The Three of U.S.: A New Life in New York

The pleasure of our California King Sized Serta Perfect Sleeper is only ruined by the fact that every time I flop down upon its vast quilted acreage I am reminded that we paid too much for it at Bloomingdale’s. I am taunted by the saturation advertising on TV by ‘1–800-Sleepys’, and its rival, ‘1–800-Mattress, Leave Off the Final “S” for Savings’ in their apparently cut-throat war to be purveyors of the best mattress deals to New York’s fitful sleepers. Always an ex-post-facto comparison shopper, I have tortured myself by phoning both 1–800-Sleepys and 1–800-Mattress, to discover that the California King Sized Serta Perfect Sleeper, the exact same California King Sized Serta Perfect Sleeper, can be purchased from either of them over the phone, for $500 less than we paid at Bloomingdale’s. And of course, both hyperdrive salesmen assure me, ‘We deliver free! Guaranteed within two hours! Anywhere in the five boroughs!’

Monday, 22 JuneJoanna

I am on my way to see my new accountant, a solemn-sounding man called Bob Green. When I phoned to make an appointment he informed me he worked from home, so I set off for his apartment on the thirty-eighth floor of a modern tower block overlooking the East River. When I arrive he answers the door, an unsmiling, middle-aged, black-haired man with his left shoulder wedging a phone to his neck.

His office is framed by huge, grey-tinted windows offering spectacular panoramic views stretching down past the solid towers of Brooklyn Bridge to the graceful columns of the World Trade Center. Directly below I can see a red helicopter taking off from the 34th Street heliport. It rises to the height of our window before swooping off across the East River towards La Guardia airport.

‘What fantastic views,’ I say as Bob reappears, neck straight and minus the phone. He nods silently, beckoning me into his office and reaching out to boot up a large desk-top computer, which emits the triumphant fanfare heralding the imminent presence of Windows ’98.

He swings to face me and utters his first full sentence. ‘I don’t mind telling you, Joanna, I am going to be very aggressive on your behalf. Very aggressive indeed.’

From out of a drawer he produces a stiff pink bandage with cream Velcro straps which he proceeds to bind tightly around his right arm. ‘Too much time on this thing,’ he says gesturing at the keyboard. I commiserate as he swings back to the monitor and calls out, ‘Full name? Address? Social security number?’ As I answer, he pounds furiously at the keyboard.

For the next ninety minutes I produce endless, carefully collated receipts for restaurants, books, batteries, tapes and other journalistic minutiae as we examine my earnings.

My saving grace, he tells me, is the cost of setting up a household in New York, some of which I can offset against my freelance earnings, including a frenzied period of television appearances during the Louise Woodward trial.

By the end of our session the taciturn Bob is grinning. ‘I think you can relax,’ he says, scanning a column of figures he has printed out. ‘In fact, I work out you overpaid already. The IRS owes you money. About eight hundred dollars in total.’

‘Are you sure?’ I ask, having earmarked my meagre fund of savings for the Revenue.

I thank him profusely, marvelling at how much more generous the US system seems to be to the freelance income. Bob smiles briefly and with a flourish extends his bandaged arm. ‘Welcome to America, Joanna,’ he says, with no trace of irony, shaking my hand for the first time. ‘Welcome to America, land of the free.’

Sunday, 28 JunePeter

As good West Village citizens, we are watching the annual spectacle of Gay Pride. The floats progress slowly south down fifth Avenue towards the Village. Crowds of curious Mid-Westerners and outer borough suburbanites, the bridge and tunnel set, press against the blue wooden police trestles, snapping at the freaks with their Sureshots.

Behind an arch of rainbow balloons, the procession is led by a squadron of Lesbians on Harleys, dozens of them, built like beer kegs, inscrutable behind their Ray-Ban aviators. One gives a clenched-fist salute to the crowd, and is nearly unseated as her Harley hits a badly fitted manhole cover and fishtails crazily across the street before she manages to wrestle it back.

It is an astonishingly diverse assemblage: ‘Puerto Ricans Against Anti-Gay Violence’ saunter by, their sound system perched on a wheelchair; ‘Latino Gay Men of NY’; Gay and Lesbian Arab Society; Bisexual Trekkies; one with a subsidiary banner proclaiming ‘They say we don’t fuck, We say Fuck You’; ‘Come fuck with us – free your mind and your ass will follow.’

Dressed up as the Village People, The Clit Club’ Lesbians are marching to the tune of ‘YMCA’. The Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project displays banners which entreat: ‘Hang up on Hate, Give us a ring’. Their principal dancer protrudes from a giant pink phone on the back of a flat-bed truck and the whole float threatens to be borne aloft by a flotilla of pink balloons.

In front of me a transvestite rollerblader falls heavily on to her bum. Her companion, dressed in a sequined evening gown with a slit up one thigh all the way to her panty line and a gold bra with sharply conical revolving cups, brushes her off and helps her up. They curtsy briefly to the applauding onlookers and continue on their way.

A man pushing a trolley piled high with a teetering tower of pretzels eases it down the kerb ramp and joins a flock of anxious black-hatted Hasidic Jews as they dart across the road between floats. And then we catch sight of the ubiquitous Mayor Giuliani marching along between two hostile groups, but grinning fit to pop and dispensing royal waves this way and that to the crowd. Most boo back, a few cheer.

