Fish and Slips

Here is a piece of subway art that's had me distracted and bothered for some time now.

As you can see, it depicts a subway car as a zeppelin-cum-flying fish.

The fish, transporting all kinds of bizarre characters, floats gracefully above some version of New York City. There's a knight, a couple of aliens, a guy playing the saxophone, a woman in a red dress with a giant lizard on a leash, a boy and a girl making out, a painter, a couple of punk rockers, a ballet dancer, a guy reading the newspaper, and a business man falling out an open door.

I've seen every one of those characters on the subway before. Almost. OK, so substitute a soldier for the knight, and a couple of clowns in full make-up instead of aliens. Plus, anything goes on Halloween. And it wasn't a woman with a lizard, but I did once see a man pull a lizard out from his pant leg and try to get some teenage girls to play with it, eventually by tossing it at one of them. (That's not a euphemism. I am talking about a reptile. It bounced off the girl and landed on its back on the floor.)

I know this is supposed to be a representation of the width and breadth of humanity that depends on New York City public transportation. (Oh, look at those characters. Isn't New York a wacky place? Aren't we crazy? We love us! And there's an echo of Atomic Age futurism and industrial hope. But there's something about that businessman that bothers me.

Forget about what it might mean, e.g., the recent failures of American finance, artistic hostility toward briefcases. I'm talking about the execution of the cartoon itself. It's very stylistic. The artist was clearly careful in his or her choices, holding to certain ideas of perspective and geometry: the mechanical shine to the fish, the shapes of the buildings and bridges, the boats on the river.

But look at the businessman's arm.

He's reaching into the car, grasping a pole fixed to the center of the floor. There's no way he could have a grip on that post and be hanging completely out of the car. His arm would have to be double its present length!

It's a trick of perspective; three dimensional reasoning intruding on a two-dimensional image. It's a mistake.

Yet the artist seems to be so deliberate about everything else. I might conversely assume it's intentional. But that just seems worse. Why ruin the order of the whole thing to achieve that single sight gag? It seems so imprecise, careless. Almost lazy.

A joke told poorly sucks, no matter how good the punchline is supposed to be.

Vox Popular

Improvement of public transit is always exciting for me, especially when it happens in Queens as well as the other boroughs. It's not just having shiny new stuff. It's the evidence that we're making progress, growing up, that thrills.

So the semi-electric buses run more green. The subway cars have clean blue seats and windows free of etched tags and doodles. Some subway stops have new tilework on the floors and walls.

But by far the best improvement is the voice I hear on the new E trains running express in and out of Queens. She tells us each stop we've arrived at and what to do next. And she is kinda hot.

"This is ... Queens Plaza. Transfer is available to the R ... and ... V train."

It's the way she says "transfer is available" that catches my attention. It rolls off her tongue like candle wax gaining momentum as it runs down the length of a taber. It's a little richer, more throaty, more lusty, than the station announcement. It all runs together in one suggestive vocal gesture.

"Transfer-is-available..."

It's like she's waiting for you after work after a few cigarettes. The ice tinkles in her second, slightly stronger, gin and tonic. She's given up the pretense of waiting for you before she starts her evening. She hitches one leg up across the other knee and leans back. Her lacquered fingertips dangle. She tempts you to switch trains. Go on.

"TRANSferizavailable..."

You know you want to do it. Get off the express. Take your time through the city. Do it ... slow...

But those R trains are still using an intercom. The seats are an ugly orange. And it just wouldn't be the same.

Rat Race to Nowhere

It is morning rush hour, and commuters are coursing through the hallways and platforms like blood-borne pathogens heading for the heart.

A train pulls into the station, its wheels squealing loudly, distinctly. It's one of the old E trains. A mass of people begins to push through the open doorway before passengers have time to exit. Swimming upstream, the passengers are able to eventually push their way through to freedom.

A guy a couple of people in front of me enters the crowded train and stops in the doorway. He wants to be close to the exit to give himself the greater advantage when he reaches his stop, whenever that may be. There's nearly room for two abreast to pass through the doorway, and for all he cares, people can just slide past him. It's not technically a problem, right? Until a second person decides stop in the doorway for the same reason.

I have room to avoid him, but I bump my arm against him and graze him purposefully with my bag. It helps calm me to imagine him dropping and scratching his iPod or getting a smudge on his clothes from leaning against the door.

By and by, we approach my stop. Others, too, are exiting here. I can tell when people ostentatiously begin to stir around me. Several move toward the door. Someone gently nudges me from the side. Maybe it's an accident; maybe she wants me to move. I take a step closer to the door. I'm getting out here, too. Hold your damn horses. We're all in a hurry, lady, but don't you worry. We'll all get off this train, I promise you.

The doors slide open, and I feel the woman trying to get around me to my left. She is smaller than me, and I can see her black hair as her head comes out around my upper arm. I take a half step to the left, hold my left arm out a little further from my body, and she pushes against me harder. I push harder back, but not enough to stop her. It's not worth making a fuss. I just want to clarify my existence, hoping I'll embarrass her for the unnecessary contact. She makes it through the doors before me.

I glare at her as she awkwardly dashes toward the stairs in her uncomfortable shoes, hoping she'll turn around to see the rude creep who was tying to keep her from getting off the train. Really I'm laughing to myself. We'll see how far she gets. I continue at a calm pace behind her and dozens of others.

She never does look back, but it delights me to see her swallowed up in a crowd of frantic commuters whose hurry is equal to or greater than hers. In the end, her reward is to be no more than two people ahead of me on the stairs.

On the landing we all veer right to take the escalator to the next level down. There's a short fence jutting out from the escalator entrance meant to corral us and prevent people from jumping in line in front of others. The desire is for order and forced politeness, and the majority of us is willing to comply. We round the far end of the corral, but two guys slip in through the gap between the far end of the fence and the handrail conveyor belt. They end up right in front of me, craining their necks to find a way past the people in front of them.

The idea is to stand to the right so people can pass on the left. But there are so many people at this time of day, no one is standing to the side. We are all walking down the escalator, and everyone's progress is slow. The guys try to press past the others, but to no avail.

At the landing, they take off like broncos and meet further resistance when they reach the final set of stairs down to the platform. Again, I end up right behind them.

When my connecting train approaches, I see there are a couple of open seats in the car nearest me. I don't imagine I'll be lucky enough to get one of them, but I figure we'll see what happens. It's a little like roulette, whether the train stops with a door right in front of you or six feet to your left or right.

This time, I'm one of the first to board. I have a shot at a seat. Someone in front of me is milling about confusedly, and I can't get by. A woman approaches the seat, and just as she turns to sit, a younger woman wearing all white literally runs up behind her and steals the seat in one swift motion. If the older woman hadn't noticed, she might have sat on her.

The woman in white glances up for a second. The other woman turns on her adversary and raises her voice for us all to hear. "Oh, I see. You need that seat? Go ahead. There you go, honey. It's all yours!" Her friend tugs at her arm to discourage her from saying more.

The seat stealer looks at her quietly, blankly and then stares into the space between herself and the floor.

I am filled with something like hatred for her. I want someone else to speak up and say something. I keep my eyes on her for several stops. I wonder if she's avoiding eye contact with everyone on the train.

After a few stops, the irate woman now long gone, a space opens up next to the woman in white, just a little too small for a person to fit into. But before long another woman turns to present her back side to the row of seated passengers and, without so much as an "excuse me," wriggles herself into the tight space. She can't even sit back all the way. This new woman is an obnoxious cow, but I briefly I feel some schadenfreude over the woman in white's obvious discomfort.

Leaning forward with her oversize purse on her lap, she fumbles with a magazine or newspaper and holds it out in front of her. Forgeting her surroundings, she allows the straps of her bag to flop down to both sides, hitting her neighbors in the face and chest before landing limply in their laps.

It is obviously annoying to the strangers. Every move she makes causes her purse straps to rub against them, but neither of them makes any move to stop it. My allegiance begins to change. Could it be that I have some sympathy for the woman in white? The purse lady is actually worse than she is.

I long for a confrontation. Why do we take such pains to avoid talking to fellow passengers? To avoid touching them? Why do I never make any confrontation?

My exit comes before either of theirs. I never get to see how it ends. But it never really does end. The players in these little scenes of denial only change. They never quit.

The Odors of East Broadway

Walking to my office from the last Manhattan F train stop before Brooklyn, I felt like I could imagine what the old Lower East Side was. Or maybe what it always has been — and always will be. A neighborhood of immigrants. The home of the undervalued and overwhelmed.

