I didn’t think he’d fit, the man standing on the platform of the 23rd street stop of the 1 train. Physically of course he could. He was young and handsome and I even looked twice when I caught those big blue eyes looking back at me with a smile when I walked by. Who, me?
But it was what he was holding, after my numerous attempts to count, forty-eight, no, fifty-two balloons, that was going to cause the problem. They were gold and black and the strings that were wrapped around his arms were so long they touched the ground. I wondered what or who they were for. A woman, presumably (lucky girl) or an anniversary party or a birthday or a reception or maybe they were just for his apartment (new decorating idea?).
I heard the subway in the distance and pried my eyes away from him. It was late and when the train arrived, and after he managed to pull all of the balloons in behind him, we were the only two people in our car. What a funny thing it was to be sitting there across from a sea of black and gold as the train hurdled forward. We smiled at each other, and he acted casually as though he weren’t attached to what could qualify in most places as a small county fair.
In my head I thought of a million things to ask him, a million funny things to say, that would in the end, make him fall madly in love with me where he would ultimately, one day, buy me forty-eight, no, fifty-two balloons. This is Manhattan. Love and balloons and cute guys alone with you on the subway don’t happen to you all the time. In fact, I don’t think they happen at all.
"What are they for?" I asked, apparently forgetting the moment I opened my mouth all those funny and clever things...
"Oh. Ah. Une Livraison."
I think my look of confusion came across as clear as my poor attempt to flirt with him.
"Uhh, delivery?" he said, his French accent was think. He pulled a small map out of his back pocket and showed it to me and pointed. "La direction de Wall Street?"
I nodded to say that yes, Wall Street, delivery, I understand, and he smiled at me sheepishly. It became clear quickly that he couldn’t speak English any more than I could understand French. Damn. I cursed myself for taking Russian in high school and how the cute ones are always taken or gay or can’t….speak English(?), and how it always seems so impossible to meet a man who can communicate.
Just before we approached Houston Street where I began to collect my things and stand up, he spoke again.
"Un moment," he said, and unraveled in the time it took me to blink, a gold balloon from the labyrinth of strings on his arm (now fifty-one) and handed it to me. I stared back at him while other people started to file into the train and I felt my heart swell. A smile was all I managed before I had to jump through the doors before they closed.
As the train sped away I stood there holding the balloon and wanted to shout at it to come back (where is life’s rewind button when you need it?). For a split second I thought seriously about hailing a cab and taking it to Wall Street and not stopping until I found him. I’d learn French! I could take night classes, get books on tape! I love Paris! What I wouldn’t do for a pain au chocolat!
I thought the better of it, and realized (again) that timing in life (and love and balloons) is everything. As I got above ground and began walking I started to think that if I couldn’t work things out so that one day he and I would be together in a subway again then my name isn’t Classy Girl.
Which, of course, it isn’t.
February 24, 2009
February 19, 2009
Manhattan Navigation.
I never pay any attention to what’s going on. People who come to New York to visit always complain that New Yorkers don’t care about other people. They say that New Yorkers are mean spirited, they avoid you and just shake their heads impolitely when their group of tourists with maps and fanny packs, all standing in the middle of the sidewalk like no one else in the world exists, extend their arms an open their mouths with that we know is going to be a question of “Where am I?”
In our minds we say: You are already here...just walk.
And it’s not that we’re rude or impolite, it’s just that in a city with so many people we covet those sacred moments when we get to be alone. When we can walk free and unobstructed (mostly) and clear our heads, out of the elevators and subways and busy offices that we’re crammed into all day long. And yes, of course we know how to get to Rockefeller Center from 70th and Park, but we’re not going to stop and tell you how because you have a map(s), and even without a map(s), to us this city is the easiest place to navigate in the world, and you should, by all means, be able to just walk, and figure it out: streets run East to West, avenues North to South.
Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to stop and recognize the fact that no matter what we do we’re not alone here (or anywhere, really). On the 1 express train this morning I wasn’t paying attention, seriously balancing a 500-page book, when the woman standing next to me started yelling into the little speaker on the wall near the door which is marked in black and red: EMERGENCY BUTTON.
