I love New York City. I haven’t always but for at least the last thirty years I have loved living in this city. For some years I had no interest in cities—none. Not Paris or Rome or Barcelona or Istanbul or Delhi. No, there was a time I only wanted to be out of the city—the ocean, the mountains, anything but buildings and people. But that hasn’t been the case for quite a while. These days I love cities, and especially New York. I also love to leave them, to find new ones, to escape them on beaches and in travel. But I love to return as well. So it is more than a little disheartening to me that I can envision having to leave this city, finding it no longer a livable place for me. And strangely enough it is not the usual stuff of city life—excessive poverty or excessive wealth, crime, pollution, noise, gentrification—no, what may finally drive me away is—The Driving.
I got my New York State driver’s license on my 17th birthday, having spent the previous summer taking Driver’s Ed at The Brooklyn Academy of Music and practicing by driving my father back to our summer place in Far Rockaway each day after I finished my driving class and he finished his shift delivering pies to the city’s restaurants. Summer was his slow season, the schools he usually had on his route being closed, so he finished work even earlier than he did in the winter and our schedules worked out pretty well. His bakery—California Pie and Cake—was within walking distance of the Academy of Music and I would walk over after class and meet him in the locker room, pretending to shield my eyes from the craps games going on in the bathroom and from the pin-ups on the locker doors. There was some kind of educational process being offered me in those moments, but my father wasn’t inclined to enroll me. Thus my pretense of ignoring what was in front of me. (A different kind of life lesson.) So by the end of the summer of 1963 I had a Junior Permit and was driving our ’56 Olds in the company of my father quite regularly. And on my birthday in January I was licensed to drive without him and I have been doing that ever since. I used to joke that it was the second-best thing I did. I don’t use that joke any longer.
I have been a really good driver from the start. In part, I think, because of my father, who drove for a living and whose livelihood would have been destroyed if he lost his license. In part it’s because I really like to drive. It’s the perfect outlet for my particular form of ADD and my peculiar way of doing meditation and for my love of rock and roll. I am relaxed and awake and alert and inside my head all at the same time. I have been driving now for over 53 years. I am not-quite accident free but need I say that no accident I was involved in was my fault? I have said that my tombstone should read “He Drove Us….” But these days I fear my tombstone may be nearer in my future than I want or believe it should be. And the reason for my apprehension is the way that others are driving in the New York area of late. I am, quite frankly, afraid.
The cars are often very big—SUVs dominate the roads—or very powerful—BMWs and Audis and souped-up Hondas. And the drivers are moving at rates of speed normally associated with the left lane of the Autobahn and they are moving from left lane to right, cutting in front of us, coming up suddenly behind us, passing us on whatever side seems most open at that split second. And if someone isn’t paying attention, is changing the station on the radio or turning to the person in the adjoining seat or sneezing—if someone isn’t fully there at the moment that incredibly powerful machine comes hurtling out of nowhere—disaster awaits. Death awaits.
And great driver that I am, my reflexes are not what they were when I was 17 or even when I was 57 and I’m not so sure I will see him in time or move over in time or brake in time. I’m not sure I can keep him from side-swiping me as he moves from left lane to right lane in front of me in the middle lane and I am not sure he will not rear-end me as I brake in response to what the guy he is racing across Westchester has just done. I am not sure I’ve got the “chops” for New York driving much longer. I arrive home from one of our usual jaunts to the Lower East Side or Chelsea or the Theater District and remain seated in the car for five minutes just to unwind. I breathe and relax my body from the position it has assumed in order to be there for me for this past 45 minutes. It’s taking it’s toll and I’m wondering how much longer I can do it and, more than that, how much longer I want to be doing it.
Maybe it’s time to start thinking about leaving. The driving isn’t going to get better. People aren’t becoming less aggressive, not on the road, not anywhere near here. My mind trick of telling myself that anyone driving in this way is actually rushing to the hospital to see his dying mother may serve to keep me from shouting “Asshole” but it doesn’t make me less nervous or less vulnerable, and that combination of nervousness and vulnerability isn’t helping my quality of life either. So while my wife is looking for “community” for our impending dotage, maybe I need to be looking for “drivability”—somewhere where I can drive until my dying days. After all, what’s the point of living if you can’t drive?