Rich vs. Poor

Don’t let the title fool you this isn’t a class war rage.  It’s more of an understanding how people grow up in different areas with different resources and as much as I’d like to think that we can over come these financial and therefore cultural differences, I’m not so sure.

Our story begins with me meeting someone through a mutual friend, who had just moved to town.  She had come to New York via Paris but was originally from a wealthy suburb of San Francisco.  She was smart, accomplished, well traveled, well educated and easy on the eyes.  She had me after she finished the sentence, “I was a journalist for a Parisian newspaper but there’s something about New York City.”  Oh and one more thing about this girl, for all intents and purposes she was engaged.  Engaged in that way when people have been in a relationship for a long time and the next step should have happened by now but it hasn’t so let’s just get engaged even though we both know it’s a huge mistake.  You know, that kind.  In any case, I don’t meet women like this often.  Actually, I never meet women like this.  For a long time I started thinking that women like this didn’t exist, so finding one in the wild, even if she was engaged, was quite the reassuring prospect.  The world was filled with hope again.  I made a promise to myself that if she ever becomes single I would ask her out immediately for a few reasons.  The first being to get out of my comfort zone of only thinking about talking to women of that caliber.  The second being that I was positive that there would be a line of dudes who were also going to be vying for her attention and lastly, rebound relationships usually have at least a pretty good run before they end in a dismal pile of tears, booze and harassment. 

So let’s fast forward through the months of her living with her fiancé and move right to the part where she leaves him.  This story is so old that I Myspaced this girl when I found out about her moving to Upper West Side.  That’s right, I said Myspaced.  For some unbeknownst reason see agreed to go out with me.  I often think it was because she either felt like she owed our mutual friend, or there was a strong sense of pity in my general direction, or she figured let’s get this over with.  Having come out of a long relationship  she was very upfront about not being interested in being in one any time soon, which I completely understood and respected.   I was so excited to spend time with her that I would have happily paid for anything and everything date related, even if it meant three and a half hours of her verbally and physically berating and abusing me.  I would have taken out a loan to make that happen.  Happily.

We agreed to go for coffee at a place that she loved in Paris that also had a location not too far from where she was crashing.  Crashing isn’t exactly the right word here but I’m blanking on what would be.  The reason crashing isn’t appropriate is because people don’t crash at apartments with full time doorman who have seen enough to know that I’m not the quality of person to be allowed entrance in the lobby let alone the multimillion dollar apartments.  Staying also doesn’t quite work either. 

For my own therapy, looking back I should have noticed the chink in the armor when we went to La Pain Quidien for coffee.  An upscale chain coffee place for a fake date?  I’m not sure about that move.  There are far too many coffee places in New York with charm and character that I would have chosen before La Pain Quidien.  I know I was so overcome with joy at the prospect of sitting down with this woman that at the time I wouldn’t have minded if we were in an old man bar surrounded by people projectile vomiting onto the floor and walls, but I digress. 

The anecdote that has stayed with me these five or six years which is sort of the point of this article? Entry? Post? Whatever this thing is, is this. We were both removed from college by only a few years and she was going to go back for a master’s, so it was natural to discuss those rather formative years.  She regaled me with a tale of walking into her suitemate’s room while the radio was playing and asked who was on the radio. 

The roommate replied, “Santana.”  Mind you this would have been around 1999 or 2000 when “Smooth” was released and took over every radio station.

She replies in an overtly sarcastic tone with, “Who Carlos Santana?”  One of those goofy, adoy, tones.  A tone so deliberate that it’s used only in absolute certainty. 

The suitemate replies, “Yeah, Carlos Santana.”  I image she had a quizzical look on her face during and after her reply. 

You see, dear reader, the girl sitting across from me drinking her tea and nibbling on her croissant had lived next door from one Carlos Santana.  You must be thinking well, Carlos Santana must be a fairly common name and this girl just has a strange sense of humor, which would be two very reasonable thoughts and you shouldn’t feel badly about the fact that you are 100% incorrect.  The truth is that she not only lived next to a Carlos Santana for her entire life up until she had gone away to college that year, but that she lived next to THE Carlos Santana.  That’s right, THE Carlos Santana.  Having no idea what he did for a living, despite, I may add, that he took her backstage to the Grammy’s a few years before that. 

Like I said earlier, I’ve thought about this story a lot over the years.  I don’t have a satisfactory answer as to why she felt the need to share it.  My best guess is that I was very into music at the time and she thought it might be a cute story that I would appreciate.  Or it could very well be her way of showing how not cool she was by being so ignorant about her surroundings and what popular culture society expects us to know.  I’m not sure if it’s even either of those things.  The one thing that I did know immediately after hearing the story was how out of my league this girl was.  Not only out of my league but how we came from different worlds.  Worlds not separate by physical distance, nor economy but what rather what that money can do and give a person.  Whether the story was supposed to be cute and telling about her personality or something unrelated, it won’t change where we come from.  In that instant it became very clear to me that there wouldn’t be a Hollywood ending in the cards for us.  The two worlds we came from were entirely too different. 

That last line has depressed me as I typed it, so I’m going to pull a 180.  Come to think of it, I have no idea what old Mr. Fitzgerald our neighbor did for a living.  I’m pretty sure he didn’t play Woodstock but I might be wrong about that.