New York Hates Me.
Living New York City living made me much more of a neurotic nutcase than I was before I moved there. And I’ve always been a neurotic nutcase.
The city somehow encourages psychotic behavior… and I took full advantage of that. People who do not notice a homeless man walking down the middle of the street and screaming “Total Eclipse of the Heart” are not likely to notice little old me separating my M&Ms by color preference and insisting to my friends that we only walk uptown on odd-numbered avenues. In New York, people feel open to doing whatever in the world they want. There are no restraints.
Do you want to yell about Jesus into a Hare Krishna’s face? Go ahead! Feeling in the mood for a romp through the park wearing nothing but a diaper, despite being 37 years old? We won’t mind! Want to dress up like a bloody, bruised torture-victim and haunt the streets of Manhattan for your “cause”? Help yourself! We probably won’t even notice. (And if we do, we’ll just ignore you.)
In some ways, it’s liberating. It is good to know no one cares what you are doing. Still, enough is enough.
Though I have returned, again and again- often against my will and always to unmitigatedly disastrous results- I remember, as vividly as I remember the breakfast I finished five minutes ago, the night, the moment I was officially done with New York City.
Trust me when I say that the wee hours of a Sunday night is never the time you want to find yourself alone on a Subway platform. Unfortunately for me, that is where you would find me almost every Sunday of the year. When I lived in the Big Apple, I spend my Sundays at my couple-friends’ Upper West Side apartment eating their food and watching their Tivo, eating candy and drinking whiskey, talking far too late considering I had such a long journey home to Brooklyn.
That night was no different. I got to the 6th Avenue L-Train stop just after 1am. It was not nearly as abandoned as it could have been considering. But it was just me standing at the far end. Or so I thought.
I was sufficiently lost in a trashy article about the Celebrity Scandal of the Week, when I start to hear vaguely disgusting noises coming from behind me. Suspicious, I turn around slowly, not expecting to see anything of note. Instead I am greeted by the truly horrifying sight of a giant, homeless black man, pants down around his ankles. He is masturbating and sucking his thumb. In slow motion, he turns his head toward me and for one millisecond he looks me in the eye.
Then I whip around and go back to reading my article.
The train comes three seconds later and Mr. Self-Molester Guy, thankfully, chooses not to follow suit when I get on. It is only then I realize my problem. At first glance, this was almost commonplace. It wasn’t until I sat down, slowed my heartbeat, caught my breath and put down my magazine that I realized what a truly horrifying and traumatizing sight I had just seen… A Giant Homeless Man Masturbating To Me While Sucking His Thumb. TEN FEET AWAY.
I don’t know about you, but I would prefer public masturbation never to become commonplace.
●●●
I should have known from the beginning that perhaps I wasn’t meant to be a New Yorker.
Despite the fact that the best school trip of my life had been to New York City, I had dreamed of moving to Los Angeles since before I could remember: the movies beckoned me since before I can remember. When I managed not to get there for college, I promised myself I would move there afterward. I did not. I instead dropped my L.A. plans and moved to New York with a friend who got into grad school at NYU. I know that others can drop everything and move to random exotic locales. But from the beginning, my life has been fated. I was meant to be silverscreen superstar; I’ve known that since birth. And I’ve been avoiding that fate, running from it scared for years. Moving to New York was the last straw. The universe was pissed at me: if I was planning to ignore my fate, it was planning on punishing me.
My friend Andy is fond of pointing out that in his thirteen years in New York City he has not known one person who has had one of the things happen to them that have happened to me in the mere two years I lived there.
The truth is, I saw the writing on the wall. I knew it was coming. When my new, fancy New York City ATM card came in the mail a week after I moved it had the numbers 666 emblazoned precisely in the middle. When I received my new non-student American Express card the next week, the same thing, only this time the number began with 666. God- or the Devil- was sending me a sign: if it was God, it was a sign I wasn’t supposed to be a New Yorker, if it was the Devil, it was a sign that I was. God was mad at me. The Devil was making his presence known: he was thrilled to have a new victim to torture.
Neither sign was appealing, so I ignored them both.