The social service agency where I worked was located on the eastern edge of ever-eastward-expanding Chinatown. The area is still brimming with unassimilated culture, but the immigrants these days are the young white folks from uptown, adding their soy latte paper cups and Whole Foods plastic bags to the polystyrene clam shells and broken liquor bottles of previous inhabitants' detritus.

Every morning along East Broadway I passed several of the small food distribution warehouses that supply the innumerable restaurants in the area. It's all rubber tires and wooden palettes, beeping carts and honking horns, orders barked in Chinese and answered in Spanish.

Lazy, unaffected stray cats lounge on bags of rice. Cases of five-gallon jugs of monosodium glutamate wait, cooling in the early shade. Bags of overripe onions and packs of bean sprouts sit waiting for refrigeration, sending into the air a spoiled, acrid bouquet of lost time.

Waxed cardboard boxes of chicken parts drip quietly inches above the pavement. Oil and bile and festering water from thawing seafood mix with milky pools of unidentifiables in the streets. The draught, gently, blindly finding its way toward the pungent gutters, never frozen in winter, never quick in summer, would glisten in the sharp early sun of crisp fall mornings, would stir cigarette butts slowly in shades of gray and beige in the murky mornings of springtime.

God knows what time these poor guys got out of bed to haul crates, push carts, load vans. They'd have been at it for hours before I passed by at 8:30 in the morning. I'd avoid the puddles, careful not to slip, hopping to one side then the other to miss skillful dollies and swiftly moving carts, pressing onward toward the warming day to a place I had the nerve to complain about.

Blood, Sweat and Queers

Logo is premiering a documentary about the rivalry between the San Fransisco Fog RFC and the Sydney Convicts RFC leading up to the 2006 Bingham Cup.

I can't embed it, but here is a link to it: Walk Like a Man

The tournament was hosted by my team, the mighty Gotham Knights RFC of New York City. A lot of B roll footage is from that tournament, and you can see us in our yellow-and-blue jerseys running around with that silly white ball kicking up dust across the abominable rugby pitches on Randall's Island. Oh, it was hot that weekend, and it was still only spring!

Everything the Fog and Convict players say about their teams, their teammates, their own experiences, the ideals of the sport itself, and the way the game is coached and played is mirrored absolutely equally among all teams around the world.

Bright as a New Penny

The E train home from Midtown tonight was new, like the N or the L. It was disorienting to hear the calm, cogent voice of the prerecorded station announcements. (It was distracting to be able to understand the voice at all.) It's the female voice of the N train, not the male voice of the 4/5/6. And I swear that train traveled faster and smoother than the old model.

The seats are blue and clean. The video monitor shows the bright blue "E" circle. The LED display clearly shows the next stops. The windows are not all scratched up. The floor is already scuffed ... but I'll let that pass.

The Most of Christmas Past

The tree started out nice. OK, it was always a little funny-looking, but it had a sort of rough-hewn, homemade dignity. I would have sawed about six inches off the trunk and removed some of the scraggly lower branches to give it a more classical triangular shape. (See, Dad, I was paying attention!) The lights are random leftovers from previous years' trees, mostly pale yellow, a couple strings of multicolored lights, one of them blinking.

The pièce de resistance was the Christmas pop music coming from a radio hidden under a little red felt tree skirt. I confess I felt a slight swelling in my heart and a tear in my eye at "Do They Know it's Christmas?" (Remember 1984's Band Aid?)

A few days before Christmas the tree greeted us in the lobby of our building, generating a gentle glow and sparkling meekly. It was a sudden change to an otherwise cold and empty lobby, and the effect was enchanting. It was like a kid's art project you'd tack to the fridge. But like said art project, the longer it stays there, fading and gathering dust and food stains, the sadder it looks, and the less it does to honor the artist.

The tree has not aged well. Nearly all the lights have been either unplugged or have burned out. All that remains of its once festive twinkle is a single string of multicolored lights. It snakes up through a few of the lower branches like a good time barely remembered.

The radio station stopped playing Christmas tunes on December 26. Now it's back to boring old Lite FM. I can't figure out for all the world why it's still turned on and tuned in. Now that we're past the twelfth night, I think it's time to say good-bye to Christmas.

It's a little depressing to see the last vestiges of a withering holiday. I boxed up our own tree last weekend, shuttered it away in the closet. The sentimentality gets me every year: I decorate the tree after Thanksgiving with carols on the stereo; I take it apart in January in total silence, distracting myself from heavier thoughts by counting the lights by twos so I can rubber band the strings to fit back in the box properly.

This morning, walking to work from the subway, I thought I caught a piece of confetti floating and twisting down to the sidewalk from somewhere. I looked up and saw about a dozen squares of tissue paper. They do a pretty good job of sweeping the streets on New Year's Day in Times Square, but I guess they don't get to the confetti trapped on the rooftops until the week after. Looking down from my 31st-floor office later, I saw men with power blowers shifting piles of multicolored glitter and paper off onto the sidewalk, briefly showering pedestrians in the memories of the melée of a few days ago. For a moment I wanted to be down there, but with Christmas neatly folded up, we are all back at our grindstones.

Water Pressure

"I'll tell you something for nothing," the bartender said. "You want to buy water."

"Water," I said.

"It's the cheapest thing we sell. And you don't have to finish it here. You can take it with you."

I considered what he was saying, fingering the label on my $6 beer. "Water counts?"

"Sure. I tell you what. Towards the end of this competition, people are buying whole cases of water and taking them home with them."

A friend of mine is competing in an American Idol-style singing competition at venerable old, historic Stonewall Inn. It's a little silly. A little shabby. The sound goes out at intervals. The lighting is bad. But it's precisely that silliness, that shabbiness, that gives those West Village gay bars their charm.

Each week, someone gets eliminated based on the previous week's voting. It's all very democratic. Everyone in the audience can vote. And you get a ballot for every drink you buy. Every drink. So the trick, it would seem, is to round up all the drunks you can find. Finally they'll do you some good!

The competition is realm and the contestants are talented. By and by, they reveal their strengths and their personalities. There's a different theme every week, so everyone's bound to expose some weaknesses, too. Over time, the competitors become friends. The same folks who come every week in support become familiar. It's a little Wednesday night community.

So the water trick seems a little cynical to me. (Almost worse than exploiting your friends' alcoholism!) Whole cases of water, really? Can't we trust ourselves to suss out the winner based on talent? And do we have so little faith in our friends that we'd rather stack the deck to be safe?

These things can't always be based on merit, can they? Sometimes a real stinker gets the votes. Sometimes the person who gets cut wasn't the worst one. Sometimes the judges say useful, thoughtful things; and sometimes they're more interested in getting a laugh. In the end, no matter who gets cut, it's a love fest every time.

The closer we get to the end, I feel the heightened sense of danger that the person who ultimately wins may not actually "deserve" it. Boo-hoo. I guess in that way the competition is a very good representation of reality indeed.

Hostage

One of Jeff's hobbies, when he comes home from work, is pointing out all the news I missed that day, which usually is a lot. Actually, it's not something he likes to do. He's usually exasperated that I don't know, he being a journalist, the news being his life. But I always feel like an uninformed idiot around him.

Sometimes he tries to trick me. "Oh, Madonna had a heart attack today!" he'll say.

"No she didn't," I'll calmly reply. "And the reason I know is that I did happen to read earlier that she and Guy are denying the divorce rumors. There was nothing about a heart attack."

Sometimes it's feasible, and he'll get me.

"Another pope dead? Already?"

"Oh my god! How many planes can crash in one day?"

"Why would they put a military base so close to a dog pound?"

It makes me panic. Can I really know so little about the world?

Fifteen people were rescued from six years of captivity in Colombia yesterday. It's a huge deal. One was a Colombian presidential candidate six years ago. Three are American. You can forgive me for not knowing the particulars; a lot of people have been kidnapped in Colombia. But their release is something I should have caught.

Of course, the ridiculousness that I knew more about Madonna's marital status was not lost on me.

I used to be a news junkie. I listened to public radio all day long, and on weekends, like it was my job. (In fact public radio was my job at one time, but that's not what I mean.) I would read a few stories on BBC News online every day. I was never much for daily newspapers, but I would read the Sunday New York Times every week.

Now I hardly ever listen to public radio. It's too distracting at work, and I don't like WNYC's evening or weekend schedule (the good shows come on too early). So thank god for podcasts.

The Sunday Times still stacks up week after week. Sometimes I make a pretense of removing the blue plastic bag. But usually it just sits there, where I've kicked it out of the way the previous week.

I can't say why I lost my enthusiasm, or how, or even when. But I wish I had it back.

One saving grace: I read The Economist now. The economic analysis is a bit over my head, but it's great to get a non-American perspective on American politics. Its international news coverage is excellent and digestible. And sometimes my favorite stories are from its science and technology section. My favorite thing about The Economist is that it is clearly a magazine, but it refers to itself as a newspaper. Very cute.