Some hours later and the fag end of the sweaty entourage is slowly straggling into Christopher Street, the final leg and their spiritual home, where the Stonewall Riots launched Gay Pride itself in 1969. A float blaring Schubert goes by bearing a bewigged look-alike who pretends to play a mock grand piano beneath the sign: Franz Schubert, the world’s greatest melodist – one of our boys. Along the side, to ram the point home, it declares: Schubert is OUT.

Then along comes a dizzying selection of nationalities just to prove that homosexuality is a truly trans-national, multi-ethnic, inter-religious state of being. Razem, Polish Lesbians and Gays, are followed by an ambiguous troupe of thick-set, heavily stubbled men in Doc Martens and white spangled tutus. The Russians are Coming’ declares their banner. I wonder if this is the climax of the Cold War.

Along comes a woman gyrating on top of another flatbed truck, her brief white singlet straining to contain two enormous orbs of evidently unnatural composition. From time to time she releases them from captivity, one at a time, fondling them affectionately as though stroking kittens, and makes as if to offer them to the crowd. Next to me a gay boy turns to his partner and sniffs, ‘She’s got some breasts going on there.’

Ahead the Lesbian and Gay Judges and NYPD Gay Officers are attracting thunderous applause, followed by the Gay Officers Action League, GAOL.

Gay bagpipers are up next, blowing ‘Amazing Grace’ through bloated cheeks, and then across my line of vision stroll two men in leopard-skin bell bottoms, with leopard tails arching stiffly from their bottoms up their backs and slung over their shoulders. They both wear rough straw hats on their heads and leather chaps on their thighs, and slung low on their slim hips holsters bearing not guns but Evian bottles.

The police are busy turning back pedestrians who have strayed off the crowded pavements on to the road. A lesbian is remonstrating loudly with a fat cop on behalf of her partner: ‘She’s having a panic attack, ya understand?’ she pleads and the baffled cop lets them through.

NY Gay and Lesbian Physicians jostle for street space with Gay Vietnam Veterans and then things turn decidedly religious: Gay Quakers, Jewish Reform Synagogues, Presbyterians, United Reform Church, Gay and Lesbian Mormons. The Catholics’ gay organization is called Dignity, and its leader, who has a papier mâché Christian fish on his head, is flashing his panties at the cheering crowd. From time to time he drinks deeply from a jewelled chalice.

New York Parents and Friends of Gays look predictably out of place – middle-aged straights, awkward and self-conscious but smiling bravely. They hold up a banner saying ‘We Love Our Children’.

They are followed by a pair of identical twins, identically dressed, in neutral shorts and T-shirts, whose banner reads: ‘I love my gay/straight brother. Can you tell which is which?’

At the end of Christopher Street the floats turn right into Greenwich Street, where a stone-faced marshal with all the efficiency of a prison warder is shutting down their sound systems and making the grumbling party animals disperse. Their grumbling is witty and restrained, though, and they are, in fact, incredibly well behaved. No one seems drunk or violent.

I sit at home that night feeling squarer than I’ve ever felt.

Monday, 29 JuneJoanna

I’ve spent the last fortnight tracking down friends who have had amniocentesis. Of all the tests offered during pregnancy, this seems the most invasive, as they puncture the amniotic sac with a needle, and it carries the highest risk of miscarriage. Needless to say if I were two years younger I wouldn’t have to think about it, relying instead on various blood tests. But at thirty-six, though I have no contra-indicators, I am automatically down on the chart as ‘high risk’ and now stand a 1/150 chance of having a Down’s syndrome baby. Another disadvantage to geriatric motherhood.

‘Have you had a chance to think about amniocentesis?’ asks my new doctor, Dr Levy, gently, as we sit in the cubicle, trying to decipher the latest blurry photo from the twelve-week sonogram.

‘Oh God, is it really necessary?’ I grumble. ‘It sounds awful and I feel fine.’

‘Well, it’s entirely up to you,’ he says smoothly. ‘We would advise you to have it, but it’s your choice. There’s only one thing you need to think about seriously. Would a handicapped baby be deleterious to your lifestyle?’

Peter flashes me a look of alarm.

‘If it wouldn’t,’ Levy continues improbably, ‘then there’s no need to have amnio, though you might want to have one just so you know. Some people like to know in advance, so they can prepare themselves.’

Prepare themselves? Ye gods, how exactly?

‘But it sounds so risky,’ I mumble.

He shrugs. ‘It’s not without risk and we go through that with you beforehand. Nationally the rate of miscarriage from amniocentesis is around 1/350. Anecdotally at Beth Israel, the hospital we are affiliated to, I can tell you it’s a lot less.’

‘How many have you done yourself?’ demands Peter.

‘About a thousand.’

‘And how many have gone wrong?’

He puts his hands in his white pockets. ‘Two.’

‘What happened?’ Peter persists.

‘Well, one was an older mother, she was forty-two; and the other, she was about thirty-two, but there were other problems … Look, you don’t have to make your mind up now. Take a week or so and call me back. We do it at fifteen weeks, so if there is something wrong …’ He tails off, but we get the message.

I call friends in England. None of them has had amnio, not even Louisa, who’s now at the same stage and same age.

‘They said it was up to me,’ she says dreamily, ‘and I didn’t feel like disturbing it.’

Regardless of age, an informal survey of my American friends turns up that they have all had amnio, some simply to find out the sex. ‘It’s fine,’ urges Joyce, a brisk TV producer, sporting a floral sarong over her six-month belly. ‘Besides, don’t you want to know what sex it is?’

‘Oh, John forced me,’ cries Lisa, another friend, earnestly. ‘He needed to know if it was a boy or a girl so he could prepare himself.’