One of the most bedeviling barriers to robust social interaction among residents of Greater Boston is a certain foul-smelling landmark that’s familiar to pretty much all of us. No, not Haymarket on a summer day. I’m talking about the Charles River. It’s not that the waterway reduces contact between us by being too murky to share a group swim in. Instead, the river cleaves the metropolitan area into two halves, north and south, and once we settle in on one side or the other, only the most adventurous of us is eager to spend a night on the other side, unless drunk.
But I’m here to report that you can cross the divide and freely consort with the opposite bank’s residents without obtaining a visa. I’m not convinced this is common knowledge. Go to a woman in Watertown and say, “Hi. I’m from West Roxbury,” and what she hears is “Greetings! I come to you from a foreign land.” It’s not that far away, you tell her. To give her a taste of your world, you invite her to a party in a friend’s Jamaica Plain loft, all of 6 miles away. If she is the only American left without a GPS, you offer directions but mistakenly utter the emotionally charged word “Jamaicaway.” Instantly, her body stiffens. She’s not going to show up, you say to yourself.
Admittedly, I get caught in the same foolish trap, avoiding the unknown other world rather than seeking to unlock its mysteries. Almost 29 years after moving to Boston, I’m still not 100 percent sure what the McGrath/O’Brien Highway is. Is it one highway or two? Does it suddenly fork and lose half its name? I know some parts of Paris better than Medford. But even the northern areas I do know — Cambridge and chunks of Somerville — I rarely socialize in because my two young kids generally expect me to show up at home around dinnertime. If I’m going to have a drink with friends, it’s going to be after the youngsters have finally fallen asleep, at which point it’s late enough that I just stick close to home and meet with other inhabitants of the south, perpetuating the vicious cycle.
Left unchecked, this lazy behavior can lead to stubborn parochialism and irrational fears of cross-pollination. I have fought this internal battle myself many times. For example, years ago, when I lived in Roslindale, I had a blind date with a northerner, and we found ourselves, after drinks and apps, looking out at torrents of rain being driven from the sky. “You can’t ride your bike in this,” she said over the tempest. “I’ll give you a ride.” I flat-out refused, fearing she’d be swallowed into the southern landscape after dropping me off that stormy night, never to be seen again. Such was my impression of a person whose Boston existence was almost entirely lived in Arlington, Belmont, and Watertown.
Anyway, getting myself entangled with a citizen of the opposite coast was just asking for trouble. A wildly optimistic scenario had me uprooting my trusty German shepherd and basement full of unpublished scribblings and following her north, because a former Manhattan resident like her was never going to end up in Rozzy.
But not only did that dweller of the north visit my world as often I visited hers over the ensuing two years, she eventually uprooted herself and came south to live when we got married. So it can be done. Despite the fact that I’ve lived in the Boston area almost twice as long as she has, her fearless pioneering has expanded her horizons and given her a wider scope of geographic familiarity than I have. Sometimes, we steal across the tainted waters of the Charles at night to visit friends in their northern habitat and regale them with tales of our shadowy world down here. And when we do, she always navigates.
Patrick McVay lives in Boston. Send comments to connections@globe.com.
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