On the way home from the subway last night, I saw a lot of men crowding around storefronts and bodegas and the front widows of bars. Each time I passed I could see they were staring up at a soccer game on TV. Don't ask me who was playing, but I live in a very South American neighborhood, and soccer is a big deal here.

Many if not most of those men were Columbian. I wonder how many of them knew about the hostage news.

Shh! I Can't See!

One of the finest examples of those things that make remember why you love New York City is the New York Philharmonic's free Concerts in the Park series. (Other cool free stuff in parks includes Shakespeare in the Park, Broadway Under the Stars, Bryant Park Summer Film Festival and the River to River Festival.)

One could go for the performance alone. It is one of the world's finest concert orchestras. But plunked down at one end of Central Park's Great Lawn, and playing to a crowd in excess of 60,000 and relying on a speaker system distributed throughout 13 acres, the full range and power of the orchestra is lost. The music on Tuesday night was fine, a simple roster of crowd-pleasers, a little "1812 Overture," a couple of standard-issue Sousa marches — nothing too challenging.

But what makes the event is the gathering of friends, the wine and cheese and chips and wine and baguettes and wine, the crossover of strangers from picnic blanket to picnic blanket. It's a rare moment when we all stop fussing with our super-important lives, take a breather to appreciate some of the beauty we literally pass by every day, and come together like a real community. It's when New York is New York. Thousands of us all there for one thing: each other. And, by extension, the other guy. And, by extension, the other guy...

I brought five bottles of wine with me, a nice mix of reds and chilled whites, including a nice soave my friend Jamie seemed particularly delighted by. So much picnicking! So much conversation! So many people wandering around on cell phones trying to find their friends!

Seriously — "What did we do before cell phones?" We arrived on time.

A star-filled night (as star-filled as you get in the City) overtook the dusk, and soon we were surrounded by citronella candles and miniature flashlights and glowing cell phones and those infernal multi-colored phosphorescent plastic whips parents are powerless against purchasing for their kids. The Philharmonic stopped, and the fireworks began.

Fireworks never fail to delight me. They are so pointless and wasteful ... but they are so brilliant! It's like, we're so happy to be alive and to be there that all we can think to do is light stuff on fire and hurl it up into the sky and watch tiny bits of metal burn and fall back to the earth.

The funniest part about the fireworks was the silence in the crowd. All through the performance, there was a low roar of chatter. People were talking about the workday, their vacation, their friends and family, the performance. Laughing. Shouting, "I'm right here waving my arms. See? No. Next to the tree on the other side of the speaker. No, the one with the pink and blue balloons — yeah — see me n— Yeah. Yeah. I'm right here. See me?" into their bloody cell phones. We even saw some guy propose to his girlfriend. We presume she said yes. Or at least that she would consider it.

But as soon as the instrument cases were latched tight, and the Philharmonic loosened their neckties, and we all turned southward to face the fireworks, everyone shut up. It was as if we had to ... so we could see.

It reminds me of that line line in Ghostbusters when Ray says, "Listen! Do you smell something?"

It makes the eventual "Oh!" and "Ooh!" stand out. It sounds funny. Like we're surprised. Like we haven't seen it all a hundred times before. So my drunk friends and I started saying other vowel sounds, just for the sake of variety. "Aye!" "Uuuuh!" "Eeee!" They seemed as legitimate as the old standbys.

Then we moved on to consonants. "Fffff!" "Kkkhhh!" (which sounds a lot like a sneeze.) "Mmmm!"

It quickly degenerated into animal sounds. "Baa-aa-aah!" "Rrreeow!" "Waak waak!" "Moooo!"

We had killed the silence with our own performance. And the people nearby could hear us more clearly than they could hear the orchestra. I secretly dared someone to shush me. "Why?" I would ask. "Can you not see over the noise?" Annoyance with us would seem hypocritical to me, following a performance that many of them hadn't even really listened to.

But apparently they had not come to see us, and no one said a word about it. They just continued to gaze back up into the sky, their eyes and mouths wide open, holding each other or holding themselves in the chilly summer night air.

And then it was over.

The Gay and the Godly

A man on the train this morning was witnessing for Christ hoarsely and vociferously. It was one of those moments when you curse the express trains out of Queens, because you know you're stuck with it for a good number of stops. He started out collecting change for a "food program" for the homeless, which was dubious enough. (It's how to be a Christian, he explained.) But he soon made it worse by lurching headlong into a tirade about Gee-zus.

You can be saved, he was telling us. Just say a prayer. He was generous enough to share that prayer with us. I won't remember the words now, but we've heard it before: some combination of biblical quotation and plea for salvation in exchange for eternal allegiance.

"Boom!" he said. "You're saved. Now how long did that take? Seven seconds. That's all it took to save a crackhead like me. That's right, I said I was a crack head."

Somehow it didn't surprise me that he had been a crackhead. What did surprise me was that seven seconds could save anyone. (Even Madonna had four minutes!)

"A good-looking man like me." (I can't confirm how good-looking he was. I was avoiding eye contact.) "I did some terrible things in my life. I did some despicable things in my life. Sold my grandmama down the river for a rock of crack." (He said "crack" with the same fervent rhetorical emphasis as "Gee-zus" in a way that made me absolutely believe that he was very well acquainted with both, crashing through each consonant and elongating each vowel as if the words were struggling to escape from their sentences.) "But if I can be committed to crack, I can be committed to Christ. If I can be committed to crime, I can be committed to Christ." And so on and so forth.

He was very interested in us committing ourselves to Jesus immediately. "Everyone believes when they're dying," he said, "because you got no choice left. You're desperate. But you gotta do it now. You could die any time."

"Yeah, but ain't no one dying here right now," one young woman said to her friend.

I have never been much for street preaching and missionaries. It's sort of a pessimistic approach for a religion to take, if you ask me. No one will believe this unless we convince them by all means necessary. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light, these guys apparently have very little confidence that we'll find him. Have they given up on teaching by example?

At the same time, I absolutely respect their convictions and the strength of their faith. I just sometimes wish they'd go get saved somewhere else. But you ride it out until you leave the train or he does. In this case, he backed out the door at Queens Plaza, still preaching his good word, and walked to the local track to transfer. We heard every word until the doors closed and reduced him to a muffled echo.

One night a while back, I saw one of these religious experiences turned around in a way I'd never seen before.

It was the end of the night for me and my boyfriend, and we were on our way home. We were comfortably lit and a little sleepy on the subway seats, not particularly in the mood for anything remarkable, looking forward to bed.

Three women stepped into the train and assumed spots standing directly in front of us. They looked very well put together, if not a little gaudy, like they had just come from a wedding, all long, gleaming fingernails, iridescent lips, bright brown and beige tones across their cheeks, gold and silver synthetic fabrics.

One of them had her eyes closed, and she was bobbing her head like she could hear music that the rest of us could not. When it became too much to contain in her head, she began to sing. It was "Amazing Grace," and yet... it was not.

The other ladies perked up and sang along:

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

It's a beautiful song. Or, rather, it can be a beautiful song. But after the first verse, she ad-libbed the rest, singing simply "I love the Lord, I love the lord..." over and over against the same melody. It seemed spontaneous — and unplanned, judging by the uninventive lyrics. Occasionally one of the other women would join or take over the "song," none of them contributing much but the odd vocal flourish or worshipful gesture of the arm. It must have been past midnight, so I guessed they had just come from some sort of day-long worship service — Methodist or Southern Baptist, by the look of it, if my sense of stereotype is anything to go by — and they were still a little touched by the holy spirit.

Unfortunately, very few of the other passengers seemed to be feeling it. I was annoyed by their righteous and presentational self-indulgence. What's worse, it was all very monotonous.

Many people just looked away. Some glared up at the women. A gay couple across the aisle from us were rolling their eyes. I closed my eyes and sighed and hoped it would end, or that at least she would break out of the trance and sing something different. But rather than merely being annoyed, or telling them to shut up as we all wished we could, Jeff looked up and tapped one woman's arm. "Hey, excuse me. Excuse me. Do you know 'On Eagles' Wings'?" he asked.

"On Eagles' Wings" is one of those post-Vatican II hymns from the '70s. It's taken from Psalm 91. Everyone raised on Catholic Mass knows it.

No, they said, they didn't.

Jeff stood up. "Can I sing it for you?"

I wasn't sure if I was amused, pleased or embarrassed, but I looked at the floor for a moment. Not only was he responding to a pack of crazies, but he was actually participating. I was preparing to be mortified, but he began singing the refrain:

And He will raise you up on eagle's wings,
Bear you on the breath of dawn,
Make you to shine like the sun,
And hold you in the palm of His hand.

