air is not moving at all, but because it’s not hot hot, my plan to go to the bank wearing a miniscule tank top, board shorts, and one of those hats you put two beer cans in is kind of out the window, because dressing like I just emerged from a rehab clinic run by the Village People is the exception on a 78-degree day and not the rule. Dammit. I shouldn’t bitch, probably, when 1) I have AC and 2) two of the three creatures in this house have to live directly under it because of the mandatory fur-coat uniform, but I don’t mind telling you, I’m about to phone up Mr. S and talk him into not only wanting an ice sculpture at his wedding but also going shopping for one and allowing me to perform “huggability tests” on the finalists, today, all day, because blech.

June 27, 2005

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