Two Tales of a City, Part I: A Dream Shattered

So I drafted a post, and it turned out to be super long. So I'm breaking it into two parts. Part Two will go up later tonight!

Song of the day: Clone by Metric.

I always used to have what I loosely call “an unrealistic, naively optimistic, and disgustingly romantic” view of New York City. I mean seriously. I have imagined that living in the city is a lot like the beginning of 101 Dalmations; you know, where the guy is sitting in his flat playing jazz music on his piano while he writes and his dog checks out all the ladies on the street below.

By the way, I firmly believe that that movie was the birth of the idea that people start to look like their pets after enough time – have you ever seen how spookily like their dogs those women at the beginning look? Especially the one with the purple poodle. I think there was a purple poodle in the beginning – it’s been some years since I’ve watched it so I can’t be too sure.

But I digress.

Before I went off to Bard I only visited the City a handful of times – at the most on a day trip, and most of the time while simply passing through. Even so, I cannot forget the excitement I felt whenever the skyline came into view. It was (and is) the kind of excitement where your heart leaps into your throat and pounds so hard that it hurts; if you’re a hypochondriac like I am, you begin to worry that you have a thyroid condition or throat cancer because your throat hurts.

It was while at Bard that I became further acquainted with the City, and further entrenched in my romantic vision. My college girlfriend lived in the West Village, the beautiful West Village, and I spent my summer break between my junior and senior years, as well as my winter, fall and spring breaks, going to visit her there. There was never any strife. All was wonderful and my visits to the City were filled with joy and mirth and general touristy type experiences. We went to see movies, and visited Coney Island, and saw small independent stage performances together. There was even a guy who did a one-man-show of the first moon landing – it was awesome, and hilarious.

The thing is that I was just that: a tourist.

The problem with being a tourist in a place like the Big Apple is that the place seems to find out that you’re visiting, so just like any host it cleans up the house and puts its best foot forward so that it can impress you. The image that you get during your brief stay is something akin to the view you get when you go to an open house. You see all the best elements of the house that you ultimately end up loving and buying, and it’s only once you’ve moved in and stayed a while that you begin to catch the little idiosyncrasies that change your view of the house forever.

New York City is no different. Whenever I visited my college girlfriend in the West Village, or my sister in Queens (which I acknowledge is technically not the city but it’s still that kind of an area), or various friends in various neighborhoods, I was given the best of the best experiences. Each visit reinforced this idea that I could easily make my image of sitting at a window with a view of the N Train, with my candle, notebook and glass of Merlot, a reality. New York City was perfect, and nothing could change my opinion – I basically had one foot out the door ready to GO from the moment I graduated Bard! I had a serious case of love goggles for the City.

Then Amanda and I attended Comic Con in October.

Now, I’m not entirely sure what happened with this visit to the City, but it was certainly not ready for our visit. We took the Megabus down Thursday night, after Amanda was done with her classes, and the City responded that weekend like it was just waking up:

“Hey, City. It’s wonderful to see you again. Your lights are pretty as ever.”

“Mmmm… hmmm… wha-? Tom? Amanda? What’re you doing here?”

“We had a visit planned. Don’t you remember?”

“No, no you were supposed to be here next week!”

“I don’t think so…”

“Hold on, let me get dressed.”

At least that’s how I imagine the conversation going.

For the most part, I enjoyed Comic Con. Really. The Javits Center is beautiful (though obscenely expensive, even for the City), and I went to some truly interesting and enjoyable panels. I got to meet Mark Tatulli, the cartoonist for my favorite funny – one of the few that are actually funny nowadays. I bought a whole slew of comics. I got early access to the closed beta for an incoming Superhero MMO, something I sorely needed after the recent announcement of the closing of City of Heroes (by the way, I will have a post about City of Heroes in the near future). I learned things about upcoming comic and tv show storylines about which I wouldn’t have otherwise known – also being ten feet away from my favorite comic book artists. I also met Tom Felton, Nicholas Brendan and various other famous folks.

I even discovered a new show to watch, because Amanda loved it and it was the only thing she was looking forward to doing on that trip. Bless her heart; she bought me those tickets for my birthday only because of how much I love comics, fantasy and superheroes. She was just along for the ride, and quite a ride it turned out to be.

Things went south when it came to navigating NYC and the crowds. The worst aspect of Comic Con (and honestly it’s a pretty bad aspect to have), is the crowd. The average population is roughly fifty sweaty, grumpy and tired people per square foot. Everyone has places to get to in a hurry. Not everyone showers. Lines are long, and the staff have to cut those lines off at certain points. I missed out on meeting Terry Pratchett – one of my favorite authors – because of that blasted cutting off of lines. Thus, no signing of my copy of Good Omens. The result of this kind of crowding was a tense, harried, sweaty, smelly air of “every man, woman, goblin, anime character, and superhero for himself, herself or itself.” Pushing and shoving were the least hostile interactions I witnessed – I swear I saw someone get punched. Hell, at a couple points I was tempted to throw an elbow, foot and fist or two. This wasn’t just a problem in the Javits Center either. That I might have been okay with, but that entire area of the City was crawling with people.

