Around 5:20 this past Monday evening, I landed at John F. Kennedy airport. I had been gone from New York for eleven full days; it felt like a lot longer. I’ve always thought New York is the kind of place that changes shape to reflect your mood—if you’re cranky, it’ll be the most frustrating place you can imagine. If you’re happy, it will elate you. It’s often very polarizing, without much gray area, and those polar opposites can apply to one person’s experience in the span of just one day.
Monday was the first time in a while I can remember not wanting to return to New York. With other recent vacations, even as I didn’t want them to end, a mellow sense of comfort and familiarity awaited me when I arrived in the city. This time was harder—I had been sad before I left and was unsure of the feelings that would envelop me when I was back. I have also only been in my current apartment since March, and it still feels new, not 100% like home.
Waiting what felt like an interminable length of time for my luggage at the baggage claim, though, I looked around and started to warm to the idea of being back: there was such a refreshing diversity in the group of people waiting impatiently for their bags. A reunited Jewish family, probably from Long Island; two young guys dressed somewhere between hipster and white trash, with accompanying silly beards; a middle-aged, no nonsense black woman with a visor, bluetooth, chin stud, and seriously oversized suitcase. There was a tall Latino man wearing some of the most ridiculous patchwork pants I’ve ever seen. Although I was cranky about the wait, I was happy with where I was. Nicaragua is amazing but mostly just full of Nicaraguans, who all sort of look like Nicaraguans. I had a similar experience when I traveled to Peru. You don’t realize how unique New York (and in many ways, America) is until you return from elsewhere.
But the city was quick to remind me, of course, that with diversity comes adversity of a certain kind. My first day back, I rode the bus home from the grocery store. (Not that I should feel the need to justify this, but I do. I had bought a bunch of food as well as milk, fruit juice, and part of a watermelon, plus my arms were still sore from kayaking, swimming, and hiking in Nicaragua). I sat down across from a large man who was talking in a tone and volume that fit his size to the bus driver about justice. He spoke about how black people have it harder than white people—how there are essentially two different versions of justice, black justice and white justice—and all through that part of the monologue, I was with him. Until he started to make an example of the Jews: “If a Jew puts on a yarmulke and walks into court, no doubt he’ll get off easy,” he said. Yes, because the Jews are such a well-loved group of people. Particularly those religious ones who wear yarmulkes and alienate everyone around them. Maybe I was just taking it too personally, but I shot him a really dirty look as I got off the bus. “The truth hurts!” he called. I kind of wanted to punch him and ask him if that hurt (though given my size and his, I doubt it would).
Then, the next morning, I was walking down Classon Ave. to work when I passed a man peeing in the street. I mean literally peeing, in the street, between two parked cars, at 9:15 in the morning. Seriously? I wanted to walk up to him (although I was pretty grossed out, so maybe not really) and ask him what he was thinking. Because it’s not like there are three coffee shops with bathrooms within a two-block radius of where he was standing. And it’s not like it was 9:15 in the morning, when people walk to work. He didn’t even have the courtesy to pee in a dark corner under some scaffolding, and he didn’t even look like a hobo—just a normal guy, peeing his heart out under the Brooklyn sun.
With those incidents and a few more days behind me, I am actually fairly happy to be back. Partly those things are what give New York its identity, plus without them I wouldn’t have much to blog about. And trite as it sounds, if the city wasn’t its usual weird self, it wouldn’t be home.
[Postscript: As I sit here on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library, a man in what I think is a white thawb and a sideways Yankee hat and another guy with a pin in his ear are having a hilarious conversation about crack, weed, the Koran, and "the processing" of drugs. The guy with the pin wants to become a master of some kind of martial art ("I don't care which one, I just want to be a master") and find a woman who is both his intellectual and physical equal. ("I want a chick that would be able to fuck me up physically, you know what I'm saying? ...A North Korean.") Offensive? Maybe. Priceless? Yup.]
