New York City is a... bizarre place. Or maybe it's just that I happen to
find myself around bizarre people. One Saturday I was in Central Park, just
chillin' at one of our hang-outs of choice—the
Dead Road—I'm lying on the tarmac
because it's late in the evening (night even) and the wind is chilly. By
laying down one can all but avoid the chilly air, and what's more the tarmac
is still warm from the day's sun. Nearby Aristedes (a good friend) and Jamel
(a new acquaintance) smoke a joint and animatedly discuss spirituality and
existence. I listen. Enter Pauly. Pauly bootlegs beer and soda in the park
and is apparently somewhat intoxicated. High, it would seem, on his own supply.
He picks up a fragment of the conversation and expounds on his own opinionated
and very loud tangent about Timothy Leary, American Culture, Hungarians and
the distinction between soldiers and sailors. In the midst of this a lady,
in her late forties, also apparently drunk, dressed in a sixties-flavoured
bikini-like costume, with one breast hanging out, verbally accosts Pauly
and then explains to the group how she came to have fresh scratch marks on
her arms. I can think of no better editorial than "Only in New York". "Ernesto and the Coefficient of Static Friction."
I was sitting by the fountain in Washington Square Park one day, watching
this group of very Gen-X, quasi-punk, adolescent thrill-seekers cavort
inside the fountain. My friend and I were among a vast crowd of onlookers
who had gathered to see the always popular People Making a Spectacle of
Themselves. These are probably the same people who ridicule mime because
they think it's silly. Anyway these fountain people were wading through,
splashing around, and occasionally standing directly over the fountain
jet itself—apparently the world's most inexpensive enema. There was
also this guy, with whom I was mildly acquainted through mutual friends and
a few parties—Ernesto by name—who didn't seem to be "with" the
others. He seemed to be competing for the crowd's collective attention (and
from what I know of him this was most probably the case) by riding his special
little bicycle in circles (in the water) around the perimeter of the fountain
basin. Unfortunately bicycle tyres don't grip as well under water as they
do on dry land and the bike slipped from under him in a spectacular watery
wipeout. It was quite funny in the comical sense the first time. The second
time was a surprise; we thought he would have learned. By the third time
the joke was just absurd. I think he was trying especially to get the attention
of another of the water wallowers whose light-colored water-soaked bra did
as much to hide the details of her prodigious breasts as it did to stop them
from bouncing around more than she. Eventually, I guess they all just got
cold and went home.
We (myself and a friend of a friend whom
I was showing around the city) discovered this peculiar little specialty
boutique in Greenwich Village:which offered all sorts of prophylactic
paraphernalia from colored condoms to hand-shaped ones. My favorite item
though was this thing called the Condom Cap, which was basically just the
tip of a condom. It did away with the whole shaft area, apparently for increased
sensation. We were both at a lost to understand exactly it how to was to
be secured in place, as the only way I could see was to glue it!... which
I should bloody well hope not.
I asked the doorman at Tavern on the Green in New York whether I could use
their "lavatory". At the time I was dressed in skating attire, a look which
is a few tattoos and a concealed firearm short of Street Punk. I gather this
is an image they discourage at the prestigeous Tavern on the Green beacuse
he audibly sneered as he rather condescendingly pointed the way, and then
audaciously instructed me to "take care of the guy in there" meaning I should
tip this man whose job it is the stand in the bathroom all day while multitudes
of strangers urinate and defecate in his presence. My question is how much
do you pay a guy to watch you pee and then hand you a towel?
I have a friend
(Aristedes
by name) who happens to be black. He and I and his South African friend Brenda
were to see a movie one evening and while we were waiting for her to shower
and meet us we stopped by my mother's apartment to call around for times
and showings. As it happened I ended up not going with them because they
wanted to meet on the East Side and see "Daylight", so Aristedes left without
me. The instant he was out the door my mother turns to me and quite sternly
admonishes me: and I quote, "Don't encourage them to take calls". I would
like to assume that the "them" refers to house guests in general, but more
than likely she meant black people. Despite being disturbing it's rather
ironic really because I'm black. At least I'm dark brown which is darker
than a large portion of the negroid population of America. When I wear a
cap and put my hood up so no one can see my hair it seems every black person
I walk past makes eye contact and offers some sort of acknowledgement, and
white people, Asians and
indigens of the Indian sub-continent seem to get ever so
slightly nervous when I walk behind them. And my mother is darker than I
am. I guess my mother has been among white Americans for so long she identifies
with them. I imagine she was also left tainted by her years in Zambia where
we as expatriates—foreigners who come to their country, live off their
land and take their jobs—were not well received by the poorly educated
locals (who happen to be black). I'm afraid I too am guilty of over-associating
with whitey. Well I was sent to English boarding schools for 4 years.
There was one black guy in my class and he was culturally no different from
the white folk. Then I came here. Went to high school on Long Island, that
bastion of black culture! So I have been known to forget that I have
never used sunblock in my life and have been unfairly quick to suspect the
black guy first. We Indian-like people are sort of the intermediate between
Black and White, we have caucasian features and in most cases caucasian manners;
and dark skin. We don't assimilate well in black society on cultural grounds
and aren't readily accepted into white society because of the color
protocol.
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