And just like that, I was irritable. Irritable. In New York City. How was this possible? My flawless image of the City was beginning to form some cracks. My innocence was disappearing.

On the second or third day, while we were on our way from the subway station to the Con, Amanda and I had to stop in a corner CVS store; I needed a notebook because I had stupidly left the beautiful one that she purchased for me at home. We went down to the bottom floor (outside of New York City, I have never seen a multi-story CVS, let alone a three-level) and quickly found a simple black bound notebook. As we were on our way up to the register I was struck on the shoulder by something hard and sharp. When I turned to see what it was I found a book – one of those trashy romance novels that every drug store and corner shop sells – at my feet.

Another book followed close behind, and I heard some shouting. I had been immersed in conversation with Amanda, so I hadn’t noticed it. Now I did. A woman pushing a stroller was standing by a bookshelf, pulling book after book off and throwing it every which way as she yelled: “Here! Take a book! You! And you! And you!” I mean, she was pegging these things around with the force of a major league pitcher. “They take all our money! Take a book! Take it back, people!”

I was gearing up to say something indignant, but luckily Amanda took me by the elbow before I could and hissed: “Come on. Let’s just buy the notebook and go.”

We gave security an extra smile on the way out. They didn’t smile back. Oh well. That experience with a crazy person/getting pegged in the face put a nice nail in the cracks in my image of the City. All I needed was a hammer.

Side Note: I freely acknowledge now how lucky I am to have visited New York as often as I do without having these kinds of experiences. The fact that it took this long to see reality is actually quite shocking.

The following morning, Amanda and I were on the subway when everything changed for good. Now, mind you, I was feeling a little shaky about this whole visit by now, and I was just a bit on edge. I was finally starting to relax when a woman in a grey hoodie came onto our car.

At first, nothing seemed amiss. Amanda and I minded our own business with all of the other rush hour riders. It was after two or so stations that the woman in the hoodie started sneezing… or something. To this day, we’re still not entirely whether she was sneezing or what. But she was doing one sneeze after the other. Rapid succession. Not even reeling back in preparation of the next one, just: ‘choo’choo’choo’choo.

Next stop, once the train settled, the woman pried open the back door to the car and started making the ah sounds that come before choos, but her ah’s sounded more like someone who is being brutally murdered than simple build ups to big sneezes. And she was spitting.

As the ride progressed she kept screaming and spitting and foaming, and she actually spat out a couple teeth – seriously, I saw it. People were starting to move up to the front of the car, and Amanda and I were near the head of the pack.

Then, with no apparent provocation, the woman knelt double and just screamed. No break, no pause, just screaming. It was the most terrifying scream I had ever encountered; the kind that’s deep in your throat, and husky, and raw. The kind that leaves your ears ringing. She screamed for about 45 seconds, and then she stopped like nothing had happened.

As the train slowed for yet another stop Amanda asked: “Can we please change cars?”

I had been too “macho” to ask to change cars up until that point (because, of course, a macho man would not be even a little petrified by a mad woman screaming ten feet away), but once she suggested it, I said: “Yes please.” We, and the entire car along with us, switched as soon as the doors opened. I had never been so happy to hear the bing, bong sound in my entire life.

Later on we joked that the lady had done that on purpose because she knew it could clear a car for her to have for herself. We joked, but honestly we didn’t find the situation that funny.

I was presented with a whole new perspective. I was shaken and tired. I felt horrified, mortified and overwhelmed. Most of all, I felt betrayed.

“Why, City? What have I done to offend you so?”

“Well, for starters, you showed up a week earlier than you were supposed to…”

Anyway, when I came out of the subway, I came to a sudden realization that crazy people live in the City. They were everywhere. Everyone who so much as glanced at me (which seemed like everyone at the time) had a glint of madness in his or her eye. People knew that we were tourists, and they were thinking about how to harass me. Everyone on the street might have been that crazy lady for all I cared. I cowered in fright because the City was no longer the perfect wonderful place I had always thought.

And there it was: the cracks had formed, the nail had dug into the cracks, and the hammer had struck the nail. My image of the City was officially shattered, and with it my dreams of moving there. I realized that I had been crazy to want to live in the City to begin with – that I’d been chasing memories, dreams and ideas in a desperate hope to capture either a long gone past or an impossible future. I fell into despair, and on the way home I thought that I very well may never return to New York City.