My Date With NYC

(Originally 8/21/06)

Yesterday I had a little me-time in NYC. Again. :)

There were a few notable things.

1) When I was leaving this house, My Benefactor's son wanted to know where in NYC I was going so that maybe I could give him a lift. I did not want to even be speaking to him at the moment, let alone take him anywhere in the car, let alone take him to NYC with me. So I asked him to clarify--was he asking me to drop him off in the city somewhere? Unsaid was 'Because I'm not actually driving you around town, and you are not actually going to hang out with me.' He thought a little and then changed his mind.

Yes, it was cold of me. No, I haven't finished paying the car off yet, so technically the car still belongs to his father (no, scratch that--it's insured and registered in MY name, and the title belongs to me).

But I don't like the boy. He smokes weed, and his father knows it but his father's a middleclass crackhead. The less I have to do with them, the better my mental health, and as these webpages can attest, I need all the help I can get to maintain my melon.

2) I took a bus to NYC anyway. I just drove myself to an NJ bus station. So I had a few public transportation moments. Firstly, it seemed to me yesterday that a requirement of speaking the Spanish language is that it must be spoken loudly. That was digging at my nerves. I had my discman with me, but I didn't want to wear it. I just wanted the Mamasita to stop hollering. She didn't.

3) I took a local train and got off at this station;

I figured why not, since I made the pic my desktop background? Again, from coffeepulse.com. It is 72nd street facing west to the Hudson and the Jersey Palisades. I bought lunch from the Dallas BBQ on the street. Cheaper than a Chili's, and located in Manhattan. They're all over the place now. I ate the lunch in Central Park, which is just behind the person taking that picture. A small jazz band plays in the park there at 72nd, but you have to penetrate in to where you reach the car path. You'll hear them doing "Girl From Ipanema" and "Take Five" before you see them, then just follow your ears. I ate on big rock. Many studly joggers passed by, flashing their tans. I marvelled and wondered if my stomach was actually capable of becoming flat, compared to theirs.

4) I Stopped by Midtown Comics--and bought NOTHING! HAHA!

5) I got on the train again, and it deposited me at 14th and 7th Avenue. I wanted to go further, but had no set destination in mind, and the #3 announced it was going no further than 14th. As I got out and walked up the steps, I watch a bewildered couple of tourists be whisked back in the direction from which we came. I laughed aloud, by myself, in the train station. I walked to Union Square. I determined to see a movie but chickened out. I couldn't hand an hour and a half of my life over to these moviemaking people because, heck, my time on Earth is limited. I can see a movie in boring New Jersey if I have to.

6) I bought a book from the B&N on Union Square based on the recommendation from Holly Black. She did a Meme and passed in on to My Other Hero, and he posted it to his Journal. So I followed his link to her and found her answers to her own Meme. Her favorite book happened to be by an author who I had heard being interviewed that very morning, so I sent her the link to the interview and she answered me back. So on her recommendation, I bought the book by Ellen Kushner. Not by her recommendation, I bought two SCONES (!!!!!!) and decided they would be my dinner for the evening. Apparently, no matter how well or bad I'm doing on the diet (I'm back down to 195 now, btw), I will have Barnes & Noble, Starbuck's Cafe scones. I will have them. Eventually.

7) I started reading my new book at a small group of Mother&Child table & chairs in Union Square. They surrounded a small fountain on the west side of the Square. I faced west. Different New Yorkers drifted by and intermittently sat during my reading. The tanned beauty, old enough to be my daughter, with the low-slung jeans. The Italian boy with the prominent nose, casual European build, and Nordic coloring, speaking with accented English to his sultry honey. A couple of vacationers, the woman looking like a healthy and younger Tracey Gold, first kissed in front of all of us, then decided to have their picture snapped at the fountain by an innocent bystander who thankfully was not me. Bold squirrels at eyelevel looking me right in the face, ready for my crap.

One group of three girls sat near me and one of them specifically had that voice that some white girls have, you know? Like, piercing, lazy and trendy, perky and um, like y'know. I look over and it's a petite redhead with freckles arcross her nose. She didn't seem familiar at all. I heard nothing in her conversation, except that she's getting married to someone named Kevin, but as I kept stealing glances, I realized she did look familiar. Not long after, I realized where I'd seen her.

On 42nd Street, facing east, across the street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, there is a perfume, soap, or magazine advert (can't remember which) and it is about twelves stories tall, pasted to the side of a building. A redheaded woman is looking out at all of us from that advert. I remember looking back at her and wondering what it must be like having your own picture so hugely featured in New York City.

And there the girl was, weeks or months later, at Union Square. No only was she normal, she was tiny! She had to be 5' tall. But she was cute--model worthy cute. Her conversation was vapid, but then again, she wasn't speaking to me anyway. And that's what it seems to take to be young and live in NYC. Be a model, be the child of someone rich, be in the arts, or be on welfare.

8) On the m5 bus back to the George Wash Bridge Bus Station, a man in his eighties had painted himself a pair of eyebrows. He looked perpetually terrified. And they were jet black.

9) Later of the same bus, a girl and her boy-friend sat in front of me. We were now in my home-territory, north of 137th St and on Broadway. These two younglings were white. The rest of the bus were Latinos, Boricua, etc. Oh, and there was me. (so many white people moving into ethnic areas--something I noted with joy when I lived in NYC).

The girl wore a backless number, held up by straps. Her entire back was exposed and was like this canvas stretched in front of me. She was very nicely shaped and the texture of her skin was flawless. She had a bronze cast to her with no tan lines, and a fine sprinkle of downy hair, too fine to see individually. She had a small dark spot in the mid-back, to the right of her spine. I have no idea why, but I thought of Scarlett Johanssen. Maybe it was the imperfect nose or the bee-stung lips--or the short cinnamon hair held atop her head by a barrette. I just stared at that perfect skin of hers, letting my mind take me into some dangerously perverted territory. Such as, what what it be like if I, a perfect stranger, leaned forward and took a long slow lick up her spine...and next thing I knew, her flesh stippled! It was suddenly like a lizard's hide!

It grew pebbly at every pore, from down at her seat to up just below her shoulder blades. I still couldn't see the hair, but I could see where ever hair follicle waas mapped because each point was now a miniscule raised dot. And as I stared further, her skin smoothed itself out. I had watched the phenomena called goosebumps. Had my thoughts alone given them to her?

All in all, a nice day for me. I had a few reassuring heterosexual moments which I shall always treasure. I spent a total of $100.00 from Friday to today, which includes 30.00 worth of gas.

Not bad if I must say so myself.