(no subject)
A few weeks ago, at the closing night cast party for Evita, I was told the longest and probably most impressive story of my young life. Several Absolut Citron & 7ups in, I’d already accosted most of those around me with my perpetual chant “tell me stories”. Most merely provided pitiable attempts, and Madelynn, tired and having exhausted her supply of Tara Tales, had given up even pretending to entertain me, and responded with an outright “No” to any and all demands. So I was ecstatically pleased when my request to one of the actors led to a long, detailed, and almost endless story entitled “Arnaud Goes To London”. If I had not already been in love with him for lending me his top hat and laudably attempting to teach me to waltz, I surely would have become so then. In any case, in honor of Arnaud, and the art of lengthy and meandering storytelling, here’s
Carolyn, Madelynn, and I set off for NYC late Friday night, boarding the Greyhound night bus armed with unhealthy snacks in the form of gummy bears and oreos, and unhealthy reading in the form of Cosmo. The journey was endless, notable only for its cold, and the 3 hour stopover at customs during which we sulked and slept intermittently. I love the neatness of our trio, though- sprawled across the dingy seats in various states of weary repose, in our tank tops and pajama pants we seemed distinguishable only by the colors of our hair. We match well together, I think- like the Babysitter’s Club or maybe a Soviet Troika. :)
In the city subway Carolyn sited our first rat within 5 minutes. In 5 more minutes, without having seen the above-ground world at all, I had decided absolutely to attend graduate school in NYC- I’m so overawed even by the vermin and filth of New York. In only 140 more minutes, we finally managed to correctly navigate the metro to our hostel, having taken perhaps every incorrect train possible, some of them more than once. To my dismay, we ran into none of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or associated characters.
The hostel was orderly, if in a somewhat dubious neighborhood. (Passels of grungy men offered to “help us with our luggage!” during the two block walk from the subway.) So we quickly overcame the desire to become comatose, and headed directly towards what, so far as I can tell, is the very epicenter of the modern world, Times Square. On the way the wind carried off my brand new fuzzy red hat, of which I had spent the last 12 hours being exorbitantly proud. As the three of us careened wildly down the street in haphazard pursuit, looking entirely ridiculous, a kindly stranger fetched it for us, smiling and giving us a kindly look not unlike that reserved for my cat, when he eats inedible objects or otherwise displays glaring irresponsibility/ ineptitude: a sort of indulgent tolerance. Generally, New Yorkers seemed startlingly innocuous and even kind hearted, volunteering subway suggestions and other useful information. They keep their maliciousness, pretentiousness, and overarching evil moderately well hidden, I think.
In Times Square I bought a Care Bear and a Frappucino and felt childishly delighted. Looking at the neon and billboards gave me that pleasant, nervous, stomach-turning sensation usually reserved for roller coasters and first kisses. If I’d ever thought I didn’t relish the American Way, that delicious showy triumphal materialism, I doubt I will again. I refuse to not embrace the promise of 46th and Broadway, and I look forward to a time when I no longer live in a country that expresses such disdain for the excesses of capitalism. I want to always be in Times Square, with ads for Diet Coke 4 stories high, and a Starbucks around every corner.
Eventually, after a fair amount of frantic confusion, we met up with Dyanne, Dennis, and Dave, and headed down to Greenwich Village for food. Waiting for Dyanne I stood on street corners, one hand holding down my hat, and squinted at the faces crossing Broadway, wondering whether various indistinct figures might be her. But, as it seems to always be with close friends, when I finally did see her I recognized it instantly and without doubt- to my pleasant surprise I remember people better than I think I do. Dave led us to The Strand, a crowded but impressive used bookstore- Dave and Dennis argued politics in the aisles, Carolyn and Madelynn browsed, and Dyanne and I procured matching copies of Ulysses, which it is now our mutual Goal to read before death, and maybe also the end of the summer.
After dinner we three returned to the hostel, staying conscious only long enough to go through our half-hearted beauty regimes and collapse into bed. I slept next to my Care Bear, and might have concerned the strangers who shared our hostel room.
