Manhattan

When you come home from a trip to New York City you take a shower. You do not do this when you come home from Denver or Pittsburgh. I love New York but I always leave feeling like I am covered in a film produced by the cornucopia of pollution wafting around in the city air.

Yesterday’s trip to New York began as usual: New Haven to Grand Central Station – and uneventful ride. However, I had fallen asleep on the train and being seated by the window my head kept bobbing into it as I slept. When I woke up, the otherwise respectable man sitting next to me had his arm around my head to prevent this as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I think he owes me dinner, maybe a movie to push him over fifty dollars.

These trips normally progress toward meeting someone someplace well known, not ridiculous. My friend, Colleen, works in an office off Time’s Square so we met in Time’s Square.

Those of you who have not been to New York just let out an “oh” while those of us who have lived or visited in New York let out an “ew.” Colleen describes the smell of the Square as “Baked Urine.” The could shut down Times Square again, as they did for Tom Cruise, and scrub the place down but then it would lose its charm and that aroma of, “Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live here.” I took Colleen and I half an hour to find each other and that is almost completely my fault. Her part of the blame comes from not realizing that I was a half wit.

After meeting up we walked passed Union Square, all the time Colleen is in heels, to a Vietnamese Restaurant where we were promptly seated, fed and pushed back out the door. Mc Donald’s is not as fast as these people which lead us to believe that our food (Pad Thai for her, Chicken in some ginger goo for him) was actually someone else’s. We had both skipped lunch so we figured by eating it we were establishing it as our own and the people it was intended for would not want it. Our dinner was accompanied by the entertainment of a medium sized, middle aged woman in clothes built for a smaller sized, younger woman who bounced and burst out of her clothing at every angle while flirting with her date. Poor Victoria, she hoped to keep that secret but it was not meant to be.

After dinner we strolled about New York, observing it and taking pictures of it. At one point we encountered a concert near NYU and the quote of the week when Colleen declared, “This is full of old people, it has to suck.” Indeed, it did. We walked past bars and restaurants, art galleries and massage parlors and to the Hudson River – with its lovely view of New Jersey. New Jersey is best seen at night, you do not actually see it. Luckily, I had picked up a hard copy of “the Onion” while we were walking along the river because a group of young wiper snappers told us we had better watch our back. Had I not had my newspaper to thwack them with declaring, “Kind sir, where are your manners? I am from Connecticut!” this story would have a different ending.

And indeed the story ends with the air-conditioned subway ride back to our train stations and good-byes, my train ride to Connecticut was uneventful but that is nothing to complain about. Colleen estimates we walked six miles around Manhattan – but I think of it is as time well spent.

Comments

[Margaret]

Times Square is frenetic, and don't ever walk in NY City in flip flops. Your feet will never be clean again. I learned this the hard way. EWWWW!