Delis will also give you a straw with every canned or bottled beverage you buy. Water, soda, juice … Sometimes they ask if you want a bag. (No. Why get a little bag for one little item?) But always there is a straw. Always. I have a drawer full of unused straws in my office. I keep them with all the extra packets of soy sauce I’ve collected.
Archive Page 45
20
Sep
05
New York Lesson No. 326: Straws
20
Sep
05
New York Lesson No. 325: Coffee
When getting coffee from a deli, bear the following in mind:
“Coffee” is two sugars and milk. You have to ask for cream if you want half & half instead of milk. You have to ask for “regular coffee” if you want it black, but regular coffee still comes with sugar. You have to specify “one sugar” if you want less or “no sugar” if you want none. So, what I think of as just coffee is actually “regular coffee, no sugar.”
I used to get a coffee and a muffin on the way to work every morning at the bakery/pizzeria on the corner where I enter the No. 7 train. The first time I did it, I watched the guy behind the counter slosh two heaping spoonfuls into the cup before pouring on the coffee. It was more like coffee-flavored candy. So, started the next day, I became more specific. Then I tried taking no sugar at all, which is now my habit — and not a bad habit, come to think of it
I stopped going to that bakery for two reasons. 1.) They changed muffin suppliers, and the crusty raisin bran muffins I love were replaced by soft, oily shadows of raisin bran muffins. 2.) I just drink a cup of coffee at home in the morning while I’m making lunches.
19
Sep
05
Patience and Fortitude
Today is the first anniversary of my wedding day. Jeff and I celebrated with a quick walk around the environs of the New York Public Library building at Bryant Park, where, three years ago, he proposed to me, and a quiet dinner out in the West Village.
Patience flanks the south side of the NY Public Library front steps. (NYPL.org)
Standing just behind the marble lion on the south side of the front steps, Jeff distracted my attention toward some pigeons or something, and when I turned back, there was a small, gray box sitting in front of me on the low wall surrounding the terrace. What else could it be but a ring? Its sudden appearance was still a total surprise. And the first thing I thought was “Why didn’t I propose to him first?” And then “How long has he been planning this?” I snapped open the lid and looked at the simple white gold band, and I hardly knew how to look at him anymore.
“Will you marry me?” he asked. And wishing I could say something more heroic, I took a deep breath and said “Yes.”
After slipping the ring on and holding Jeff for a good long time and looking back and forth several times between his tearful eyes and the shining ring, we walked away together to explore the city.
Incidentally, as we turned to go, we saw we were in front of a Starbucks and were sort of amused and horrified at once. Had he just provosed to me in front of the Starbucks? Technically, yes. And looking in three directions and seeing three more Starbucks, we realized there was little chance in Midtown Manhattan of not proposing in front of one.
This was two years before we moved to New York. September. Jeff thought the library was simply a good bookish place to propose to a former English major. And I loved him for making that choice.
When I later learned that the two lions in front of the library building are named Patience and Fortitude, the appropriateness of that location was even more clear, whether Jeff intended it or not. After love, what are the most essential ingredients of a relationship? Patience and fortitude: a willingness to deal with not only your own problems, but also the challenges someone else brings to your life; and the strength to do it again and again.
And again.
Jeff and I got into a stupid fight the night before our anniversary. We were drunk, and I was being stupid. It was not the way either of us wanted to start our second year of marriage, but there it was — poorly timed, but when is a good time for an argument. I slept in the second bedroom and woke up clear headed enough to remember almost everything from the night before.
We’ve had some spectacular fights in the last eight years. Nothing physical. We don’t duke it out. We just suddenly snap and bark at each other like young dogs. Once I slammed the bedroom door so hard it I broke the door jamb. Once Jeff threw a brick of sharp cheddar on the floor. Broken plates. Overturned ashtrays. Nothing that can’t be swept away.
And we still enjoyed our pilgrimmage to the library today, albeit after sleeping in until mid-afternoon and sheepishly tip-toeing around the apartment. We visited our little sacred spot behind Patience and kissed and held on to each other like our lives depend on it — because they do. We still had our dinner out at his favorite place, Good (which was not-so-good tonight, as it happens). We got dessert at a café with a few friends and had an early night in watching a movie and teasing our cat.
Because we can.
With patience and fortitude all this marvelous mundanity can be ours.