And just like that, they were totally disarmed.

Ooh! they said. They did not know it, but they certainly liked it. How does it go?

So Jeff sang it again. It was like a walk-off for Jesus. The ladies enthusiastically tried to sing along with him as he stood there with his hands outstretched like a youth minister. All that was missing was a guitar and a tambourine. The gays across the aisle were laughing. Almost everyone in the car had a smile. And we were — what bliss! — approaching our stop.

"That boy has the Lord in him!" one of them called out as we stood to leave.

"Yes he does," said another.

I had never thought of that before, but I supposed it was true. Jeff had succeeded in undermining their annoyance in their own language and in a way that was not disrespectful. It was brilliant and accidental, an unlikely connection between people very unlikely to cross paths outside of the Great Equalizer, the New York City subway system, and I have rarely been so amazed by him as I was then.

One Track Mind

The pet owner is bundled up against the winter elements. His dog, because this is New York City, is teeny-tiny and dressed in an outfit that costs as much as the man's. The dog scampers along in front, keeping pace, pretending there is no leash connecting them. And then he stops to inspect the base of a retaining wall. The owner passes him and pauses, giving the lead a gentle tug. Come on. Time to go in, boy. The man shifts on his feet and shivers.

The animal stands there with his ass in the air, clearly shivering. He's one of those little guys that shivers on a warm day. A bitter wind whistles under his tail and across his exposed belly. His single-mindedness and determination is almost inspirational. I'm coming, I'm coming. I just really have to smell this because it's so ... interesting, and I ... Oh, wait, what's this? Oh, now that... that smells awful. Isn't that awful?

I Heart Ms. Pac-Man

East Meets West

Today, the best-looking ground beef we could find at our local supermarket was halal. Reminds me of one of my earliest memories of the neighborhood. Standing outside a Rite Aid while Jeff was buying a pack of smokes, I saw a white-robed man wheeling a metal shopping basket heaped with goat carcasses across 37th Avenue. He disappeared into a restaurant. I knew I was in New York.

Dinner tonight was Swedish meat balls. Swedish meatballs with halal meat. Why is this funny to me?

The Emperor's Children

	I can't say I don't recommend it. Just be prepared to take some time with it.

Messud's writing style is dizzyingly parenthetic. I lost count of the sentences I had to read over two or three times before I could disentangle the syntax. It's like a photocopy of exact thought at times: It may have made perfect sense to her, but not everyone can follow along. I accepted it early on as a stylistic quirk, but often it seemed gratuitous, a mishmash of clauses that could have existed happily as separate sentences, whose unholy union only complicated and obfuscated rather than providing any deeper meaning.

She uses several turns of phrase that just don't parse for me. And I think she hit the thesaurus a few too many times. I am not an unintelligent reader, and I have my own fondness for good words, but what's the point when it obscures rather than reveals meaning? It's inexcusable, especially considering her consistent misuse of the very simple word "comprise" throughout. Sometimes it's not so much the fault of the writer as it is her editor.

That said, the novel is engaging. Each chapter is written from the perspective of a one of the principle characters, yet the voice is a consistent coherent narrator. The variety keeps the story from getting too dull.

The one thing that binds all of them to each other is their tremendous self-indulgence. (I'm sure her own self-indulgent writing style was not nearly as intentional.) I recognized people I dislike in these characters. And isn't it always the case — I recognized qualities I dislike about myself in them. It kept me from liking them too much to remain objective, yet it made them familiar enough to keep me paying attention.

What drew me to this book was my curiosity about the new spate of novels and short stories that have come out in recent years in which 9/11 plays a significant part. It annoyed me at first that anyone would reduce that day and its aftermath to a plot point — even if it was done well. Six years on, it can still be a ballsy proposition. But like all such events, it is a plot point. It is our history, our story, our plot. I admire the way Messud uses it at the end as a means of releasing &$8212; shattering — the characters out of their illusions, while still capturing the horror, panic and disbelief of those days. I think it had a similar effect on all of us, however short- or long-lasting it may have been.

Dancing Lessons

Considering the years I've lived in the very South American section of Jackson Heights, it is embarrassing to admit that I still cannot comprehend the difference between salsa, meringue, mambo, rumba... you name it. But whatever it is I hear at any given moment, there is a lot of it. It is blasted from cars stopped at traffic lights. It pours out of the multitude of bars and clubs peppering Roosevelt Avenue. It comes in pops and beeps from cell phone ring tones in the line at Rite Aid.

It is not an occasional indulgence; it is blended into the fabric of every day life.

Walking home from the subway one night last week, I heard familiar tones and felt familiar beats — even if I can't name it, it is familiar — coming from ... somewhere. A parked car? A stereo speaker in someone's kitchen window? Looking for the source, I saw families gathered on the sidewalk a block ahead. It was like church had just let out, but it was after 10 p.m.

Kids ran among cars parked at meters. Adults stood around smoking and chatting and laughing. As I neared them, I saw that they were standing outside a beauty shop. And why should I be surprised? Usually when I arrive in my neighborhood after work, most of the shops are locked down and shuttered, but this place was the quintessence of street life.

A flashy LED sign made a sequence of optimistic declarations about fingernails and makeovers and French hairstyles, punctuated by blocky images of blinking eyes and vibrating telephones. The place can't have been more than 10 feet wide, but it was very deep. The walls were painted a bright orange in sharp contrast to the dull linoleum of the floor, and across the ceiling were scattered bouquets of pink helium balloons tied with white ribbons. It was a beauty shop block party, and it was hopping! People grouped in pairs spun and bobbed, butting up against each other, bouncing literally off of the wall. Others sat in a row of chairs against the other longs walls, old, uncoordinated, or just catching their breath.

Where was the equipment? The chairs, the vanities, the nail tech stations. Where, in other words, was the beauty shop? It didn't strike me until after I had rounded the corner that the place hadn't been there the day before. This must have been a grand opening. In my part of town, a grand opening can last a month.

I wondered how keen the neighbors were to have their local hairdressers and a hundred of their best friends livin' la vida loca outside their bedroom windows. But for all I knew, their windows were closed, because they were down here bumping and grinding with everyone else.

My family is one of those for whom dancing is something that happens after you hit the bar at a wedding. Maybe. Occasionally, it seems appropriate for someone else to do — up on a stage — if someone's paying them to do it. Dancing for us is not a way of life. It does not happen spontaneously. It is not necessary for social interaction. Indeed, it is not even wanted in most cases. It does not bubble beneath the surface of our skin and jerk us into sudden, joyful animation when three sounds in sequence (a tapping pencil, a squeaky brake pad, a palm against the side of a garbage can) form a rhythm. We are not a people of gyrating hips and deep shoulders and clapping palms. And at times like this, when a neighborhood is brought together in a beauty shop not by a 10% discount on manicures or highlights or hair extensions but by salsa and pink balloons, I desperately wish that we were.

New York Gay Rugby Team Reaches Milestone Game

UPDATE: The game will be at Wassening Park in Bloomfield, NJ, at 1 p.m. on 10/27. See gothamrfc.org for directions.

Following their defeat of Fordham University's Old Maroon RFC 41-5 on Saturday October 20, 2007, the Gotham Knights will advance to the the final round of the New York Metropolitan Rugby Union Division III playoffs this coming Saturday.

This is unprecedented for a gay rugby team in New York, or rather, a gay team that plays rugby. But since we've got a few straight guys on board, we can't really say that, so we say "predominantly gay." Which is fine by me, because even that is unprecedented. The win last weekend also makes us the first such team to play in the Northeast Rugby Union championship tournament in he spring, the first stage of the USA Rugby national championship playoffs.

And, wouldn't you know it, this happens during a season I happen not to be playing. (Maybe these two things are not unrelated...)

The championship game will be played at Brookdale Park in Montclair, NJ. I won't be there, because I'll be cleaning house for my husband's birthday party. But I will be on pins and needles waiting for that email from someone's Blackberry. Stay tuned.

Tomas Mendes: Worst Cab Driver Ever

Sometimes you just don't have any luck with a cab driver. Jeff and I were once refused a ride home because the driver didn't feel like driving to Queens. He told us this after we were in his cab. he just refused to move until we got out. (This is against the rules, by the way. But what am I going to do? Take the wheel myself?)

Once a driver took offense when Jeff asked him to hang up his cell phone. He was rude and unresponsive to the point that he wouldn't look up to take our money when we reached our destination. Jeff dropped the cash in the front seat and got out. Thinking he hadn't been paid, the driver started shouting at us, calling Jeff a whore in Spanish.

