WHARFAGE, n. The fee or duty paid for the privilege of using a wharf for loading or unloading goods, timber, wood, etc.


I knew an artist who groused constantly about his lack of money and bleak prospects for future sources of income. We worked on some projects intended to financially enrich him in the future. I donated my time out of a sense of honor and servitude, the sort of vassalage to which one submits themselves when they feel they are in the presence of a great and worthy artist.

I was surprised, then, when one day he mentioned that he owned a boat. He also owned a car and rented a private parking spot, which seemed like preliminary extravagances already, but the boat seemed like a statement of privilege incompatible with his stated persona.

I was 25 and I think he was about 48 at the time.

I was surprised to find this self-styled starving artist spending his weekends pursuing a leisure activity I associated with profligate wealth, but at 25 I took some humble comfort in the age difference between us. I soon remembered the wise words of a sleazy real estate agent I encountered early after moving to New York. A well-dressed, rudely demanding gentleman who had never seen any of the apartments he rented, I said something to him about possibly not having the money for the listings he pushed on me. I had come in response to a newspaper ad promising apartments at a certain price, and as became routine for this pursuit I arrived at the broker’s office to be told that all those listings were gone.

I would call a real estate agency at the number shown in the classified ads, and I would ask for a “Mrs. Arnold.” There was no Mrs. Arnold. Instead I would talk to whoever answered the phone. “Mrs. Arnold” was a code signaling which newspaper ad I responded to, similar to click-tracking in today’s Internet advertising. By asking for Mrs. Arnold they knew I called in response to a specific ad in the Village Voice. Had I asked for “Mr. Pardo” they would know that I responded to a different ad in the New York Times. The vagaries of this system included differences in the listings among publications, and the differences included the basics of apartment types and rental prices as well as the name of the company and other details which differed from ad to ad, from paper to paper.

In response to the “Mrs. Arnold” ad I met a well-dressed older gentleman who never mentioned the ad to which I responded but instead pushed a series of apartments considerably more expensive than the ones I came to see. I meekly suggested that these were too expensive, to which he turned surprisingly reflective, saying that when he was my age he imagined he would never have enough money, but that “as you get older you’ll find ways to get the money together when you need it.” His exact words are lost to the witches of memory but the words of this Upper East Side real estate agent echoed those of a college counselor at my high school. Addressing a classroom of students in the throes of applying for college the counselor attempted to quell our anxieties about the day-to-day consequences of our affairs by stating that “In 15 years no one is going to care that you failed an Algebra test.” She offered other examples of seemingly significant events of our high school hungerings, explaining that little if any of it matters on this highway of life, and that we would get through these eventful times and “find ways to prosper.”

I think the real estate agent had it right. We do not prosper. We find ways to survive, and we craft a view of the world in which our dignity relies on the shortcomings of others and the lies we supply ourselves, lies about the misfortunes of others. cherry-picked anecdotes, selectively nurtured trivia, and ever more lies about all things.