We woke up (almost ) early the next morning - being in close quarters with my friends has a clear positive impact on my sleep schedule, reducing my nocturnal tendencies considerably. Awake but lacking in sufficient caffeine, we set off towards Central Park and the Upper East Side, of considerable Sex And The City fame. When we finally arrived, having taken several detours in order to get lost, and for me to smell flowers, we went straight to the nearest Starbucks. I can’t imaging returning soon to a place where acquiring a daily supply of Multinational Corporate Evil in liquid form means a 20 minute walk through snow and -30 cold. :)
Satiated, we headed to the MET, and had time to explore at least several of the most well-traveled collections before beginning to wilt, taking longer and longer rest breaks to sit on benches under the eyes of surly guards. I liked Impressionism fairly non-critically and all-embracingly, and wished I hadn’t made the decision, only days before leaving Montreal, to cultivate an image as One Who Rejects Society, if only within societally condoned and practically cliched ways, by purchasing both a Trainspotting and a Fight Club poster. Plastering my walls with additional Cezannes and Van Goghs seems now like a better, or at least certainly culturally superior, plan. European Paintings I liked primarily because it made me feel as if my appearance... fit in. My pale moon face and consumptively bright cheeks, though peculiar in a Montreal Club, seem to have been an expected part of the feminine imagine in, say, Renaissance Italy. If only I lived a few centuries ago. :)
When we left I made a mental return to modernity, and bought a framed photo of a Starbucks. Still, I guess I have a stirring desire to be painted, now, if partly only because my mother has a painting of herself at 19, and it seems only appropriate to have some permanent encapsulation of my image, in that same medium.
Anyways, we walked down to 5th avenue and visited both Prada and Louis Vuitton, to mixed reactions of disdain and slightly judgmental indifference from the sales clerks. To restore a little self esteem, we stopped by Express, and then decided to leave the Island entirely, in protest. Or to meet Dave for dinner at his infamous Brooklyn pizza place, which seemed tolerably good, though it contributed to a disgusting overabundance of pizza throughout the trip. With Ice Cream, we hurried up to Columbia just in time to watch the final episode of Sex And The City. In the absence of this distraction, its just possible I might find some time to be productive, during the remainder of this semester.
The next morning I woke up to horrible blisters, large enough to form small nations sending representation to the United Nations. Therefore, directly after the requisite morning Starbucks run, we hunted down a dollar store and I purchased a stylish pair of yellow foam flip-flops, which I wore for the remainder of the day. As luck would have it, that morning I‘d put on a pair of white socks defaced by Seth, Nick, and several permanent markets, sometime last summer. I flip flopped through the day looking like a mangled cross between tourist and confused panhandler.
Sandaled, I followed Carolyn and Madelynn into the Museum of Sex, which was surprisingly interesting, with long displays on early prostitution laws and burlesque queens. We exited unsure whether we were expected to be “all hot and bothered” by porn clippings ranging from 1910s silent movies to the infamous Deep Throat, or slightly ill at the sight of skulls deformed by syphilis, and terrible menacing tools used to preform abortions. Instead we inspected the museum shop, purchased R rated playing cards, and returned to Times Square to try to procure Broadway tickets.
Despite our enthusiasm for seeing any show, regardless of quality or fame, we were unable to find any within our impoverished price range. So we sat in McDonalds, taunted by the signs flashing Chicago and The Lion King, and periodically leaving to make a phone call or buy a newspaper, in a vain attempt to find a point of intersection between our miserable budgets and the available shows. I mostly lounged about unhelpfully, taking pictures of my socks and face in the overhead mirrors, and drawing faces in the salt on the tables. Still I was upbeat, grinning and giggling and continually being amazed to actually be here. The City seems, I don’t know, I suppose like such a distinctly individual experience that it was (is?) impossible for me to convey the power of the emotion it produces. Periodically I would turn to Carolyn or Madelynn, concerned that they weren’t “having fun”, because I couldn’t see the ecstatic joy written on their faces that I was sure must be written on mine. I may over-estimate my own transparency, though- my happiness might not have been visible except in satisfied sighs at the skyline, and a persistence in singing and humming on the city sidewalks- I sang “On Broadway” and “52nd Street”, and even took a stab at Interpol and Simon & Garfunkel, surrounded by passing commuters.
We did find tickets to Gypsy, and after an obligatory stop at Macy’s took our seats at the very top of a Broadway theater. (I put back on my boots, first. :)) Afterwards I called Dave, and we headed confidently over to Columbia for a late dinner. Positive that after 3 days we could navigate the city, the observation that we were the only white people, and also the only females, in our entire train car didn’t raise in us the slightest concern. We found ourselves, suddenly, in the middle of Harlem in the middle of the night, accompanied exclusively by rats. When we finally reached Dave, and safety, we no longer had our former touristy desire to “see Harlem and everything!” We celebrated our continued life by playing Egyptian Rat Screw with nude men.
The next day we straggled through the slush to breakfast, then to Port Authority, where Madelynn and Carolyn left for Montreal, and I split off to travel to Philly. I waited, feeling somewhat surreal and post-modernist, my short skirt and leather legs surrounded absurdly by billowing suitcases- even while feeling entirely disconnected from my own fingers shoveling quarters into a slot, and jerking back abruptly when a Snapple dropped down, my gesture felt uniquely tied to, I don’t know, the fundamental fabric of America, in a way it wouldn’t feel anywhere else. I struggled to the Greyhound handicapped by a bocketty wheel, but wrapped in imperviously in the cloak of “Simple Things” playing loudly in my headphones, and the glow of being a part of New York.