Jeff is extremely friendly and respectful to cab drivers. He's a little picky about cell phones, maybe, but unlike many people in this city, he does not treat taxi drivers like servants. If they're amenable to conversation, he'll lean forward and chat them up. "How are you doing tonight?" "Where are you from?" And that kind of thing. "Pakistan? Ah. You from Lahore? Oh, yeah? I'm told it's a great city."

We're all people, and why shouldn't we talk to strangers? They don't always love it, but usually they'll at least be friendly. Sometimes it charms the drivers. Sometimes it just sort of fizzles. A couple of nights ago, however, it inspired something close to rage.

At closing time early on the morning of October 6, we hailed a cab outside of Xth Ave. Lounge in Hell's Kitchen. Jeff leaned forward to strike up a conversation with the driver as usual. He started out asking the guy about his name, Tomas Mendes, and tried to guess the origin. Mendes with an S indicates one thing, whereas Mendez with a Z indicates another, he was explaining to me.

"I don't like guys," the driver shouted.

Jeff paused. "I asked, 'Where are you from?'" he said, at which point, the driver pulled over and started shouting. I was so confused by the reaction, I couldn't even follow what he was saying. But it was soon clear that he was threatening to throw us out of the cab.

What? OK, I'm not going anywhere, I thought.

Jeff recoiled, wide-eyed, and sat back in the seat. The car came to a stop, and Tomas Mendes wildly gestured toward the door and continued ranting. I half expected him to reach back and hit one of us.

"Wait a minute. What are you talking about?" I said, raising my voice.

He turned in his seat and kept shouting and waving his hands. "You get back. I don't want to talk! I don't like mens!"

"OK, then. Just drive us home!" I shouted back.

"I don't like mens! I don't like mens!" he kept shouting.

You don't like English, either, do you? I thought.

"You know ... I was just trying to talk to you," Jeff said.

The note of confusion and dejection in his voice made my heart swell and raised all the hate I had in me toward that driver. He seemed to be waiting for us to exit the cab, but I was not about to get out of that car. Not for some homophobic moron. And if our presence irritated him so much, the back seat of that car is exactly where I wanted to be.

After a moment of silence, we began to move and we rejoined the traffic of 45th Street — and I fantasized about all the things I would do upon exiting the cab.

By the time we hit the 59th Street Bridge, I decided I'd spit on the back seat and then slam the door.

He studiously avoided eye contact in the rear-view mirror with either of us, but I kept a steady, scowling stare at the reflection of his large forehead in case he were to glance up.

At 21st Street in Long Island City, I decided to slam the door hard enough to break a window.

At 36th Street, I realized I had to pee, so I considered pressing hard on my bladder as long as I could stand it, and slightly undoing my pants, so I could open the door, let Jeff out, and piss in his back seat in one swift movement before slamming the door and running.

65th street: I'm going to take a shit right on the floor of the cab and leave him with the aroma of disappointment all the way back to Hell's Kitchen or the West Village or the East Villaqe or Midtown or Chelsea or Downtown — wherever else he might just pick up another drunk couple of fags.

Oh, I'm so glad he stopped my boyfriend from seducing him, because honestly, I too was irresistibly drawn to his receding hairline, his sallow eyes, his body odor... There was such a thin line between Jeff's check-out line conversation and a sexual overture. There's no telling what might have happened ...

I felt like I had just been verbally gay bashed. And all we did was behave like any two inebriated but polite 30-something men getting into a cab at four in the morning. And, honestly, I thought about my ability to hide behind that. How did he know we were gay? Xth Ave. Lounge is only gayish. Everyone goes there. What gives him the right? How dare he?

But a bit of shame struck me. And then I wished I could show him just how gay I really am. I wished I could fellate some guy in the back seat of his cab. I wished I could spread the result across the Plexiglass barrier. I wished he had reached back and hit one of us. I wanted an excuse to hit him so bad.

Of course, I did none of these things. I just reached over and touched my husband's leg and scratched him gently with my fingernail and looked up at him and winked. That was as gay as I needed to be. He seemed still a little shocked, and I was proud of my anger. So I went back to staring a hole through the driver's head.

All through the long trip home, I thought what might happen if we refused to pay him. How fast would we run? Would he follow us, cursing and shouting? Should we be dropped off several blocks from our apartment to throw him off? But even that would have been a step too far. We were better than that. Jeff asked him in his native language: "Do you want a tip?" A nice touch, I thought. An olive branch.

He refused. "No, just the fare."

So Jeff paid him. And Tomas Mendes was silent.

Not much of a charmer, our Tomas. Lic. No. 418186, expiring 03/08/09. Taxi No. 1P25. Worst cabbie I've ever met. And that is saying a lot in this city.

If I had a jar full of loose change, I would have counted out the shit in pennies and nickels and dropped it in his front seat.

I slammed the door anyway. The window did not break.

...But You Can't Take the Country Out of the City

When I was reminded this summer of the last remaining functioning farm in New York City, the longest continually farmed land (by white people) in the state, there was no question that Jeff and I had to go check it out. Of all the crazy things to do in this city, surely this must be among the craziest. And the Queens County Fair, held in mid-September out on the Nassau County border in Floral Park, a neighborhood I'd never heard of, was the perfect opportunity.

Being good Midwesterners, we love a good fair, and having lived in Minnesota for a good chunk of time, we've had a taste of the best. (The Minnesota State Fair, though it is the second largest state fair in the country after Iowa, will always get my blue ribbon. But I am not without my prejudices.) The Queens County Fair is a charming escape from urban frenzy, recalling the ghosts of an agrarian past that New York City has all but forgotten, but it seemed to me ultimately a desperate recreation of a Queens that no longer exists. (I have found that Queens is often the site of such grand anachronisms. Witness the World's Fairgrounds in Flushing Meadows.)

For the owners of the prize-winning chickens and wood carvings, this is still obviously a very present and real lifestyle, but for the vast majority of us, this is all a vision of "the old days." The farmhouse, the fairgrounds, the vegetation, the animals — the odors — it is all an exhibit. The site is in fact a museum — a source of amusement and distraction for us city folk, no longer front and center in our minds as the backbone of a way of life.

Also, it's a very white audience, which may have reflected the local demographic 50 years ago, but not today. The clearest example of this that I saw was the Bavarian tent, with its beers and brats and lederhosen. It's a long-time staple of events like this, but why? The gyros and kebabs of the midway could have come out of Astoria, maybe, but a far better representation of the county might have included empanadas, halal chicken and rice, or maybe some tandoori or curry. Not that I have anything at all against beers and brats. Or lederhosen.

A woman working in the livestock tent said to a patron, "City kids don't have a chance to see this stuff." Goats and cows and chickens are exotic to us now. Ironically, these days, as suburbs and exurbs encroach on the shrinking countryside, many country kids don't get to see so much of this stuff either. Neither good nor bad, I suppose; just true.

A pictorial:

Green Acres — You can see we're still in the city.


MENSA Chicken — Some of the chickens were wandering around the fairgrounds, while others among them were too stupid or unlucky to figure out how to escape their pens.


Big Cock — Roosters really are sort of beautiful, even if they're standing next to a dirty man-made "pond."


Turkey — "When Thanksgiving time is here, then it's our turn to gobble, gobble, gobble."


Ouch! — Do you cook with these or defend yourself against burglars?


Orange Crush — I have a perfectly healthy obsession with pumpkins.


Eat 'Em Up — Oh, what I couldn't do with a sharp knife and a cutting board.


Purple Haze — Look at all the shiny, purple lusciousness. This was one of the most beautiful things I saw at the fair.


All Tarted Up — Midwesterners like me have a special fondness for rhubarb.


Super Size — These hogs are so painfully obese, they can hardly stand, and their bellies scrape the ground when they walk.


Face to Face — I can hardly tell the difference between this goat and my husband! They're both so cute.


Man and Beast — Arley tries communicating with a billy goat.


Charmer — This guy popped up all over the place. I couldn't tell if he was officially part of the fair or if he was just some creepy guy who showed up with a snake to show around. Touch my snake! Touch my snake!


White Men Singing — Seeing these guys sort of reinforced the whiteness of the whole thing.

The petting farm, pony rides, hay rides, magic shows and blue ribbon-winning jams and cakes and breads locked away in acrylic display boxes, each one with a single piece missing, were all standard fare. (Jeff wants to enter his zucchini bread next year!) Other random oddities, like the guy with the snake, and a kid in a hot air balloon basket demonstrating his flaming apparatus to a small crowd, rounded out the offerings. And of course there was a cornstalk labyrinth, the "Amazing Maize Maze," which sounds funny no matter who says it. (What happens if the kids can't find their way out? I imagined little skeletons scattered around the maze at harvest time.)

