Back in one of my high school English classes we read the great American novel, The Great Gatsby. Gatsby isn’t just any book to Manhasset, the town I grew up in. The novel takes place on our shore and surrounding locations. Seventy-eight years after its publication, the social mores of the novel survive. Living in my egg-shaped town you’ll experience an intense obsession with class, location and ownership. When characters in Gatsby talk about Tom Buchanan’s affair, they say he’s “got some woman in New York” who he treats as an object. This feeds from the urban mystique of having a mysterious woman.
This weekend I’m going to visit my very own “woman in New York.” She’s not my girlfriend. We met about three years ago on the same Port Washington train line to Manhattan that Tom and his mistress take in the book. I got on at East Egg and when she got on at West Egg I just had to talk to her. We dated for a short time, but now she’s the person I visit for romantic purposes while at home, whether or not I am in a relationship. What I have with her allows me to live in one of my favorite books. Jay Gatsby learns that he can’t repeat the past, but maybe I can repeat a relationship from his story.
Based on what she has and what she’s done she’s no ordinary girl to me. She’s a design student with a near-penthouse apartment off Union Square. She’s done some modeling, which fits her exquisite nature. One time we were hanging out and she had something written in pen on her chest. I asked about it and she said the drummer from Blink 182 signed her the night before. She fed me some story about how she used to sing for Latex Generation and how they’re friends with Blink. It feels like I’m bragging when I talk about this girl, and she does have a certain social capital that attracts me. It’s a fantasy. It’s living out something from the book—but it’s real. I too, can have my very own Tom Buchanan reality.
Is it the city and not her that makes this situation so charming to me? This is what I think about on the train into the city now. It’s rare when I get to see her. We almost never get together if I plan to spend a long time in town. Just a casual attachment—perfect for college life. But Nick Carraway would frown on my mistress and the decadence that this girl and I overtly imitate.
Wait—before you judge me for my sense of ownership, I realize it’s shady to say you have a “woman in New York.” Many people model themselves on fictional characters. Isn’t what I’m ultimately doing a drag performance with me acting as Tom Buchanan or Master of the Universe Sherman McCoy in Bonfire of the Vanities? When I was younger I wanted to end up like one of these guys because they start off with much that I desire. Now that I’m immersed in collegiate liberalism, I reexamine my actions.
There are things I have to do to maintain the relationship, I send the occasional letter or a Valentine’s Day card. These are matched with her late night calls of “come to New York.” This detached nature just adds to my surreal experience with her.
Gatsby ends with the line “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” The question I’m beginning to mull over is of the future. What happens when I move to New York after I graduate? Do I have to get a girl in L.A.? Perhaps my relationship with her ends when I start living and working there. Forgive me if I begin to sound like Sex and the City but are those who have girls in New York destined to settle down once they move inside the bounds of the city, or do they have to find some other place to romanticize and mold themselves around some other story? There I go again, modeling myself after a story—except this time, it’s lowbrow HBO.
Danielle DeCerbo is a senior in the College and associate editor of the Georgetown Voice. She’s your favorite R.A.
