Fathermucker by Greg Olear Read Free Book Online

in Christ’s salvation that borders on the delusional, so a not terribly successful screenwriter-cum-HR-generalist and a not terribly successful actress-cum-marketing-manager who pay two grand for six hundred square feet of squalid living space five elevatorless flights above the ground-level grime must rationalize this prohibitive expense by believing absolutely that New York is an Artist’s Paradise, and the rest of the nation so many benighted circles of Limbaughian hell.
    It took the birth of our son for us to see things for how they really are, to recognize that the Empire State emperor was, and always had been, butt naked. In just six weeks—six cold, dead-of-winter weeks—we went from We could have two kids in this apartment to Let’s get the fuck out of here . Roland was born on Christmas; by Valentine’s Day, we were househunting in New Paltz. The charms the city offered, so alluring to us as childless thirtysomethings—conveniently placed casting calls, movies opening two weeks earlier than anywhere else, the theater, fine dining, the only-in-New-York personalities teeming into the IRT, the ability to drink copious amounts of alcohol without having to worry about driving home—held no appeal for us as new parents. To raise kids, you need space, safety, good schools, fresh air, and a roomy car, none of which are readily or cheaply available in Gotham. When you’re wearing your infant son in a Baby Björn, the only-in-New-York subway lunatic becomes not so colorful.
    My friends were stunned when I relayed the news. We’re moving to New Paltz , I told them, my group of New York drinking buddies, a hodge-podge of comrades from high school, college, and the city, loosely affiliated by a bi-monthly beer night. They didn’t get it. Noo Yawkers never do, especially residents by choice rather than birth. I should know; I was just as gung-ho once, the notion of escaping just as unfathomable to me. Why would anyone want to leave nirvana? Aside from, you know, the crime and the grime and the mice and the noise and the price tag and the claustrophobia and the all-permeating negative energy, the volcanic Bad Vibe that seems to seep up from the abysmal warren of overheated subterranean tunnels. The snow doesn’t stick on the streets of New York . . . because it’s so close to Hell . I could have told my friends I was leaving to enter rabbinical school; they wouldn’t have been more shocked. They were still in Lady Liberty’s dastardly and delusional thrall.
    And none of my city friends had—or, indeed, have—kids. Some of them aren’t even married. It’s impossible to adequately convey to someone on the outside the radical level of change that takes place when you cross that threshold from childlessness to parenthood, especially to someone living in the bubble of arrested adolescence that is the East Village. Every aspect of your life is altered, forever. It’s like pre-9/11 and post-9/11. Nothing— nothing —remains the same.
    New Paltz? Why there , of all places? That was the next question, once it sunk in that I wasn’t pulling their collective leg, that my intention to skip town was sincere. Start with this: a rare combination of affordable houses and nationally ranked schools. Vibrant, activist, communal community. Top-notch restaurants. Plus, this is a college town—SUNY maintains a campus here known for its fine arts program—and college towns always have a youthful energy. But the clincher was that, at the time, then mayor Jason West, of the Green Party, was performing same-sex marriages at Village Hall, in blatant disregard for state and federal law. We figured that any town whose mayor could so audaciously, and in our view so heroically, champion gay rights—heck, any town that installed a member of the Green Party in City Hall to begin with—must have a low hick-factor.
    And so it does. In New Paltz, pretty