I was disappointed to have missed the pig races. Watching those little frenzied curly tails bobbing around the track was always a favorite part of my own home town's annual fair.

The frog jumping sounded promising, too. I was imagining something out of Mark Twain, but the emcee frustrated much of his audience, including me, by dragging the show out to exhaustive lengths (much like this blog post) before actually pulling any frogs out of his buckets. All I saw in the time I waited around was a tree frog peeing repeatedly on some poor little girl's hand.

And maybe that's the best place to close. I'm glad to have seen the Queens County Fair. It was precious. I am amazed that such a thing can still exist at all. And at the end of the day, I guess, we wash the animal excretions off our hands and return to our city, leaving the farm behind us.

Definitely Not a Mets Fan

Jackson Heights, Queens, is one of those neighborhoods — unlike Maspeth or Rego Park, lord knows — that seem to get a lot of media attention. It is a marvelously ethnically diverse place and is often cited for its rich selection of restaurants or the reaction of its citizens to the goings-on of their homelands around the world.

It is also home to the same brand of crazies you find anywhere else in New York. Gothamist reported today on an incident that occurred on the 7 train, which runs right through the neighborhood. A guy in a Yankees shirt pretending to be asleep behind his sunglasses had his pants undone and his junk hanging out, half-concealed by a newspaper, and a woman caught him on her camera phone.

I'd say "I love New York," but there's nothing particularly "New York" about it. Dorks like him live everywhere.

Your SUV sux.

On principle I hate SUVs.

Every time I see a Hummer in New York, even in Queens, I want to find the owner and hit him or her over the head with an iron skillet. With parking at such a premium, what business does anyone have parking a vehicle the size of a Manhattan apartment on a side street? Parking tickets should go up in value the more space the car takes up.

Today I saw a commercial for a Subaru monstrosity called the Tribeca. Tribeca, as in Lower Manhattan. As in short, tight, narrow streets. I hope I'm not the only one who sees the irony in owning a vehicle named after a neighborhood in Manhattan where you'd scarcely be able to park it!

For $30,000, you get a 256 horsepower, six-cylinder engine, symmetrical all-wheel drive, and 247 pounds per foot of torque at 4,400 RPM. I'm sure all of this comes in really handy when you're stuck in bumper-to-bumper city traffic — on totally flat land.

The one in the commercial featured a DVD player, perfect for encouraging your children to shorten their attention spans, keep them from reading books, and help them realize that you'd really not rather talk to them on those tedious drives to school or grandma's — just keep your eyes on the Disney and leave Mommy alone, kiddies! Media over-stimulation while driving is always a good idea. Be sure you bring your cell phones, too.

If you live in the mountains, get a car for the mountains. If you live in the city, get a car for the city. And if you want to have room for your kids, get a bigger car, of course. But for the love of Mike, don't put a living room on the road.

Bad Signs

	The thing is, these guys are probably from somewhere near the Mediterranean Sea.
	Ectetera, ectetera...
	Waithing for a copy editor.
	Walk. Wait, no. Don't walk!

It always makes me wonder why so many small business owners have permanent signs on their businesses with gross spelling and grammar errors.

I remember a place in Minneapolis called "Lee's Wig's." Apostrophe errors are among my biggest pet peeves, and they happen all the time. They're not a surprise, though. Sometimes it can be tricky. And sometimes I can forgive it. Sometimes, sure... if you don't know better, you might slip up and use an apostrophe in a pluralization. But when it's connected to your livelihood? When it's a direct representation of yourself in the world? There are no excuses.

Whoever made Lee's sign got the possession right. But the S in "wigs" doesn't set out to accomplish the same thing. So, then, if the one has an apostrophe, the other should not, right? One S or the other should have an apostrophe, but not both. I think I could accept "Lees Wig's" more easily than this. That at least would show some conviction, rather than this spineless covering of all bases by overpunctuating every S in the sign.

Poor Lee.

How do those signs and awnings get made. Do the shop owners screw up? If so, why don't the sign makers do them a favor and suggest corrections? Or maybe it's the sign maker's fault. And when it arrives, fresh, clean and smelling of plastic and paint, the shop owner thinks: Well... it's close. Why wait longer or shell out for a new sign or?

I had some fun recently spotting some bad signs in New York.

Just My Luck

Should I consider it a good omen that a bird shit on me late last night while walking home from the bar?

If so, then good luck has been clamoring to find me this week. On Wednesday, as I was crossing 9th Avenue toward my new barber, I heard a splash near me on the pavement, maybe a foot away from my shoe. It was surprisingly loud, considering the level of midday city noise, and blended in well with the customary filth of the street. Looking up, I saw a row of pigeons on a streetlight suspension wire.

I considered myself lucky at that moment that I had dodged a bullet, so to speak. I mean, there's a time and a place, right? Apparently that time was about midnight and the place was 82nd and Roosevelt Avenue in Queens.

As the train passed, I felt something light strike me in the chest. I thought it might be some small piece of debris falling from the underside of the elevated tracks of the 7 train, but whatever it was seemed to have stuck there. I could feel its light weight sitting on my chest. Without thinking, I reached up to my chest to feel what it was, and my hand slid across the warm, slippery substance and came away with a bit of bird shit.

It was the color of graphite and much more solid than I had expected, like an exuberant dollop of acrylic paint. And it covered a good three or four square inches of my shirt. It was revolting.

The last time a bird hit me, I was about 7 or 8 years old and standing under a tree. It hit me on the back of my right hand. I wiped it off on the tree trunk without comment and carried on with the business of hide-and-go-seek. With the enormity of New York's pigeon population, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. At least it did not land on my head or on my face this time.

There was a rumor for a while that a bird once shit in Cyndi Lauper's mouth, back in 2004, while she was going for a long note at a concert in Boston. "My grandmother says it's good luck," she said, "but I think it's disgusting."

She put the rumor to rest recently: "It is not true that a flying bird once pooped in my mouth when I was singing in a concert. It did not go in my mouth. It went on my lower lip. I could not taste it. I just wiped it off."

The shit-upon shirt was my spare. Living in Queens and working in Manhattan, I have learned to carry my house on my back; never knowing when I will will get back home in the day, I always have a spare shirt, some basic toiletries, reading material, and sometimes gym clothes in a bag when I go off to work in the morning. So I changed back into my slightly damp shirt from earlier in the day.

I don't particularly like the shirt. I got it from the clearance rack at Gap, and every time I wear it, I see three or four people wearing the same thing — without fail. I avoid wearing it if I am going out into the city. Maybe the bird was merely suggesting I retire the garment and try one of the boutiques along 82nd Street.

United for Equality; Separated by Police Escort.

I don't get too worked up about the prospect of meeting famous people. I don't hound them for autographs. I don't wait in crowds behind theaters and arenas hoping to catch a glimpse or snap a photo. For heaven's sake, I felt nothing but guilt over trying to get a snapshot of Cyndi Lauper recently, and when the images didn't turn out, I thought: "Serves me right."

Let them be famous and worlds apart from me. Let them be extraordinary, in my mind, to a degree only I can know. And let them live their real lives without me. They are the performers. I am the audience. Let us not break this sacred boundary.

So it is a particular irony that my first interaction with Broadway phenom Idina Menzel was not only a complete fiction, but also an unfortunate and unpleasant experience involving the NYPD that I hope never to repeat again in my life.

I have never seen Wicked, but I own the soundtrack. I saw the movie version of Rent. Didn't care for it. A lot of people whining about the consequences of the bad decisions they've made, I think. But I guess I admire Ms. Menzel, and enjoy her work. A fan? Eh... not really. She was the headline performer at last night's annual NYC Gay Pride pier dance, where I was a volunteer. And truth be told, I was more looking forward to the fireworks than her techno remix of "Defying Gravity," but after seeing her sound check earlier in the day, I could admit to having a mild curiosity to see her performance.

Once again, my rugby teammates and I were bartending for the slick, gyrating masses of manflesh that make up the pier dance. On my way to the volunteer port-a-johns toward the end of the night, I ran into a crowd behind the main stage area, just a few tents down from ours. I tried to skirt around the edge of the crowd near the fence, and someone from behind me grabbed my arm just above the elbow and yanked me violently backward. I assumed it was just someone telling me that I couldn't go past that point for some reason, so I shook off the hand and stepped backward, with my hands out, trying to see what was going on. "Whoa! OK. No trouble. I can wait."

"What do you want to do with him?" I heard someone say.

I had my volunteer shirt on, and my credentials on me. Whatever was happening, I assumed I could just wait it out. At least they knew I belonged there.

But suddenly I was aware that I was being surrounded.