I knew I shouldn’t have. I believe in signs. I am a pretty superstitious person, even if I am rather lackadaisical about it. But signs to me are the best way I have of interpreting my fate. If there is a God, he cannot talk back to me: he does not have a voice that little old me can understand. So he speaks to us in ways we can: through the hands of an artist, through a change in the weather, and-in my case- through the numbers on the cards in my wallet.
Through signs.
Do not snort at my signs-belief condescendingly. I can hear you doing it, and I’ve heard it many times before. I am impervious to your presumed superiority. You think believing in signs is a faith for precocious five-year-olds. You think it superstitious and unsophisticated. I think myself open to the possibility that maybe there is more to this world than meets the eye.
My signs trace back even sooner than that: I decided to move to New York City in the July of 2003. I moved a month later. My dad had planned on moving me, the idea of which stressed me out to no end. Daddy has no end of back troubles, not mention what I’ll call politely “stress-management issues”. A thousand-mile trip with him in a rental van was not very fun sounding. At all. When my dear friend Emily said she wanted to move me, I jumped at the chance. Not only was she great company- willing to read every line of Cosmo (everything up to and including the fine print and the tampon ads) while we drove- she also had an apartment in Washington, DC where we were welcome to spend the night along the way.
Unfortunately, sometime in the middle of said night, her phone began to ring. It rang and rang until finally she climbed out of bed to answer. It was her parents, irate at some mistake going on at her school’s admissions office. They said Emily had been lying to them, claiming she would finally be graduating when in fact she was off failing classes. Emily said it was all a big misunderstanding. Her parents won out, insisting she fly home within the hour. So at 4am I drove my rented moving van to the Baltimore Airport and dropped off my only hope of getting safely into the city on my own.
I drove that moving van- without even the help of rearview mirrors- for the next 300 miles alone: through Baltimore, up to Philadelphia, across the New Jersey turnpike, and- somehow- into New York City. I am not known to be a fantastic driver, and how I navigated my way through Chinatown and along the tiny streets of the East Village without ramming into something- or someone- is beyond me. But I did.
Entering New York through the Holland Tunnel was just as thrilling as the first time I had come. From there New York City looks so old and magical… But a feeling of complete dread washed over me as I approached my new home. As the neighborhoods grew skuzzier, my heart sank. When I saw my street, I knew then that I was in for a rough year. I love the East Village, but I don’t kid myself that I will ever fit in there. Many people find that the East Village is a place for people who will never fit in, who don’t want to: but East Villagers, in their collective outsider status, they will always fit in with each other. Naturally, the eighty year old man, covered in tattoos did not see me as a kindred spirit and neither did the umpteenth supermodel-thin hipster girl or the neo-punk Goth boys in their skin tight Ramones jeans. And I could tell all of this from that first drive down St. Marks.
I was not wrong, though I grew to accept it. It is nice, in a sense, to feel that no one cares what you are doing. But it can very dreadful, too. Especially when those who do seem to notice you seem so menacing.
A month and three days after I moved to New York, my wallet was stolen. I do not know how, only that I had it when I got into the subway… and was without it when I went to pay for dinner when I got out. I got my cards cancelled quickly enough; only several hundred dollars worth had been charged up on them by then. And it wasn’t until three months later, after I had reacquired a driver’s license and Social Security card, that I realized my identity has been “stolen.”
I feel so foolish saying that: my identity was stolen. I mean, the girl who used my “identity” to open accounts at every mediocre mall store in New Jersey knew nothing about me. She did not know that My Little Pony the Movie was my favorite cartoon for an embarrassingly long time. Or that I routinely brush my teeth only once a day. Or that I still have a crush on my childhood choir director. But she did ruin my credit for ages. She’ll have my first social security card for life. And she caused me quite a lot of tears. But I’m sure she was not thinking about my first Christmas “on my own” when she charged up $600, hopefully as a present for some deserving young girl, at the Limited Too.
I managed to get home to Tennessee that first Christmas; I did a lot of crying and whining to my mom: why me, why me, why me, etc, etc. Not thinking that on my back to my new home in New York, tripping through Penn Station my wallet would be stolen again.
