In New York City, a Room of My Own

It’s 1:30 in the morning. My feet are so sore after a day of walking the city streets that they almost feel broken. I’m sitting in the only peaceful haven I’ve found in New York so far – the backyard of Muldoon’s Irish pub on 3rd Avenue. It’s supposed to be closed, but the bartender took pity on me. “I just want a place I can sit and write,” I told him. “A place to relax.” He let me come back to the Bier Garten – a 14’ fenced-in alley space left abandoned by the crowd that keeps regular hours. He makes me skinny margaritas with club soda, I give him too much money, and it feels like the beginnings of a mutually utilitarian friendship.

I’ve always had this esoteric belief that I wouldn’t really be complete as an American until I visited New York City. It was the first stop for the immigrant grandparents I hardly knew — where my grandmother sewed shirts in a factory for 13 cents an hour as a teenager, and where she met my grandfather, who moved her to Newark and then Hartford, where she spent her life in a kitchen, making kielbasa breakfasts and pierogie dinners.

As a kid, I watched countless shows that were filmed in NYC, from the Chorus Line to Baretta. Alongside the booming skyscrapers, aging doormen, scruffed ballet shoes, and the pimps with feathered hats, NYC always seemed to be the place where Big Things Happen – to dreamers, travelers, tap dancers, singers from the corn fields of Iowa, and down-on-their-luck writers.

I’ve been in NY for two days. I’ve seen the upper West Side, Times Square, the theater district, Chinatown, and Little Italy. I’ve heard waitresses sing while waiting for their turn at restroom stalls. I’ve seen dead turtles on ice, fake Coach purses and Rolex watches, and thousands of tourist-y trinkets. I’ve smelled hot dog steam, garbage trucks, burning plastic, body odors, and sewage. I’ve sat on stoops, watching people pass: Mothers with MacClaren strollers, women in sundresses, men with day old beards and tiny dogs on leashes.

What I haven’t seen in any great number are homeless people, obvious drug addicts, pimps or hookers.  I haven’t seen any crack needles on the sidewalk or crime scene tape. I feel slightly disappointed by that. It’s like I prepared for a dark Disneyland and the felonious Mickey Mouse failed to show up.

I’ve seen a lot of thin people in NYC – more than average. I imagine it’s because they walk everywhere, often without stopping until they reach their destination. There was a meaty woman on a New Jersey bus, wearing giant hoop earrings and a flowered sundress, who didn’t seem to mind sharing her cell phone conversation with the public.

“So she aks me if that’s my baby’s daddy. I tell her helllll nooooo, he’s just  a sperm donor. I’d rather have a German Shepherd be my baby daddy.”

On Amsterdam Street, a woman walks alongside a skinny man in an old pink Izod shirt and green cargo pants. She’s wearing a translucent yellow sundress. I can see the pink hearts on her underpants. She’s pushing a stroller that contains a contented-looking toddler and a four pack of Starbucks Double Shot. “He’s an old soul, you know,” she tells her companion. “He’s lived many lives. My sensei told me he’s destined for art”. I have no idea if she’s talking about the baby or someone else.

At Stand-Up NY, a small crowd gathers for an evening of laughs. The emcee and comics seem daunted by the small crowd. They make note of it, as if to say their acts might go over better in front of hundreds of people instead of seventeen but they still do their best, even though it’s hot and the air conditioner is on the fritz.  Paul Mercurio draws the biggest laughs of the evening, but I can’t remember a single joke he told. I can’t remember any of the acts a day later and have to refer to my notes. At least ten of the seventeen people in the audience were international tourists. I won free shots of alcohol in a drawing and donated them to girls from England, but they didn’t want them. No one did.

There’s almost too much entertainment in NY — too much dancing, singing, choreography, and too many performers with too many stages. It seems that all but the hardcore fans are jaded. No one stops to listen to the guitar payer in the subway. It’s too much.

He’s too much, in his faded jeans and Bob Marley knit cap, but he makes me think of Harry Chapin. Cats in the Cradle, WOTV, a lonely man and a homely waitress, a spilled banana truck . . . Harry Chapin is dead, and so much of his music died with him. Some of Chapin’s work remains timeless, especially the songs of his that were recorded by other artists, but most of it is archaic and unheard.

At a crosswalk on Park Avenue, I stand next to a woman with iPod buds in her ears. Tori Amos is singing her rendition of Vincent by Don MacLean. It’s haunting. Starry starry night, paint your palette blue and gray, look out on a summer day, with eyes that know the world and can’t forget. . .like strangers you have met. . .the ragged men in ragged clothes. . .

Red turns to white and the woman crosses the busy street. I lose her among the throngs of people. I finish the song in my head and for the millionth time, I wish I could sing. It seems like a curse to have a vice on my throat when my head is filled with music.

I stare out among the brick buildings and fire escapes and I wonder – who lives here? Could I? For a moment I imagine myself on a roof top deck, or in a brick-walled apartment, where the blights of the city carry over into personal spaces. Piano strains and screaming children.  The smell of curry wafting trough hallways. Water leaks and heat and musty elevators, thick with people.  I know that the scene would grow old in a short amount of time, and that while the anonymity would not daunt me, the invisibility would.

I know that in NYC, I would only feel truly alive in places like Muldoon’s, where the bartender already knows my name and is willing to share 14’ of semi-secret space with me and let me pretend, at least in the wee hours of the morning, that I truly do have a room of my own, for the cost of three margaritas, a Baileys coffee, and a small stack of dollar bills.

Tagged as: New York City, Road Trip Stories