I write this from Dublin, Ireland, where I'm on the second to last day of a three-week apartment trade with an Irish woman. People keep telling me it's like that movie, the one with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz from last year, the name of which no one can ever recall because it sucked so hard, and we are all in denial that Kate Winslet could make a bad movie. It's true the woman I switched with and I do have a lot in common: we're both the same age, we're both fiction writers, we both have cats and bicycles and cozy homes. The big difference between us (besides the fact that she's like ninety feet tall and blonde and I, with the last name of Attenberg, am so not that) is that she is single and ready to mingle and I have a boyfriend who I started missing even before I left town. Can you tell already who was going to have the most fun?
To be fair, this wasn't about me having fun. I'm in the midst of writing my third book and I couldn't seem to break through the second third of it at home in Brooklyn, so this was to be a writer's retreat of sorts. Still when it rained every day for the first two weeks I was saddened and forced to eat toast at least three times a day. I rode my bike in the rain as much as I could tolerate it and then I finally retreated. I started sleeping late and working and reading all day long. I just wanted to be dry for a while.
Also I tired quickly of the pub culture. You know that stereotype about how the Irish like to drink a lot? Um, they do. I know, I know -- it's my problem, not Ireland's. This country has been this way for a long time, and it's only been a few years since I got bored with hanging out in bars all the time. Drinking for the sake of drinking all night long just doesn't interest me anymore. Plus men were approaching me an awful lot in bars. Listen: I'm OK cute. I'm no stunner. There was simply no reason for me to be getting so much attention, other than I was out alone, and when I ordered my cider, I did it with an accent. Because you know what they say about American women who travel by themselves? Totally easy. (Ah, if I were only in my twenties. I really was totally easy then.) So after the fifth night of phone numbers being slipped in my hands, I vowed to be home by 11 pm every night.
Back in New York, the woman I traded homes with was out dancing the night away with a graphic designer ten years her junior. (Everyone loves an accent in New York too.) "I don't want to leave," she said. "I love it here."
I spent the next few weeks exploring the early side of Dublin. I saw legendary Dutch typographer and designer Wim Crouwel speak at Dublin's innovative design lecture series Sweet Talk, where they also screened the design-geek documentary Helvetica. I went to practically every museum in town. I biked all over the place. I watched Christopher Hitchens defend his support of the Iraq War to a group of angry Irishmen at the Dublin Writer's Festival. I stole a few hours at Stephen's Green during a brief bit moment of sun one Saturday. I ate bangers and mash at Gruel, a fantastic restaurant on Dame Street, and a goat cheese tart at Queen of Tarts, just a few blocks down. I wrote 15,000 words of my novel and achieved the breakthrough I had hoped for. I drank pints early in the evening at the Stag's Head Pub, and went to art openings at Monster Truck Gallery and at the Bernard Shaw Pub. I found the Asian market off George's Street, where I bought jars of kimchee and huge bags of baby Bok Choy. I read six novels. I discovered the joy of the lamb kebab. I saw Ted Leo and the Pharmacists put on an amazing show at a venue so small it was almost beneath them. (I think I was home by 11:30 that night.) And last Saturday the sun came out, at last, and I did a 5k cliff walk between the coastal towns of Bray and Greystones. For at least an hour I was alone on the trail, and I could hear myself think. All around me was fresh air and damp earth and the sun glinting off the sea. And when I took the DART train home I thought to myself: I am done here.
My house-swapper emailed me yesterday to tell me she had gone to a party at my next door neighbor's house, the noisy hipster kids who smoke like fiends. Then she had gone up to the roof of my building -- I live on the waterfront and face Manhattan -- and watched the sunrise. She told me, just as she had been saying since the day she got to New York, that she didn't want to leave. She had slid so neatly into my life. She was born to be a New Yorker.
I, on the other hand, was so bored last night that I walked to the internet café furthest from my house to check my email. Out on the streets young children played in the streets until dusk, as old men smoked cigarettes outside of pubs. I don't think I failed here. I did as much as I could with what I'd been given. It's just not the life for me.
My Irish doppleganger was supposed to come back this morning. I waited for her for a few hours, and then I took off on the bike to do a little shopping. I just checked my email -- she tried to take the subway to JFK early this morning and got rerouted. The line at security was horrible and she got there thirty minutes before the take-off. Delta gave away her ticket to a standby passenger, and now she's got to stay in New York another night. Be careful what you wish for, I thought.
I am so not missing my flight on Wednesday.