"He's out of here," said someone else.

Two police officers snapped to attention and guided me away by the arms. They marched me past my team's tent. A few of them saw me being led away, but the cops wouldn't let me stop to tell anyone what was happening. They were not rough, but they were direct and very clear about me moving along. I still had no idea what had just happened. And I still had to piss like a racehorse. So I asked them to explain.

"The head of security saw you," said one of them.

"Saw me?" I said. "I don't even know what it is that I've done. Can you at least explain to me what's happening?"

"He saw you go right for the talent," said the other one.

There had been volunteers and security folk and cops all around — as there had been all over the pier all night long — and there was no one turning people away or stopping anyone from passing. A slip in security allowed me unwittingly too close for comfort, and now it looked like someone was overcompensating for his error by making a spectacle of kicking me out. Maybe the security folks were starstruck, themselves.

"OK," I said. "I'm not going to try arguing. Clearly I'm out of here no matter what. But I have to tell you, I was just walking to the bathroom. I swear I didn't even know she was there. I didn't even see her. I don't understand how this is even happening."

One of the officers, perhaps beginning to believe me, explained to me that it didn't matter if I had done something wrong or not. The head of security wanted me out of there, so they were obligated to take me out of there. End of story.

"You're seriously telling me that I need to be escorted out of here like this?" I said. "I need to completely leave the pier?"

Yes. I did.

They walked me to the front gate. They allowed me to get my bag from the volunteer bag check. They made a guard cut off my wristband and said that I was not to be admitted back in. The whole thing was very humiliating and confusing. So I walked off down 14th street, ripped off my bar crew badge, stripped off my volunteer t-shirt and dropped it into a trash can.

I won't speak ill of Heritage of Pride as a whole. I know they're very careful and serious about safety. And they do a phenomenal job of organizing and coordinating the volunteers. But clearly some of the volunteers can be a little overzealous. I felt a lot better after speaking the next day to the volunteer coordinator, a very nice man, who asked me a lot of good questions and made sure he got the story straight before he apologizing and saying it shouldn't have happened. He was surprised that there was no first warning. My first indication that I was in the wrong place was being yanked out my skin.

I never even laid eyes on Ms. Menzel, let alone a hand. I didn't even get a chance to see who this security guy was. And perhaps the worst part of it is I still had to pee. Badly. So I high-tailed it to a bar nearby and answered nature's subtle call. I couldn't make out Ms. Menzel's voice from across the West Side Highway, but the fireworks were not half bad. Then I met my boyfriend and got roaring drunk.

Greening

I could never live in a place where there is no autumn or winter. It makes springtime all the more miraculous. Do I have such a bad memory that new leaves are a delight for me year after year? Or is it truly amazing how, over the course of three days, a bright green parasol unfolds from nowhere over a drab streetscape? Even this place is beautiful.

Happy Night Shift Workers Day!

Believe it or not, but Wednesday (yesterday) was National Night Shift Workers Day. Working late nights can suck, but there is more to consider than the obvious problems of having a wonky schedule.

Someone dear to my heart went around the city Tuesday night to talk to people working the third shift and produced an awesome video story for ASAP, The Associated Press' service of innovative and original multimedia stories: Night workers get their day

Ironic, I think, that this national day of commemoration could not be observed by the folks for whom it was intended. They were all sleeping.

The Quick and the Deed

Walking to work one day not long ago, I had the opportunity to play the Good Samaritan. A man walking toward me on the sidewalk in the opposite direction was holding a plastic grocery bag full of papers and miscellany. I guess it contained one too many things, because the bag split and papers went pouring out onto the sidewalk. The morning spring breeze picked up and sent it all eddying and dancing down the sidewalk — torn-open envelopes and bills and other bits with handwriting on them.

The poor guy barked a PG-13 curse and immediately fell to his knees and threw his hands and feet in every direction, like a Twister champion, trying to stop the papers from getting away and missing several. They didn't seem to be driven by the wind so much as by a desperate desire to get as far from him, in any direction, and as quickly as possible. One glided under a parked car.

As the bag spilled, three people breezed right past him, offering no help. I was approaching him anyway, so it was no big deal for me to stop and see what I could do.

At first I stopped simply because it would have been ridiculous and conspicuously uncharitable not to. I helped him not necessarily because I wanted to but to avoid shame, setting myself up in my head in opposition to the people who didn't stop.

I was glad I did. He was embarrassed, the poor guy. He would not look up at my face. As if the papers scattering around us were bits of underwear or nude photographs. But he was also grateful. "Thank you. Thanks, sir. Thanks," he said.

Our reactions to the situation were so different. He'd been taken by surprise, something of his life exposed briefly and rudely, his independence momentarily stripped away by forces outside of his control, whereas my simple interaction with him, which neither of us was looking for in particular, took me outside of my own head and put me in a position of power. I know it sounds idiotic, but I think I actually felt some dominance over him in that moment. It was brief and a little embarrassing, but it was power. I was doing the one thing he needed most right at that moment.

So I gathered up what I could. I knew we didn't have all of it. Some papers I had just seen moments prior were gone when I turned around. Oh well. He looked up at me finally and smiled and said one last thank-you.

"No problem," I said. He seemed to have everything under control, so I carried on along my way. I wondered what he would do about the missing pieces, but I felt wonderful for at least doing my best to help. Should I have told him he didn't have all of it? Did he already know? Would I know if it were me?

In that moment, the paper that had gone under the parked car skidded out into view and made its way down the street away from the man. I ignored it and kept walking.

When you commit to a kind gesture, how far must you go? Did I negate my good deed because I didn't chase that page down the street? My obligation was complete. What was my obligation? Hadn't I done my best? No, I knew I hadn't. It wasn't quite the same thing as walking an old lady halfway across the street and then dashing off when the light changes, leaving her to contend with honking horns and whizzing bicyclists. But it occurred to me that I hadn't really helped him at all. Those people who had walked past him were rude, but at least they were honest. And, in opposition to them, I was certainly no better.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow?

Hanging out this weekend in Philadelphia the night before a rugby match against the Gryphons, one of the Philadelphians observed that New Yorkers seem to be obsessed with gentrification. I think he's right. Three of us had used the word in separate contexts within an hour, he said.

Living in New York City, how can one not be obsessed with gentrification and rising rents? It's why I live in Queens, even though we are now under seige. I feel safe in Jackson Heights for now, but we're worried about Long Island City. Once there's a Starbucks, all is lost.

The gentrification of one neighborhood in particular has finally hit me where it counts. The hair. My Lower East Side barber has raised his prices so quickly in the last year that I am wondering whether I should reconsider my loyalty.

The liquor store adjoining his barber shop is extending deeper into the little commercial strip it occupies, essentially taking over his space. So the shop has moved around the corner into an empty space in the same complex. Its front door now faces East Broadway instead of an alley between the building and the garden of an apartment complex. They have a new name, a new sign, new mirrors and cabinetry, new chairs, cute new matching cobalt blue smocks, a new flat-screen TV — with cable, by the looks of it — and a fresh coat of paint on everything. And they also must have a new, more expensive lease, because they also have a new price for a basic haircut.

One of the reasons I was so happy with this place was its low price. But this getting to be a slippery slope. For a $9 cut two years ago, it was easy to tip two bucks. When it rose to $10 a few months ago, two bucks still seemed decent. Now that it's a hefty $12, do I need to tip three? Should I reconsider my loyalty and find a new barber? One invests time and emotion into settling into a trusted barber. It's not so simple to move on. These guys are neighbors.

The neighborhood is beginning to draw some new commercial tenants. The other day, the barbers were discussing the merits of a Two Boots pizza going in across the street. It's a welcome addition for those of us who work in the neighborhood and are often at a loss at lunch time. (Hmm... Bagels, pickles, McDonald's or bad Chinese food?) They were wondering if it would increase business — you know, get a slice, get a cut. Seems a natural combination, right? One guy suggested maybe people would bring their lunch into the shop, or even eat in the chair.

I stifled a gag reflex thinking of hair clippings as pizza topping.

Is our desire for decent pizza and somewhere to go past 6 p.m. going to kill my lunchtime quickies? I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

Sour Grapes for Wal-Mart

I am gleeful that Wal-Mart is not opening a store in Manhattan. And I love the way it's been reported, too: New York thumbs its nose at the behemoth retailer, and Wal-Mart's all like: "Oh yeah? Well... I hope your babies look like ... monkeys!"

In the great pissing contest that is Life in Manhattan, Wal-Mart lost. And their CEO, H. Lee Scott Jr., comes off looking like a sore loser, staging a meeting with the New York Times to ensure maximum exposure when he said Screw you, New York!