The Starbucks is no longer on that terrace in front of the library. The lions aren’t so easily moved. Those marble guardians stand against time and the elements. And in a way, so do we. We stand against a legal system that is only reluctantly starting to accept us but still doesn’t recognize my marriage, a population that pendulates between misunderstanding and ignoring us, and patterns of self-destructive behavior that threaten to divide us from our friends and family and each other. Witness last night: We can clearly stand against each other. But even in doing this, we do not stand apart. In the end, we always settle in to a soft, close, quiet place and sigh and take a moment to look around at the leather-bound volumes of our years together and find a sense of pride and accomplishment and relief. We remember how important it is to stand together, guarding this little relationship of ours.
P.S. We’re now looking for statues named after “wisdom,” “beauty,” and “financial responsibility.” If you have any leads, let me know.
08
Sep
05
Fat Woman in Black
I saw an enormous woman on the F train today. She was as round as a gourd. Her arms hung from her body at 45 degrees. She was very neat and almost angular, despite her evident softness — very clean and almost sharp. She wore clean black sneakers — her after-work shoes, I guessed — black tights and a black skirt that stretched across her legs and waist. It didn’t stretch in an uncomfortable-looking way.
Thank god she wears her size, I thought. I hoped it was out of sensibility and pride rather than resignation. Whatever the reason, it’s better than squeezing into something she’d spend the rest of the day spilling out of.
The only bit of color she wore was a lime green top, sleeveless, I would imagine, over which she wore a black jacket. Simple earrings. A bracelet or two. A neat hairdo, piled casually on top of her head.
She was totally captivating. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She was beautiful and terrible. It was like examining something you see all the time — just a stranger on the train — something that all of a sudden looks totally foreign and reveals things you never think of otherwise.
I make up stories about people like this in my head. What’s her name? Where is she coming from and where is she going? How old is she? Where did she grow up? What is she reading? Is she covering her face with it hat newspaper? Who gave her that watch? Did she have a good day? Where does she work?
The most arresting thing about her was her face. Her face was swollen but very soft-looking and smooth. It was like a lump of ice cream sliding out of a cone. She had gorgeous, radiant skin. And she wore so much make up, very well applied, that the blush on her cheeks and the illusive shapes and contours she gave herself made her look severe and angry. Her face was a blank canvas shaped with color and shadow. Did it thin her out, or was it merely her style? What would she look like out of make-up?
Her eyeshadow was very dark. Black. No, almost black. I imagined she gets some happiness from knowing that it’s really a dark blue — even though people must surely think it’s black. Like a little trick she plays on the rest of the world. Like a secret.
Her fingernails were meticulous and done in a French manicure. Did she attend a wedding last weekend? Was she a bridesmaid? How big her dress must have been! I hoped it wasn’t one of those ruffled taffeta numbers. I hoped it wasn’t a bright color. I imagined she’s very picky about what she wears — and knows well by now what flatters her figure and what does not.
She takes such good care of herself, I thought. She clearly cares about her appearance. Why is she so fat?
I imagined her feet must hurt. Her shoes didn’t have laces. Just something that slips on and off. Something easy. Can she even touch her feet? She should sit down in the subway car, I thought.
She was reading a magazine. And she kept raiding it to cover her face. Like she was about to sneeze. Like she was hiding from something.
I have this perverse notion when I see a really fat person eating ice cream or a piece of cake, that he or she is very unhappy. That she hates every lick. Or that he puts every bite out of his mind and ignores that little voice on his shoulder.
Maybe it’s the one treat a month he allows himself. Maybe she’s just decided to start a diet.
Or maybe she’s happy with herself. Maybe I’m the freak for thinking so much about it. Maybe someone loves her. Maybe she loves herself.
02
Sep
05
Hell and High Water
I was on my way to work this morning after listening to gruesome and horrifying NPR reports from Louisiana and Mississippi, and I couldn’t help but recall the terrible 1997 Red River Valley flood of Grand Forks, North Dakota. I recalled the copy editor’s dream headline “Come hell and high water” that leapt off the front page of the April 20, 1997, Grand Forks Herald. (There’s an interesting back story here about the perseverance of journalists, despite the flooding and burning down of the newspaper’s headquarters, for those who care to read it. This small-town paper won a Pulitzer for their remarkable coverage.)
“Well,” I thought, “as much as New Orleans is dealing with — and it’s a lot — at least they don’t have fires on top of it all.” That’s something, right?
When I got to work and opened the New York Times online, I saw that a chemical plant near the French Quarter had exploded. So much for the luxury of no fires.
After running through Manhattan on some exasperating errand or other or running late on the morning power walk to my clickety-clack morning commute, losing countless minutes at each subway transfer, sweating through the heavy, dirty summer air, trapped behind slow walkers on narrow stairways, dodging passengers who stop for a chat in front of the turnstiles, desperate to the point of violence for a breath of the stale but mercifully cold air on those refrigerated trains, I often find that the only thing that makes it all bearable, apart from my paycheck, is my iPod.
