October 24, 2012 scottcjones 2Comments

Phillip and I emerged from the subway near Rockefeller Center. “This is midtown,” Phillip said pointing at the twinkling buildings around us. “That way is uptown. That way is downtown.” I was trying to play it cool, to look like I fit in, to be a wallet-tucked-away-in-my-back-pocket kind of person. I tried to put on a cool front, to appear entirely unmoved by what was unfolding around me. My unmoved expression, of course, didn’t last. I don’t believe that anyone can take their first, virgin steps down a New York City sidewalk and not look like Charlie Bucket walking into the chocolate factory or a kid unfolding a Playboy centerfold for the first time.

I knew in advance that New York was made up of buildings and that those buildings would be very tall. I knew this because I had seen New York on television in shows like Taxi and The Odd Couple. What television neglected to tell me was what it felt like to stand next to one of these buildings. I put my hand out and touched the wall of the nearest building. The cold concrete numbed my fingertips. I’d never felt smaller in my life. There was the sense that there were important people inside the building, and that they were doing important things—signing papers, phoning other important people. Meanwhile, I was down here on the street, a speck moving around with the other specks.

As we walked down the street, I looked at everyone. I couldn’t help myself. I looked at peoples’ faces. I’d never seen so many faces. I saw beautiful women. I saw old men. I saw a boy crying and his mother consoling him. We walked by a fancy restaurant, and in the flickering glow of candles, I saw a gray haired man in a suit touch wineglasses with a gray haired lady. The night air was thick with smells. I could smell the most delicious food I’d ever smelled in my life—it was like a thousand cheeseburgers all being cooked at once. But just beneath that smell was the raw, acrid scent of old urine.

Like Charlie Bucket and the kid opening that centerfold, within the span of a couple of seconds the world I had lived in for the past 22 years had suddenly become a richer, darker and far more interesting place. The universe was more vast than I’d previously imagined. Now I had a better understanding of why Mary Tyler Moore always threw her tam o’shanter into the air at the end of the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. New York was the kind of place that demanded dramatic, borderline crazy gestures. If I’d have been wearing a hat that night, I’m certain I’d have fired that sucker like a missile into the night sky.

During my stint in the Scouts we were taught that the best way to get one’s bearings in a strange place is to always look for the North Star. I could barely find any sky above New York, and the bits that I could see were completely star-less. So what I did was this: I spotted a lamp in a window near the top of a high-rise apartment building—it must have been on 30th or 40th floor—and I made that lamp my makeshift North Star. There were other lamps in other windows on almost every floor of the building. But there was something about this particular lamp that caught my eye. It gave off an amber light that made the window look like a piece of toast lit from the inside. I wondered what kind of people would own a lamp like that. I wondered what their story might be. Maybe Dustin Hoffman was up there still trying to fix scrambled eggs for his son Billy, as he did in Kramer Vs. Kramer. Or maybe a young couple in love was up there, living in their first apartment together. I didn’t have a girlfriend, and certainly had never lived with a girl. I wondered what it might be like to have the key to an apartment in New York, an apartment that you had to ride an elevator all the way up to the 30th or 40th floor to get to, and when you arrived at that apartment you would find a girl there who would tell you that she loved you. Then you could take off all of her clothes and take her to bed, and afterwards the two of you could look out the window down at the specks moving around with the other specks.

Phillip grabbed me by the elbow and began hauling me along the sidewalk. “Let’s keep moving, Herr Jones,” Phillip said. “There’s a place up here where we can get a slice. Then we’ll head to the show.” We walked along 52nd Street, through the northern part of Times Square. This was still the pre-Rudy Giuliani New York of the early ’90’s, so the streets weren’t quite as well-lighted as they are today. There seemed to be a bit of a gap between each street light, and in that gap, in those pockets of shadow, people gathered and moved. I couldn’t make out their faces, but I could feel them there, looking at Phillip and at me, looking at everyone who was passing on the sidewalk, and sizing us up. I wondered what these shadow people made of me. No doubt I looked like the biggest, dumbest, palest animal in the pack that night. But my size, I felt confident, would protect me. My six-foot-three-inch frame always functioned like a turtle shell; all my life bullies had given me a wide berth. Thankfully, Phillip, my guide, was right there to lead me through this trash-blown labyrinth.

Doorways opened behind these shadows, and short, crooked stairways, usually glowing in red neon, ascended to places where, I understood, things could happen to you. Chinese women chanted the word “massage” over and over again, always with a small, dangerous pause between “mah” and “sage.” Other people offered drugs with the word, “Smoke, smoke.” A woman wearing a bathrobe and heavy makeup smoked a cigarette in a doorway and offered to reveal what was underneath her robe if Phillip and I would only follow her down the stairs. “Eight shows nightly, no cover, two drink minimum, Champagne Room available,” she said between puffs. Another guy attempted to cajole us into playing a round of a shell game he had set up on a makeshift table. “Two dollars to play, that’s all, don’t cost nothing,” he kept saying. I was tempted. I’d seen the shell game played on a TV show, and I was confident that I could follow the pea, that could win the whole thing.

New York was a place where something could happen to you. Something good, something bad—it didn’t matter which. All that mattered when I was 22 years old was that something—finally, mercifully—would happen to me. In the woods, where I was from, nothing ever happened. It was a long string of blank days punctuated by the occasional world-is-coming-to-an-end snowstorm. Here, anything could happen. I might purchase a sweater with a buffalo pattern stitched into it. I might get stabbed. I might meet a beautiful woman. I might get a job. I might grow a beard or wear a hat. I might live in a loft, don a beret, drink Tokay wine, paint terrible paintings and listen to Edith Piaf records. Who knew, really? I might be discovered, for pete’s sake. Someone might finally recognize me for the unique and terrific individual I’d always suspected myself of being. I imagined a man wearing a perfectly tailored game show host suit walking up to me, holding out his hand, and saying, “We’ve been waiting for someone like you. All of New York has been waiting. And you’re finally here. You are finally  here.”

I don’t remember much about the Letterman show at Radio City. I remember sitting down with Phillip in the balcony, and a man coming out on stage to tell us that we were about to see the real show, that the show that the afternoon audience had seen earlier that day was the rehearsal. Everyone cheered. The rest of it was a blur. There was Letterman, my hero, then Bill Murray, then Larry “Bud” Melman, then Bob Dylan, all of them specks down there on the stage. I remember laughing a lot. And I remember, once the lights came up, feeling sad that it was over. But what I remember more clearly than anything was standing on a street corner with Phillip eating a slice of pizza before the show. It was a cold night in February. I was woefully underdressed. I stood next to Phillip, shivering inside my thin jacket, shifting from foot to foot, and eating a piece of pizza that had just come from a giant, fire-breathing oven. It would not be an overstatement to say that the cheese on this particular slice of pizza was as hot as lava. I could feel it searing the roof of my mouth. I opened my mouth to let cold air in and hot air out. During the air exchange, an massive cloud of steam streamed from my face which made it seem as if my mouth was smoking. Phillip’s mouth was full, but he tried to talk anyway. “It’s so good,” he said.

I had to agree. I was so good.

2 thoughts on “A Field Guide to Moving to New York City: 8

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