“HELLO? THIS IS…This is car number 6061 and we’ve got….we’ve got a MAN down near the doors laying on the ground….and people are trying to MOVE him and he’s NOT MOVING. Car 6061. There’s A MAN ON THE FLOOR and he’s NOT MOVING. WE NEED HELP.”
I have to admit, regrettably, that I first looked at her with a look of hateful irritation. Here we go, I thought. Another crazy person on my train, going to start yelling random things that don’t make sense. And it’s always my car. Why does it always have to be the car that I’m in that gets the crazy people? The Bible quoting homeless man, the woman carrying barrel-sized wheels of bubble wrap, the dude with headphones on across the train whose music I can hear making inappropriate gestures toward me (dream on). Of all the subway cars in all the city…
Of course then I looked away from her and peered to my right I saw it. What I saw at first as the crowd parted and people began muttering to themselves, was simply, a hand. Just a hand. There it was limp on the floor, palm face-up. Someone was attached to that hand but I couldn’t see them. They were on the floor tucked under the seat, blocked by people standing with spring coats and big shopping bags (at 8:30 AM?).
No one seemed to care. No one seemed phased. The one big thing we all seemed to manage to do was simply to look. We all just looked. The train stopped at 14th street and the subway conductor called for a doctor. As I left the train (to switch to the local) I saw the body attached to the hand on the ground - eyes closed, blue fleece jacket, light brown hair. He was someone. To us we’re all just anybody. Could be anybody, we all thought. What can we really do about just anybody? People all around him were still. And my heart sank. I watched as they all just went back to their newspapers, their novels and their New Yorker, silently upset that their few morning moments of peace and quiet on the subway were lost just because of somebody else’s someone.
In our minds we say: You are already here...just walk.
And it’s not that we’re rude or impolite, it’s just that in a city with so many people we covet those sacred moments when we get to be alone. When we can walk free and unobstructed (mostly) and clear our heads, out of the elevators and subways and busy offices that we’re crammed into all day long. And yes, of course we know how to get to Rockefeller Center from 70th and Park, but we’re not going to stop and tell you how because you have a map(s), and even without a map(s), to us this city is the easiest place to navigate in the world, and you should, by all means, be able to just walk, and figure it out: streets run East to West, avenues North to South.
Sometimes, however, we have no choice but to stop and recognize the fact that no matter what we do we’re not alone here (or anywhere, really). On the 1 express train this morning I wasn’t paying attention, seriously balancing a 500-page book, when the woman standing next to me started yelling into the little speaker on the wall near the door which is marked in black and red: EMERGENCY BUTTON.
“HELLO? THIS IS…This is car number 6061 and we’ve got….we’ve got a MAN down near the doors laying on the ground….and people are trying to MOVE him and he’s NOT MOVING. Car 6061. There’s A MAN ON THE FLOOR and he’s NOT MOVING. WE NEED HELP.”
I have to admit, regrettably, that I first looked at her with a look of hateful irritation. Here we go, I thought. Another crazy person on my train, going to start yelling random things that don’t make sense. And it’s always my car. Why does it always have to be the car that I’m in that gets the crazy people? The Bible quoting homeless man, the woman carrying barrel-sized wheels of bubble wrap, the dude with headphones on across the train whose music I can hear making inappropriate gestures toward me (dream on). Of all the subway cars in all the city…
Of course then I looked away from her and peered to my right I saw it. What I saw at first as the crowd parted and people began muttering to themselves, was simply, a hand. Just a hand. There it was limp on the floor, palm face-up. Someone was attached to that hand but I couldn’t see them. They were on the floor tucked under the seat, blocked by people standing with spring coats and big shopping bags (at 8:30 AM?).
No one seemed to care. No one seemed phased. The one big thing we all seemed to manage to do was simply to look. We all just looked. The train stopped at 14th street and the subway conductor called for a doctor. As I left the train (to switch to the local) I saw the body attached to the hand on the ground - eyes closed, blue fleece jacket, light brown hair. He was someone. To us we’re all just anybody. Could be anybody, we all thought. What can we really do about just anybody? People all around him were still. And my heart sank. I watched as they all just went back to their newspapers, their novels and their New Yorker, silently upset that their few morning moments of peace and quiet on the subway were lost just because of somebody else’s someone.
