Manhattan Streets: Chapter Six

“[New York] was never built for the comfort and happiness of its citizens, but to astonish the world.” Susan Ertz, Anger in the sky

I started to prepare our New York trip in advance, wanting to make it a 360 degrees experience rather than a first timer tourist trap. I already knew what I wanted to see and do (and by that I mean ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING which, of course, would have been impossible to begin with) but the city didn’t allow me to and I think it’s because after all the years of waiting and yearning, I still wasn’t ready for it.

As much as I’ve tried, I failed at grasping it’s subtle nuances and the little things about it that dragged me here, like the smell of a dark alley at 1am, the first taste of a fresh bagel, a secret Friday night date at a speakeasy, sneaking out of my room through the window to have a smoke on the fire escape looking at the stars, hailing a taxi, getting 50% off tickets to a Broadway matinee or a Stephen Colbert Late Night Show, sipping beer from red plastic cups at a frat party or drinking booze from a paper bag on the street, watching a sunset on Brooklyn Bridge or standing in the exact same place as Meg Ryan’s character when she heard the first “Brickley” in the last scene of “You’ve got mail”.

“When I had a look at the lights of Broadway by night, I said to my American friends: “What a glorious garden of wonders this would be, to any who was lucky enough to be unable to read.”

G.K. Chesterton

Still, I discovered that the Americans, very much like the English, are more than willing to engage in conversations with strangers, especially when they smell tourists. I think it’s probably because they never get tired of life stories or they’re just very, very curious people who are genuinely interested to learn more about you, where you’re from, what brings you to their country or maybe it’s just a strategy so they can start ranting about themselves.

To us, it was an unexpected and interesting way of meeting amazing individuals who simply astounded us with their openness and friendly nature, like the men who approached me on the street just to tell me how much they loved my hair (which by the way was an epic fail according to my fiance who died it and didn’t do such a great job spreading the color evenly), the middle aged, African woman who didn’t quite get my excitement of being in New York , the guy visiting from Wisconsin for the first time who was carrying a caricature of himself sketched by a local artist for only 5$ and, of course, our Couchsurfing hosts, Michael, an eclectic hoarder, his Puerto Rican girlfriend whom we’ve only met through stories and anecdotes and the small, cozy, 70’s music, horror, erotic humor, Star Wars, Homer Simpson, bowling, anti Trump themed Hell’s Kitchen apartment we’ve been a brief but intense part of.

Michael is the kind of guy who welcomes you in his home by leaving large, plastic cockroaches underneath your pillow and waits quietly for your reaction: a desolate futile scream for mercy followed by a mouth-to-ear laughter and for you to fight back with an equally funny prank at an unexpected moment.

Upon our arrival, the mini fridge in our room was hiding some terrifying s&*t: a bloody, severed, plastic hand, a stuffed turkey and a plastic kidney. The walls and ceiling were entirely covered with Diana Ross, Dionne Warwick, Aretha Franklyn, Olivia Newton-John, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson magazine posters. Still, somehow, we didn’t feel at all as if our lives were in any kind of danger.

From the first moment we set foot in his home onward, our one week stay continued to get more interesting with every new, unusual, funny or terrifying discovery we made, like the orange flavored, penis shaped mints in the living room, hundreds and hundreds of books such as “Hell’s Kitchen: the roaring days of New York’s wild West Side”, “What your poop says about you” and The Fonz’s autobiography next to a Pez like Darth Vader figurine, the aforementioned talking Homer Simpson clock, a bar of “Soap for Uranus”, a black plastic spider and a skeleton hand on the sink and a Bela Lugosi poster.