Posts under ‘I Live NY’

Provided you get out of your apartment, New York City never feels lonely. Wherever your destination, people will be there when you arrive and hot on your heels as you leave. The only time I’m ever on the subway alone, which happens about twice a week, is when I’m taking the C back to my apartment from where I tutor in Washington Heights. Service on that subway line terminates where I begin my journey home, so unless it’s been a particularly busy day for hospital visitors and employees (the stop is where all of Columbia’s medical facilities lie), there are few riders.

I’ve had a few crappy jobs since I became a legal worker. If you’ve read this blog in any depth, you probably know about latter woes. My nascent employment unfolded behind the counter of a fast food restaurant. The summer after freshman year of college, I moved back home thinking I’d advanced on the fast food chain - I got a job manning the hostess station of a popular diner chain. Both jobs dripped and congealed, but mostly just sucked.

As I left the apartment this morning for work, I looked outside and exclaimed to no one in particular, “It’s snowing!” I suppose it was technically sleeting, as the precipitation consisted of puffed (r)ice that melted the instant it hit the ground.

The buzzer squeals, and the one person I’d expect to visit is already visiting. “Someone pushed the wrong number,” I tell Cade. We continue doing whatever we were doing.

If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. And if I can’t scratch your back, I’ll scratch someone else’s. If no one’s scratching my back, it’s even more important to scratch someone else’s, because I get what I give.

There’s that moment of recognition when you know someone you don’t. When you realize the woman on the subway looks uncannily like you plus twenty-five years, or you meet someone’s eyes and they just get it. Most people never acknowledge these moments, at least not to those with whom they are experienced.

Cade and I saw Danny Glover at Popeye’s in Harlem last night. Homeboy was keeping it real and ordered a box of popcorn shrimp. The cashiers didn’t recognize him, and I wouldn’t have, either, but Cade has a knack for recognizing tiny quirks of various celebrities and then rattling off their film credits.

Saturday afternoon: A ghostly white peacock struts down the sidewalk in front of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. A crowd stands guard, their backs to the traffic down Amsterdam Avenue. The bird struts four paces, stops, and stares. “Notice I’m a peacock perilously close to traffic, everybody? In Morningside Heights, far from any zoo or possible origin? Okay, just checking,” it seems to say.