February 4, 2009
cut to the chase.
There she is, drunk
and all over him
talking nonsense,
and he doesn’t seem to care at all.
Sometimes I think
that if I just stopped making sense
(or just stopped talking altogether)
I’d get every man I wanted.
Her hands are holding his,
and then stroking his hair
and everyone at the bar can see
that she's kissing his neck.
Why bother I wonder,
to spend all that money on that many dirty Goose’s,
when it would have been so much easier
to just stay home.
and all over him
talking nonsense,
and he doesn’t seem to care at all.
Sometimes I think
that if I just stopped making sense
(or just stopped talking altogether)
I’d get every man I wanted.
Her hands are holding his,
and then stroking his hair
and everyone at the bar can see
that she's kissing his neck.
Why bother I wonder,
to spend all that money on that many dirty Goose’s,
when it would have been so much easier
to just stay home.
February 2, 2009
Pretty Woman.
I was sitting on the crosstown bus diligently reading last week’s New York Magazine that I hadn’t had a chance to get around to. It was early (even though I was running late) and the traffic along Fifth Avenue was in near gridlock. I tried not to think about it (or check my watch) but I knew it wasn’t looking good.
It’s always the mornings where I have to be at work for a meeting or a phone call that the traffic is at its worst. Days when it wouldn’t matter if I showed up at the office at all, we breeze down and through Central Park in what feels like mere seconds.
So I sat patiently and tried to absorb as much as I could about stock-surfing the tsunami (whatever that means) as seconds turned to minutes turned to I-am-going-to-seriously-freak-out-if-we-don’t-get-moving-soon.
I could sense it before anything else, just at the moment I was about to really start breaking out into full blown hysterics- eyes watching me. Tense and slow I looked up, and saw, much to my surprise, a little girl about six years old on her knees in the seat in front of me. Her face was about one foot from mine and she was looking directly into my eyes. She had a pink headband on with a big flower on it, and a bright orange backpack strapped to her back. There was something about the innocence of her face, her bright blue eyes and pale as snow cheeks that made me hate the way this city, with its schedules and deadlines and routines, can sometimes make you so ugly.
We looked at each other for a minute, me confused, and her, just smiling without a care in the world with a look on her face like she knew something I didn’t. "You’re pretty," she said very matter-of-factly, leaving me sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights. Her mother, who I only then noticed was sitting next to her, told her this was their stop and they left the bus without another word.
Strange isn’t it, what we see when we open our eyes?
And once they were gone, the traffic (thank God) began to move.
It’s always the mornings where I have to be at work for a meeting or a phone call that the traffic is at its worst. Days when it wouldn’t matter if I showed up at the office at all, we breeze down and through Central Park in what feels like mere seconds.
So I sat patiently and tried to absorb as much as I could about stock-surfing the tsunami (whatever that means) as seconds turned to minutes turned to I-am-going-to-seriously-freak-out-if-we-don’t-get-moving-soon.
I could sense it before anything else, just at the moment I was about to really start breaking out into full blown hysterics- eyes watching me. Tense and slow I looked up, and saw, much to my surprise, a little girl about six years old on her knees in the seat in front of me. Her face was about one foot from mine and she was looking directly into my eyes. She had a pink headband on with a big flower on it, and a bright orange backpack strapped to her back. There was something about the innocence of her face, her bright blue eyes and pale as snow cheeks that made me hate the way this city, with its schedules and deadlines and routines, can sometimes make you so ugly.
We looked at each other for a minute, me confused, and her, just smiling without a care in the world with a look on her face like she knew something I didn’t. "You’re pretty," she said very matter-of-factly, leaving me sitting there looking like a deer in the headlights. Her mother, who I only then noticed was sitting next to her, told her this was their stop and they left the bus without another word.
Strange isn’t it, what we see when we open our eyes?
And once they were gone, the traffic (thank God) began to move.
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