Beware "The Littering Type"

When I told my dad I wanted to move to New York City to finish my bachelor's, he tried everything to get me to stay. If there are five stages of losing-your-daughter-to-the-densest-city-in-the-country-grief, my dad spent the year before my departure stuck bargaining. He offered several what I call “cash prizes,” the most surprising of which was his not-so-subtly desperate offer to buy my dream car. But I chose to go 35 thousand dollars in debt to pursue a degree in literature: Bribes were never going to work on me. Naturally— being a stubborn man of uncommon persistence— he didn’t stop there. His next move? Shit-talk New York City out of the dreams I’d held on to since 13 years old. He told me I wouldn’t survive the cold and reminded me constantly of my deep love for long car drives. He said that I’d miss the California beaches I grew up walking along. And besides the rats, crime, and “radical liberals,” he complained most (on my behalf) about the brown paper bags and soda cans I’d crush beneath my feet, “with every step” I took.

I grew up in Los Angeles, so I was used to litter. Sucked-dry watermelon-flavored vapes and drive-through fast-food bags marred even the prettiest ocean views along the Pacific Coast Highway. The parking lot of my local Food 4 Less looked more like a dumping ground for groceries of the barely-expired and overstock variety. So, when my dad told me that garbage would be the straw that broke my will to move cross-country, I laughed under my breath at the sweetness of his intentions and ignorance of my nature. Still, I will admit that this city’s streets take their trash seriously. I realized this just a few days ago, when my best friend stopped to pick up an empty and badly crushed cigarette container that was left in the middle of a crumbling path, deep in Fort Greene Park.

Living in this city made me realize that some people are just the littering type.

I am sitting with a glass of sauvignon blanc at a cute restaurant and bar on the corner of E 13th Street and 3rd Avenue. When I asked the charming Irish bartender if I could take my drink outside, I hadn’t considered how the heat would leave drops of sweat on the most used letters of my keyboard. I was just about to move inside, to make innocent eyes at the lad that poured my wine and enjoy the touch of conditioned air, when I noticed a man across the street. He wore a neat navy suit that was just slightly too snug on the thighs and was holding an almost-empty Dunkin' Donuts cup. The sharp-dressed man didn’t even suck his drink dry before dumping it on the (rarely-found) otherwise-clean corner of my current haunt’s cross streets.

The image of his plastic cup— sitting defeated and still on a bustling corner— is imprinted on my brain, even now, two days later. And I wonder: What do we owe to the cities we live in?

Responsibility is a touchy subject. I remember the silent grudge I held against my mother for years, simply because she made the dishes my job a couple of nights each week. I’d grimace and groan as the soapy water turned my fingers to prunes, but I couldn’t help feeling bad the nights I let her or my dad do them alone. “Responsibility is a feeling, not a possession,” I once heard (or dreamed I heard) someone say. Now that I am no longer nine, and have lived without a dishwasher for multiple years, I don’t cower from the obligatory feeling that creeps over me every time I catch dishes sitting in the sink on my way out the front door. Much like I don’t think twice about holding on to my trash until there is an appropriate place to drop it, now that my father’s large hairy hands are not around to catch my fruit roll-up wrappers and grease-stained napkins.

But not everyone thinks this way. The speaker of each person’s internal monologue has a different set of values and morals. They all think that we owe each other, and our habitat, something different. This is why some people, like our sharp-dressed man, let their garbage trail behind them like gutter-water footprints on a rainy day. This is also why others, like my best friend— a few days ago, on a crumbling path, deep in Fort Greene Park— stop to pick up and transport lost trash to nearby cans.

Though I usually write each post in one sitting, this one spans two. I am at a bar and cafe on the corner of E 31st Street and 3rd Avenue, this time with Pino Grigio, because happy hour runs all night, and the sauvignon blanc here does not qualify. Couples are sitting at each of the two tables in front of me, and if I have learned anything about human behavior serving drinks at a criminally romantic jazz bar, it's how to spot a first date. The women can’t tell, because they are sitting back to back, but they fix their hair and reach for their drinks at the same intervals. The men mirror each other too, adjusting their khaki shorts and subtly wiping sweat from their untrimmed brows like clockwork. And some rarely-acknowledged, socially unintelligent part of me wants to walk up to both sets of nervous individuals looking for love, to ask if they are looking for someone who is not the littering type.

We all know the type. The boys my best friend and I watched kick over a neatly packed garbage bin on a trip to Sag Harbor embody it perfectly. Their type tends to run out of time for the tedious parts of their job description, leaving it to unpaid interns that really should not be approving their own timesheets. Their type stays late at parties, even when the friends they arrived with are drunk, dehydrated, and dying to leave. The speaker of their type’s internal monologues values convenience and efficiency. Their morals build around their self-indulgent tendencies. They don’t find time to buy gifts for friends’ almost-forgotten birthdays or “the energy” to ever take a train out to their partners’ place of residence. They, I have found, are not the type to stop and smell roses. And I wonder if the voice in my head that tells me to save cigarette butts in mostly-empty water bottles so I can dispose of them later, will ever truly forgive the type that wouldn’t think twice about letting them fall by their feet as they walk down the street.

Signed,

A New Romantic