In this whole wide, sedated world, who needs drugs when I can plug my headphones in and hear songs that have made me happy for more than two decades. Video may have killed the radio star, but Apple killed the DJ.
“Causing a Commotion” makes me walk faster. When I hate everyone around me, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” brings a smile to my face and helps me forget the woman with the Volvo-sized baby carriage too distracted by her cell phone conversation to walk in a straight line. When I have nowhere to stand on the F train, and we’re packed in like frozen herring, “Voices Carry” helps me keep my cool and breathe a little easier. Kylie Minogue gets me through that infernal treadmill at the gym. And Dar Williams keeps me from having to talk to crazies on the sidewalk.
I wonder how many homicides Steve jobs is responsible for having prevented.
I find myself so often grateful for this little device. It’s better therapy than a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and far lower in calories.
It makes my trek through the pungent footpaths of East Broadway on my way to work almost bearable. (At least the rhythm propels my legs and my body further and further from the morning food distribution of Chinatown.)
I should evangelize the healing powers of the One True iPod more often. Can I get a witness, brothers and sisters? Can I get an amen?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, her hair is Harlowe gold.
Her lips a sweet surprise.
Her hands are never cold.
She’s got Bette Davis eyes.
28
Aug
05
Not an Animal
I’ll start with a story.
I take the F train from Jackson Heights in Queens all the way through to the Lower East Side of Manhattan to get to work. Most mornings I’m stuck right in the thick of bridge and tunnel rush hour. Those trains are packed. And you have to be pretty aggressive to get on sometimes, or those passengers will rush right past you — business men, little old ladies, moms with strollers.
Shoving is a way of life in the New York City subway. You give up apologizing for it after a while. And you put up with it from other people as long as you can until you want to scream. Sometimes it goes too far, and people lose all dignity and act like idiots to get on a subway car. Some people get close to the breaking point, I’m sure. One midwinter morning, I saw someone boil over.
I was crammed into one of the end cars, which are usually less crowded than those in the center of the train, and we were stopped at 21st Street/Queensbridge on our way out of Queens. The car was so full, there was no hope of getting anyone else in.
A man standing at the edge of the doorway began to react to a woman who was pushing him from behind. There was nowhere at all for him to go. There was no room for an other single person, and her pushing was totally useless. But she kept pressing herself against him, as if she were desperate to get in that car.
“Please don’t push me,” he said, sounding tired and annoyed. “I’m not an animal.”
Usually on the subway everyone is so quiet that when someone speaks up, everyone not lost in an iPod-induced haze hears it. Most of the passengers began to surreptitiously watch what was happening near the door. It’s an unobtrusive curiousity, a banal form of entertainment — anything is better than reading the same shampoo or community college ad for the 900th time. This is what mass transit reduces us to, sometimes.
Evidently she continued to push him, because he repeated himself. “Please stop pushing me,” he said more insistently. “There’s no room.”
She kept pushing, muttering something in a soft voice.
The man turned around and shouted, “There’s … no … room!” And emphasized the last word and shoved her back onto the platform with both hands.
The quick, painless, but somewhat violent action got everyone’s attention. Some people gasped. Some just looked nervously back and forth. And what should we do? There really was no room. The man ws clearly right, and the woman was clearly going to have to wait for the next train or try her luck at another door.
Undaunted, she leapt back toward the car and began pleading. She must have gotten a running start, because she managed to get slightly further in to the car — but not far enough to let the door close.
“Please. Please, just move in a little. Please — “
“There’s no room for you!” the man shouted. But she kept pushing.
He grasped the relatively small woman by her upper arms, lifted her up, pivoted and dropped her back onto the platform. It was not a particularly violent action, but it was certainly odd to see some one stranger laying hands on another and physically removing her from a subway car.
The woman sort of staggered back. And the doors closed, and the train lurched into motion.
Some people looked indignantly away from the doorway. Others shot dirty looks at the man. He ignored everyone but a woman who was evidently standing next to him. She began to argue with him and he would argue back. The atmosphere was tense and uncomfortable. But all the rest of us pretty much went on about our business.
I wasn’t sure how to feel: A man had just forcibly removed a woman from the subway. It felt like a fight had just occurred. Was someone calling the police right now? Would there be officers at the next stop waiting to arrest the man?
Then I remembered my headphones in my pocket. I nestled them into my ears, turned on my iPod and clicked around to my “favorites” playlist. “Don’t Stop Believing” by Journey fired up, and I began to daydream about a city boy born and raised in south Detroit.
... but enough about me 