(Stay tune for another entry, The Further Adventures of Tara!)
Carolyn, Madelynn, and I set off for NYC late Friday night, boarding the Greyhound night bus armed with unhealthy snacks in the form of gummy bears and oreos, and unhealthy reading in the form of Cosmo. The journey was endless, notable only for its cold, and the 3 hour stopover at customs during which we sulked and slept intermittently. I love the neatness of our trio, though- sprawled across the dingy seats in various states of weary repose, in our tank tops and pajama pants we seemed distinguishable only by the colors of our hair. We match well together, I think- like the Babysitter’s Club or maybe a Soviet Troika. :)
In the city subway Carolyn sited our first rat within 5 minutes. In 5 more minutes, without having seen the above-ground world at all, I had decided absolutely to attend graduate school in NYC- I’m so overawed even by the vermin and filth of New York. In only 140 more minutes, we finally managed to correctly navigate the metro to our hostel, having taken perhaps every incorrect train possible, some of them more than once. To my dismay, we ran into none of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or associated characters.
The hostel was orderly, if in a somewhat dubious neighborhood. (Passels of grungy men offered to “help us with our luggage!” during the two block walk from the subway.) So we quickly overcame the desire to become comatose, and headed directly towards what, so far as I can tell, is the very epicenter of the modern world, Times Square. On the way the wind carried off my brand new fuzzy red hat, of which I had spent the last 12 hours being exorbitantly proud. As the three of us careened wildly down the street in haphazard pursuit, looking entirely ridiculous, a kindly stranger fetched it for us, smiling and giving us a kindly look not unlike that reserved for my cat, when he eats inedible objects or otherwise displays glaring irresponsibility/ ineptitude: a sort of indulgent tolerance. Generally, New Yorkers seemed startlingly innocuous and even kind hearted, volunteering subway suggestions and other useful information. They keep their maliciousness, pretentiousness, and overarching evil moderately well hidden, I think.
In Times Square I bought a Care Bear and a Frappucino and felt childishly delighted. Looking at the neon and billboards gave me that pleasant, nervous, stomach-turning sensation usually reserved for roller coasters and first kisses. If I’d ever thought I didn’t relish the American Way, that delicious showy triumphal materialism, I doubt I will again. I refuse to not embrace the promise of 46th and Broadway, and I look forward to a time when I no longer live in a country that expresses such disdain for the excesses of capitalism. I want to always be in Times Square, with ads for Diet Coke 4 stories high, and a Starbucks around every corner.
Eventually, after a fair amount of frantic confusion, we met up with Dyanne, Dennis, and Dave, and headed down to Greenwich Village for food. Waiting for Dyanne I stood on street corners, one hand holding down my hat, and squinted at the faces crossing Broadway, wondering whether various indistinct figures might be her. But, as it seems to always be with close friends, when I finally did see her I recognized it instantly and without doubt- to my pleasant surprise I remember people better than I think I do. Dave led us to The Strand, a crowded but impressive used bookstore- Dave and Dennis argued politics in the aisles, Carolyn and Madelynn browsed, and Dyanne and I procured matching copies of Ulysses, which it is now our mutual Goal to read before death, and maybe also the end of the summer.
After dinner we three returned to the hostel, staying conscious only long enough to go through our half-hearted beauty regimes and collapse into bed. I slept next to my Care Bear, and might have concerned the strangers who shared our hostel room.
We woke up (almost ) early the next morning - being in close quarters with my friends has a clear positive impact on my sleep schedule, reducing my nocturnal tendencies considerably. Awake but lacking in sufficient caffeine, we set off towards Central Park and the Upper East Side, of considerable Sex And The City fame. When we finally arrived, having taken several detours in order to get lost, and for me to smell flowers, we went straight to the nearest Starbucks. I can’t imaging returning soon to a place where acquiring a daily supply of Multinational Corporate Evil in liquid form means a 20 minute walk through snow and -30 cold. :)
Satiated, we headed to the MET, and had time to explore at least several of the most well-traveled collections before beginning to wilt, taking longer and longer rest breaks to sit on benches under the eyes of surly guards. I liked Impressionism fairly non-critically and all-embracingly, and wished I hadn’t made the decision, only days before leaving Montreal, to cultivate an image as One Who Rejects Society, if only within societally condoned and practically cliched ways, by purchasing both a Trainspotting and a Fight Club poster. Plastering my walls with additional Cezannes and Van Goghs seems now like a better, or at least certainly culturally superior, plan. European Paintings I liked primarily because it made me feel as if my appearance... fit in. My pale moon face and consumptively bright cheeks, though peculiar in a Montreal Club, seem to have been an expected part of the feminine imagine in, say, Renaissance Italy. If only I lived a few centuries ago. :)
When we left I made a mental return to modernity, and bought a framed photo of a Starbucks. Still, I guess I have a stirring desire to be painted, now, if partly only because my mother has a painting of herself at 19, and it seems only appropriate to have some permanent encapsulation of my image, in that same medium.
