On Working Downtown

I have a confession: I love working in this city. There is an elegance, a grandeur, to the whole aesthetic. Hundreds of giant office buildings, some brick, some stone, some concrete, red, brown, and grey, with brass details or stone monsters or giant windows, with doormen and revolving glass doors, elevators, rooftop gardens. Each of these buildings has many, many floors and hundreds of people. Each of these people is completing a task, creating another form of revolving door for the millions of details, billions of documents, trillions of files, that have to be managed every second of every day.

We are, truly, a “No Vacation Nation”, a place where, as Thompson Girl explained, we have none of this ‘I work 35 hours a week and that is so hard’ Bullshit. We work, and we work hard. In early, lunch at the desk, leave late. Corporate lunches are the only breaks – albeit they are no longer Three Martinis Long – and Business Happy Hours are often happy only because of the plastic puckers plastered to our faces. But we like it This Way. It makes us America.

Walking down the street, on my way to one bank or another, I feel accomplished. I may not have an office, but with my Big Girl haircut and sensible shoes, I appear at least one step up from my Assistant’s position. The form of Assistant takes its shape as slightly smarter than Intern – and not readily noticeable to anyone but a female. These entities are sharply dressed in short dresses or flouncy skirts or snugly fitted dress pants, with the new bright colors, the not-so-smart high heels, the well dried hair. Lipstick maybe. They are excited to wear Lady clothes. Sometimes I wish I had their money. The rest of the time I am glad I have my independence, my street smarts, my Point of View. They will have boring children who grow up to raid their liquor cabinets.

Men walk past in suits, variants of each others’ haircuts, leather shoes, satchels, ties. They wear cologne and are just as nervous about each other as they were when they were fourteen, but now they have more money and more worries. Women walk by with sneakers over stockings, unfortunate, rumpled hair, or smart suits and pearls, all very busy. They grab lunch, they grab coffee, they grab at hours, they grab at opportunity, it is a selfish culture of Getting Things Done, efficiency, accomplishment, details and ever growing lists of lists that tell you what to do. I am not a part of this.

I take the metro in and the metro out. In the mornings you can smell everybody’s soap, see their tired eyes, their slow pace, their night at home with the family and the television that is slowly rubbing away with every station we stop at. In the evenings everyone is much busier, their tired eyes are no longer puffy but strained, they need a cookie and a nap, they need a hug, they need to take a deep breath. All you smell is the sweat of shuffled paper, the strain of shaken hands, the soap of the germicide we are all forced to pump on us for fear of communicating something substantial.

I hope one day I can work down here, during my own hours. I want to choose when I come in and when I go, when I can leave for a run around the capital building or the white house, when I can go sit in a coffee shop to watch the busy people. I want to choose when I can get things done myself, when to shake hands and when to sit down and when to turn off the telephone. I want to observe this world, not be in it. I want the aesthetics of accomplishment surrounding me, with the purpose of the individual, the success of the undeniable independent. But, honestly, I feel I can at least convince people I have grown up a little.