Luckily there was no identity theft the second time. When your identity is officially stolen, credit companies block you from opening on-site credit cards for ten years or so. While that means I can’t open a Barney’s card when I find the perfect Marc Jacobs jacket that I just can’t afford, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
I’ve had surprisingly little stolen from me since December 2003, in fact, since then no one’s stolen more than a glove from me. (Though there have been a shocking amount of gloves stolen!) That’s not to say that New York’s bad “luck” stopped there. (My dad says there is no such thing as bad luck. Only providence. I believe that, to an extent. Though I can’t help admonishing my friend that she’s dooming her marriage by taking her wedding photos before the ceremony… I mean, we have to uphold some standards of old wives’ tales, no?)
Bad luck chased me everywhere throughout New York, to the extent where my friends literally began to fear walking down the street with me. You never knew what might happen, after all. It could be Halloween, and we could be moseying along happily in our attempted-hot costumes, passing out candy to cute looking boys, when low and behold for no reason at all a guy just up and spits right in my eye. Not a little spit, not accidental spit. A huge guy, surrounded by a huge posse, chose me to spit a whole face-full of saliva at. I screamed. They all laughed. It’s really horrifying, let me tell you, to smell a stranger’s breath on your skin, to wipe so much of a stranger’s spit off your face that it soaks through your sweater. To feel someone else’s mouth in your eye. But, hey, this is my life.
Even five years gone from New York, I still practically expect to get accosted by strangers now.
One morning, very early, I’m simply walking down the sidewalk, heading off for the subway, planning to catch the Long Island Railroad out to the beach for a day. And I hear a car horn honk somewhere behind me. I pay it no mind. Why should I? There are car horns everywhere. Only the next thing I know, the car is driving behind me on the sidewalk, and the boys driving it are yelling at me. They stop the car and run up behind me. I guess I would have been scared, had they not looked so ridiculous. Both of them were wiry boys of about eighteen. And both of them were completely drunk. And this at 9 in the morning. They’re slurring, trying to sound impressive: to pick me up, I suppose. They do not realize how completely unappealing it is to have whiskey breath in your face before you’ve even had your coffee. Soon enough, one of them feels we’ve grown close, puts his arm around me. This, of course, is too much. I make my getaway, convincing them that I have plans, and- no- they cannot drive me out to the Hamptons.
On another afternoon, I’m walking a little ahead of two of my girlfriends. It is a rainy day, so we all have umbrellas- everyone does. The sidewalk is crowded with people and their umbrellas. While we’re on the subject, I think it is about time someone finally sat down and wrote some laws on umbrella etiquette in the city. How many times have I been clobbered by someone’s umbrella, or drenched by its spray. How often I have almost lost an eye to someone carelessly waving it about. (Why are you waving your umbrella in the first place, I want to scream.) For example: when someone is walking straight toward you, especially if they have no umbrella of their own, please do something to avoid hitting them with your umbrella. If they are taller, try to lift your umbrella above their head. Hopefully, they will do their part, too, in trying to duck. But there is simply no excuse for whacking some poor, unassuming soul with your umbrella and letting your rain get all over them. Chances are they are wet already. If there were laws such as these, people like me- who lose an umbrella a week- could sleep easier at night. I am very sensitive to umbrella issues, and make it a point to always avoid hitting people with mine (when I actually have one, that is: as with gloves, I seem always to be without an umbrella when I need one). That is why nothing about this incident made sense. From out of the corner of the eye, I see a man rushing toward me. He is coming from the middle of the street, with his eyes set on me. Before I even have a chance to groan and think, not again, he has popped up under my umbrella. He is shouting at me, in my face, more stranger spit in my eye: “I am a TALL man! A TALL man! You gotta move your umbrella for a TALL man! I’m a TALL MAN!!!” He kept shouting and shouting: “Tall man! Tall man!” When finally I pulled myself and my umbrella from his death grip, he kept standing there yelling at passersby to avoid hitting his admittedly tall head with their umbrellas. But I didn’t see him jumping under anyone else’s umbrella.