Anyways, we walked down to 5th avenue and visited both Prada and Louis Vuitton, to mixed reactions of disdain and slightly judgmental indifference from the sales clerks. To restore a little self esteem, we stopped by Express, and then decided to leave the Island entirely, in protest. Or to meet Dave for dinner at his infamous Brooklyn pizza place, which seemed tolerably good, though it contributed to a disgusting overabundance of pizza throughout the trip. With Ice Cream, we hurried up to Columbia just in time to watch the final episode of Sex And The City. In the absence of this distraction, its just possible I might find some time to be productive, during the remainder of this semester.
The next morning I woke up to horrible blisters, large enough to form small nations sending representation to the United Nations. Therefore, directly after the requisite morning Starbucks run, we hunted down a dollar store and I purchased a stylish pair of yellow foam flip-flops, which I wore for the remainder of the day. As luck would have it, that morning I‘d put on a pair of white socks defaced by Seth, Nick, and several permanent markets, sometime last summer. I flip flopped through the day looking like a mangled cross between tourist and confused panhandler.
Sandaled, I followed Carolyn and Madelynn into the Museum of Sex, which was surprisingly interesting, with long displays on early prostitution laws and burlesque queens. We exited unsure whether we were expected to be “all hot and bothered” by porn clippings ranging from 1910s silent movies to the infamous Deep Throat, or slightly ill at the sight of skulls deformed by syphilis, and terrible menacing tools used to preform abortions. Instead we inspected the museum shop, purchased R rated playing cards, and returned to Times Square to try to procure Broadway tickets.
Despite our enthusiasm for seeing any show, regardless of quality or fame, we were unable to find any within our impoverished price range. So we sat in McDonalds, taunted by the signs flashing Chicago and The Lion King, and periodically leaving to make a phone call or buy a newspaper, in a vain attempt to find a point of intersection between our miserable budgets and the available shows. I mostly lounged about unhelpfully, taking pictures of my socks and face in the overhead mirrors, and drawing faces in the salt on the tables. Still I was upbeat, grinning and giggling and continually being amazed to actually be here. The City seems, I don’t know, I suppose like such a distinctly individual experience that it was (is?) impossible for me to convey the power of the emotion it produces. Periodically I would turn to Carolyn or Madelynn, concerned that they weren’t “having fun”, because I couldn’t see the ecstatic joy written on their faces that I was sure must be written on mine. I may over-estimate my own transparency, though- my happiness might not have been visible except in satisfied sighs at the skyline, and a persistence in singing and humming on the city sidewalks- I sang “On Broadway” and “52nd Street”, and even took a stab at Interpol and Simon & Garfunkel, surrounded by passing commuters.
We did find tickets to Gypsy, and after an obligatory stop at Macy’s took our seats at the very top of a Broadway theater. (I put back on my boots, first. :)) Afterwards I called Dave, and we headed confidently over to Columbia for a late dinner. Positive that after 3 days we could navigate the city, the observation that we were the only white people, and also the only females, in our entire train car didn’t raise in us the slightest concern. We found ourselves, suddenly, in the middle of Harlem in the middle of the night, accompanied exclusively by rats. When we finally reached Dave, and safety, we no longer had our former touristy desire to “see Harlem and everything!” We celebrated our continued life by playing Egyptian Rat Screw with nude men.
The next day we straggled through the slush to breakfast, then to Port Authority, where Madelynn and Carolyn left for Montreal, and I split off to travel to Philly. I waited, feeling somewhat surreal and post-modernist, my short skirt and leather legs surrounded absurdly by billowing suitcases- even while feeling entirely disconnected from my own fingers shoveling quarters into a slot, and jerking back abruptly when a Snapple dropped down, my gesture felt uniquely tied to, I don’t know, the fundamental fabric of America, in a way it wouldn’t feel anywhere else. I struggled to the Greyhound handicapped by a bocketty wheel, but wrapped in imperviously in the cloak of “Simple Things” playing loudly in my headphones, and the glow of being a part of New York.
(Stay tune for another entry, The Further Adventures of Tara!)