Learning to Grimace: Navigating New York City Encounters

I once thought I would marry the waitress at the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam and 111th Street. She had eyes like hammers; her gaze so devastating that I swear her blink had an echo. But throughout the length of my infatuation, our most meaningful exchange occurred when, hoping to spark a conversation, I pointed to a hamentash and asked her what it was.

The waitress still works at the shop. Her gaze is still blunt, but it doesn't affect me anymore, not since the day when I mistakenly pulled out a chair at the vacant staff table and she gave me attitude.

Now, when I stop by the shop, I reciprocate the indifference with which my make-believe ex-girlfriend and the rest of the staff greet me. It's not that I'm bitter. In fact, I like the Hungarian Pastry Shop exactly because its wait staff is unobtrusive. It's simply that the moment the waitress issued the unwarranted snark, the spell was broken. And in slipping from the thrall of her siren song, I was suddenly made aware of something that I imagine all New Yorkers must eventually realize: brusque is this city's local dialect.

There comes a point in the lives of new New Yorkers when the threatening ceases to be threatening and merely becomes a dismissable annoyance. At first, the transplant is uneasy, convinced that any public altercation is his or her fault, the result of being too soft-skinned. Then comes a period of overcompensation. The transplant gets ballsy, takes undue liberties -- maybe begins to suspect that he or she knows a thing or two about the city that friends who were born and bred in New York do not.

This is never, repeat, never the case.

I once received a tongue-lashing from a friend who'd grown up in Brooklyn and later Staten Island for using the term "bridge and tunnel" pejoratively. Another time, I told a friend I didn't need directions to the Lafayette metro stop, not realizing she was referring to the Lafayette station in Fort Greene, not the one at Houston Street in SoHo. The swish of dead air was almost audible -- on the other end of the line, she was surely shaking her head at me.

But eventually, that manufactured braggadocio simmers into more subtle certainty. Through trial and error (and the occasional altercation with a waitress) your skin thickens and your speech becomes leaner. You shed entire clauses from your everyday vernacular, abandon the stammering apologies of your transplant days and curtail the bombast you employed as a disguise. You no longer consider New York City communication intimidating or rude and instead appreciate it for being pithy, terse.

More importantly, you learn how to wield it.

Pete Hamill once described the New York accent as "clipped, blunt, hard, a fist of an accent." If the New York accent is a fist, New York conversation is a sucker punch. And a sucker punch isn't all bad. It's quick and to the point.

Much like the woman who runs the register at Nussbaum & Wu. When I first moved to the city, my sister Kate and I used to get bagels and coffee there every Saturday. We'd rehearse our orders and remind ourselves that she didn't need us to point out our coffee in order to tally our bill. Those Saturdays, I used to get so worked up in line I'd have to remind myself to power down before we made our next stop to the rummage sale at Holy Name of Jesus, lest I feverishly lowball a volunteer church lady. Eventually, the woman began to recognize us, and one day after a tourist made the mistake of digging for change in her line, she gave my sister and I a "can you believe that crap?" smile. Our rolling eyes said it all: we could not believe that crap.

Our affection for the woman transcended the need to make small talk or even learn her name. A knowing, commiserative smile was sufficient. These abridged gestures are the cogs that keep New York City from jamming up.

Getting through your day without incident can be a matter of employing the appropriate degree of abbreviation in a given situation. Before moving to the city, I was once destroyed by a ticket clerk at Port Authority because I approached the counter without knowing what I needed. More recently, I had to make a sojourn by bus to Rockland County. I made sure to know my route this time around, and the clerk and I were able to complete the transaction swiftly and with amicable disdain.

Economy of politesse can be like a handshake. Once pliant with cabbies, I now tell the car service drivers who pick me up after late-night proofreading gigs to call their dispatcher when there's a dispute over whether I actually made them wait beyond the acceptable 5-minute period between arrival and pick up. The driver makes the call and the cogs turn. Presto! We're free to chat about the Mets' spring training.

Which is not to say that sincere pleasantries are nonexistent in New York City. I joke around with the guy who runs the register weekends and evenings at the bodega across Frederick Douglas Boulevard. I often chat with the pharmacist next-door to the bodega after our transaction is finished. What I am saying is that until I learned how to order a cup of coffee properly, the street vendor outside my office didn't want anything to do with me (we have a lovely relationship now).

So perhaps that's why I fell in make-believe love with the waitress at the Hungarian Pastry Shop in the first place. Having not settled into my New York skin, her disregard was irresistible, a model of the grit I had yet to work up. I like to think I'm coming along.

The last time I went into the Hungarian Pastry Shop, I ordered an almond crescent to go from another waitress. I saw my make-believe ex-girlfriend out of the corner of my eye, but paid her no attention. She was good enough to do the same.

Perhaps now we can silently reconcile. Perhaps now she'll love me.