There were lesser incidents, of course: a large, butch-like woman wearing all biker-leather and smeared-on makeup following me home for ten blocks one 4am, only to ask me to take her photo on her disposable camera.
But there are greater incidents, as well, more strangers following me home. Leaving the subway one night, not even very late, I might add, a man tried to attack me. I had nearly reached the top of the stairs going out into the street. It was snowing. It looked beautiful. For just a moment, I was lost in the dream world that New York can be when you let your guard down, a place where dreams come true, where excitement lurks around every corner- and then a piercing pain went through my body from behind. I screamed, and thought I’d been stabbed.
In fact, I’d only been punched in the back, right beneath my ribcage and above my stomach. I fell over, my face in the snow, blood from my nose trickling out onto the sidewalk, my breath gone completely. With the scream, and the fact I hadn’t dropped my shopping bags or purse (a small triumph on my part), my attacker ran away. But I quickly realized he had doubled back.
From about a block behind he was following me. Had it been a regular night, I would not have made it home. But God- or The Universe, or whatever you want to call him- was, for once, looking out for me. I could feel a presence there: the usually dark, abandoned three block stretch to my apartment was paved with obstacles to my attacker’s next attack. A Con-Edison crew had set up shop, complete with a huge spotlight, in the middle of the darkest part of my walk home. There were enough couples walking toward me (and him) that at perfect intervals I was protected by their company. On the corner before I reached my apartment, the tiny club there was playing a favorite song of mine, “Photograph” by Weezer (not a club song at all- and not a song beloved by just about anyone else, it had the sentimental value to me, however, from days gone by that it was like the hand of a good friend from the past, come out to guide me- though I was fearing for my life- those last twenty feet home). It had been one of my Happy Songs back in my New Orleans days. And I had not heard it in years: I knew I was safe. I got through the next few steps, sobbed in the entryway for a good twenty minutes after I heard him finally stalk off, and I went upstairs to bed. I could not sleep for a week. And I didn’t want to leave my building for the next several days. I knew he’d be outside, awaiting my escape… though he wasn’t, of course.
He was over me, on to his next victim. But I was over New York.
●●●
I like to say that New York hates me. If the city itself is a living, breathing being, why wouldn’t it have feelings, too?
Ah… but that is the easy way out.
Blame it on something else, personify the city, you will not have to deal with your own problems within it.
In truth, I am too small for New York. In a city of brash and confidence I am eaten up with everything. A person rushes past me for a seat on the subway, and I feel emotionally assaulted. The guy at Gray’s Papaya tells me that Pineapple Juice is not included in the $2 Recession Special and I suddenly feel the need to reevaluate my life.
Did feeling small amidst so many towering personalities open me up to the city’s harsher side, make me more pre-disposed to bad luck? I think it did. I felt vulnerable there all of the time, so those looking for someone or something to pick on could- and did- spot me from a mile away. But, then again, there is fate. Fate (God, the Devil, The Universe, Mother Earth, etc), played my weaknesses against me there. For it (they) wanted me somewhere else.
The first time I returned to New York after fleeing to sunny California, my friend Flora borrowed a car to pick me up at JFK. I saw her through the glass vestibule and rushed to meet her. But the airport, New York, and other supernatural forces I can’t explain, had other ideas. As I rushed through the revolving doors to greet her, the doors broke down. And I was stuck. Stuck there in the door, on the other side of the glass, New York City just a few feet away- though something was telling me not to go.
But I did. The doors were eventually fixed. And despite falling head-first into on-coming traffic, despite being almost arrested for a burglary that trip, I survived. I was okay. And I will always be okay, now, no matter what hand fates deals me, no matter if I keep denying it what it wants for me. For I have finally moved away from New York. And though it took years of recovery- as one would need years to recover from an abusive, destructive relationship- I know now I will succeed wherever else I go. Not because I’m fated to be there more than New York. (Even if that is the case.) But because, now, I have survived New York, time and time again. And if you can survive there, there is no where else you cannot handle.
Comfortably settled in Los Angeles for five years now, though still not a silverscreen superstar, I am happy. And rarely accosted by anyone. I no longer feel small. Or abused. I just feel like Me.