"I don't care if we are ever here," he said. "It's too hard to make money here."

Wal-Mart decided that conducting business in New York is too expensive and exasperating and would not be worth the effort.

Maybe the way they make money won't work here. Plenty of other retailers, e.g., Costco, Target, seem to thrive. Hmm...

Wal-Mart has been vigorously opposed in urban settings for a long time by labor unions and community groups. Unions and don't want them here, because of their unfair labor practices and because their low wages will disadvantage the unionized stores already here.

I love the labor response: "We don't care if they're never here," said Ed Ott, executive director of the NYC Central Labor Council, in the New York Times. "We don't miss them. We have great supermarkets and great retail outlets in New York. We don't need Wal-Mart."

I know I don't.

I love The Onion. [onion.com]

Now, There's a Man Who Gets Into His Work

The person on the other side of the counter is often so full of bile and vitriol that I have to check under the bun to make sure there isn't a razor blade or thumbtack nestled between the lettuce and the tomato. If they spit in it, I'd probably never know. And it's nothing I've done; I'm just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I'm not saying they shouldn't be disgruntled. They may have a perfectly good reason. Her shifts are too long, monotonous, soulless. He's frustrated he's not doing something else. She's mad at her boyfriend. She's not getting paid enough to put up with this crap.

Maybe they're just lazy and insolent.

Here's some insight:


Whatever it is, they sure can suck the fun out of the lives around them.

Last night at a pizza place in O'Hare airport, we ordered two pepperoni pizzas. The woman behind the counter looked back at us for about five seconds, without addressing us, before turning to the kitchen and yelling, "Yo, A. Need you up front," and then disappearing into the kitchen herself.

A man I presume to be A stepped through the kitchen doorway and stood at the cash register taking turns looking at each us patiently waiting, waiting, waiting for ... something. Pizza, maybe. His huge, brown eyes rolled silently back and forth, stopping on each of us, expectant. They said, "Yeah? ... What?" far more eloquently than I would have expected him to say with words.

Jeff stepped forward. "Two pepperoni pizzas. And two root beers."

A snapped into action.

Later, when I returned to ask a third employee for two plastic forks, he slowly reached into the bin, grabbed one and handed it to me.

"Uh, can I have two?" I said.

Sometimes, though, they can work past the routine crap and have fun with their dull jobs. Like tonight. We got the old "if you see something, say something" speech on the F train into Queens tonight, but the conductor gave it a little panache.

If you see something, don't be scurred and keep it to yourself. Tell a New York City police officer or an MTA employee. We may not be New York's finest, but make no mistake, we run this town. Always have, always will. M. T. A.

Why shouldn't this guy be disgruntled, too, like many of his colleagues? Maybe he was, but his theatrical interlude was ironically one of the clearest examples of professionalism I'd witnessed in quite some time.

Next stop on this Queens-bound F train is the bridge, the bridge, the br- br- br- br- br- br- bridge. Queensbridge.

In place of the usual grey faces of the ride home, most everyone who was listening had a smile. I imagine the conductor did, too.

New York Lesson No. 333: Neighbors

New York has a lot to teach me about how to be a good neighbor.

The morning after a rather long night not long ago, I stopped in at the corner bodega near my office for a Diet Red Bull. It's a disgusting way to wake up, but coffee makes me jittery sometimes.

After having been a customer for two years now, I enjoy a certain a mount of familiarity there. I'm just another regular from the neighborhood, but it's nice to be recognized. New York is a small town when taken neighborhood by neighborhood. You can feel pretty anonymous on crowded streets of the Manhattan workday, but you've got your deli and your cleaners and your coffee shop, and before long, folks in those places start to smile at you for real.

As I entered, I nodded at the cashier.

"Eh, boss," he said.

I set the can on the counter. "Two dollars?"

He turned to his boss. "Two? Two-fifty?"

The boss looked over at me. "For you," he said, his face widening into a grin, "two dollars. Because you are the best in the neighborhood."

It was just silly. Nothing, really. The price probably really is two dollars. But things like this never happened at the suburban grocery stores of my childhood. As an adult, I find I'm often embarrassed by hospitality and friendliness. Sometimes I want to be anonymous.

I was raised a "bad" neighbor. Nothing against my parents; we just didn't mix much with other the other families people living complete, unannounced lives across the yard and on the other side of the street. It just never came up. They were they; we were we. In the suburbs, our doors may have been unlocked, but our curtains were closed.

My mom occasionally availed herself to the babysitting talents of a few of the other moms when necessary, but even that limited interaction was short-lived. And it involved money. We were aware of the various divorces. (There was a mysterious rash of them in the mid-90s, as if families all through the neighborhood suddenly and simultaneously woke up from a dream.) I myself babysat for a few of the divorcées in the neighborhood. But we never had block parties. We never pooled our garage sales. The kids traveled in packs by day, but they returned to their quiet homes by night.

My world didn't extend far beyond those kids and whatever life-threatening mischief we could conjure in the woods that surrounded the subdivision. It certainly did not include my friends' parents. Parents of other kids were, without exception, formidable and utterly foreign. They occasionally drove us places. And if you couldn't avoid it, they would sometimes talk to you. But one was always quiet and still in their presence. One did not address them directly.

So now I find myself not talking to my neighbors. I see them in the laundry room, in the elevator, on the bus. I may smile or nod. I may hold a door. But do I ever talk to them about so much as the weather? Rarely. Sometimes I feel like I should, and other times I think, what's the point? We live in the same building — so what? We don't choose each other. But the people in your neighborhood — the barber, the goofy guys at the bodega, the lady in the bagel shop — there is some choice involved. We make these people part of our lives on purpose. Yet I stumble whenever my barber asks me something besides "How short do you want it?"

On the bus recently a guy standing right next said to a woman just boarding the stairwell, "Sorry, we don't let opera singers on this bus." She recognized him and laughed, and they began a conversation — on either side of me — about some show they were rehearsing. I was jealous of their neighborly familiarity. Minutes later, the bus driver accidentally blew past a stop and a little old lady in one of the seats near the front said to him, "Lenny, you forgot me."

"Oh, sorry, dear," he said. He stopped at the corner and let her out. The opera singers continued all the way to the last stop. I walked from the bus to the subway and continued my silent journey.

Guess You Had to Be There

One of my favorite drunk friend stories — with some compensation for the bits I don't quite perfectly remember:

So, she's new in her grad school program. One Saturday night, she's out to see a band play at some bar with some fellow students and some guys she met in the process of buying the tickets on craigslist. They're having a great time, getting wasted, letting off steam, getting better acquainted. After the show they decide to continue drinking elsewhere. One of them knows a great place. They all pile into a cab and go.

She gets out of the cab after paying the driver and runs up to the sidewalk to rejoin her friends. But suddenly it seems they don't know where they're going. She gets kind of annoyed.

"Hey, guys, where are we going? What's going on?"

OK, fine, they say. So they turn to enter a bar, and she follows them in. Moments later, they've all got beers, and she's laughing and having a great time, and everyone seems to be getting along. A few of the guys are sort of standoffish, but hey, no big deal, right? she thinks. She's mostly talking to one guy in particular, anyway, who turns to her at one point and says, "Hey, I gotta ask you one thing: Who the hell are you?"

"What do you mean?" she says.

"I mean, who are you?" he says. "What's your name? Who are you?"

She holds her beer a little tighter and looks at him hard, a little offended. "What do you mean, 'Who am I?' We've been hanging out all night. We went to that show. We had a great time. We caught a cab. And then we came here," she says.

"Uh ... no," he says. "We" — he gestures slowly to himself and his friends — "didn't go to any show. You got out of a cab and just sort of followed us in here. And here you are. We have no idea who you are."

She looks at each of them in turn, and it slowly dawns on her that she doesn't know the other guys. Wait a minute. She doesn't know this guy either. She looks around the bar. Where are the guys she came in with? She thinks back to the cab. They were right there? Where did they go?

The next day her friends would tell her that after they got out of the cab, she simply disappeared. They went one way and she must have gone the other. They assumed she went home. Instead, she had joined up with a group of complete strangers, followed them into a bar and started buying rounds with them.

All these guys know is that some strange girl just walks up to them out of the blue acting like she knows them. "Hey, guys! Let's go!" It's fine. She's funny and cute. Each one thinks that one of the others must know her ... until they all realize that none of them actually does.

"Uhh...," she says.

The guy's three friends are so disgusted with the whole thing that they just throw their hands up and walk away.

"Oh my god," he says. "That's so crazy. You have to let me buy you a drink."

She sits with him a little while longer, but she's feeling a little sick to her stomach. But they were right there!. She puts down her beer.

"Um, I think I'd better go."