My original unedited e mail message from that day:
9/12/2001 3:07 AM
Sorry for my general absence from e mail. I had a VERY close encounter with today's events. I am sending you all a CC of my account that I sent out to Friends and Family tonight:
Hi, I wanted to send out another message briefing you all on the new details and some corrections. First off, I am ok and unharmed by the World Trade Center Disaster.
My earlier message today: I was in a daze when I wrote the first message, I was not 30 blocks away, I was 10-20 blocks away on the hudson river side walking still towards the two towers when the South Tower collapsed. I was right around the Holland tunnel ventilation shafts.
The Experience:
I go through WTC everyday around 9 AM to transfer from NR subway trains to the Path trains that make me to my office in Exchange Place (NJ shore of Hudson river). I overslept this morning so I was running 30 mins late. I was rushing to work around 9 and I noticed smoke in the air blowing towards Brooklyn, but it did not occur to me that it could be WTC. I got onto my first subway train and then made it to my transfer station and got on the second train that takes me to WTC Path trains. There was something blaring on the intercom but there always is, so I did not think much of it. We made it to 8th street station and I finally got it, the Train was not going to make to WTC, something was up. I got out, somewhat angry that I was going to be late to work AGAIN! As I was walking towards the ferries on the hudson side I saw the two towers on fire. Apparently when I was going into the subway only one of them was on fire. By the time I got out and started walking, the second impact had occurred.
My own behavior did not make sense at the time. A group of people along with me were walking/running TOWARD the towers until one of them collapsed. When something like this happens you do not realize how serious it all is. I was still trying to go to work thinking, oh great now I have to take the ferry.
As I got closer to the towers (the ferry stations are in that area too), it became evident that this was not a movie. Tons of paper were flying out of the North tower (it was a VERY windy day to start with). Half way through my walk something took over and I was sobbing for no reason. There is nothing comparable to seeing one of the world's largest buildings on fire. Once I saw the South tower collapsed, I woke up from my dazed walk towards the towers. Until then I was just unable to take my eyes off of the towers to realize that I was putting myself in jeopardy by approaching. Just around this time I met with the wave of hundreds of people walking away from the towers towards North. When the buildings fell, the smoke and debris in the air was UNBELIEVABLE. The force of the buildings falling down pulled down a whole bunch of air which let all of us at the scene see the skyline without the two towers. It looked like major after effects digital video editing work only it was real. I still can not believe the news that keeps saying that there were no bombs in the buildings. They fell down so elegantly, mostly caving into themselves like they have been imploded by an professional deconstruction company.
A lot of us started running uptown to beat the storm of dust coming our way. And hope was with us until the last moment, the second tower was still standing, it was ok, one tower was still better than none. Then the second one fell, and you should have heard us all on the streets. Crying, in anger, in tears, totally overwhelmed just by the visual impact of what was happening. I found myself saying "game over"... it was over, it really was. Thousands of people walked home today at noon, all transportation, all bridges, all subways, all path subways, all ferries were shut down.
I have seen several "mud people" walking to their homes in a state of absolute shock and disbelief. I was able to avoid the dust.
All streets are empty right now, and there are ambulances and emergency vehicles ferrying patients north to uptown hospitals. The downtown hospitals are only used for EXTREME cases. I have seen several people on the streets with scratched and scarred faces.
All restaurants, all stores are closed. I was out tonight to get dinner (yes some restaurants were open), everyone is talking about this and strange thing is, in a town where everyone is a stranger, no one is a stranger right now. You can really talk to anyone and they will discuss the details of today and where they were and what they felt, and what their theories are in detail at length.
One final thing that occurred to me tonight is that all theories I hear from the news is about foreign origination....but I think otherwise, what I saw today was MUCH similar to the ending scene of the famous film Fight Club from a couple of years back.
One positive thing is, the people who hit the towers do not know that those buildings really fill between 9 and 9:30. When the first impact happened at 8:45, everything leading to WTC was stopped. And the second tower was already being evacuated when it was hit by the second plane.
So thousands of people did not even make it to their office in WTC because the subway would not go past Canal. A lot of people like me were saved by the excellent response and sense of the city's officials. I applaud the city's organization and efforts in this really challenging and difficult time.
We are all in the state of shock and disbelief, I am just hoping that the survivor's guilt will not be too severe. I am going to try to go to my work place on the shore of Jersey city (exchange place) right across the WTC complex on the NJ side. I might have to take the ferry for a while. One of the major Path (transportation between NJ and NY) is located at the WTC. Needless to say this attack pretty much destroyed that station.
Working in NY will be very difficult for a couple of weeks. Our clients have been effected and we have no word on how many of them actually evacuated the towers and the adjoining buildings in the complex.
It feels like the news is not supplying enough information. Most of us in Ny are just as information starved as you all are, no one is allowed to go past the Canal Street downtown. Only emergency personnel is allowed.
Please spread the news that everyone that I know in Sapient seems to be fine. I think we were saved by out slightly late starting schedules. (Amazing argument for showing up to work at 10:30AM !)
So far I do not know of anyone that is not ok. The phones are still not behaving right if I can not be reached it does not mean I am not ok. I am taking good care of myself. I am unable to call all of you to tell you we're doing ok, I need your help to tell others that you know might be worried about us.
Thanks for all your messages.... I am glad you all are not here to see what I saw, because on TV what you see could not possibly represent what was felt by us all here. Thanks in advance for spreading the news, ES
Category :
We take so much for granted; our bodies, our health, our sanity, and most of all our identity. We spend our days constantly trying to go from point A to point B only to realize that point B is the new point A. But beyond all of these thoughts, and the circle of life, which on most days feels a lot closer to a re-enactment of the myth of Sisyphus, we find that from day to day, from year to year, from one turmoil to the next; in the middle of all this change the only thing that stays constant is our presence.
They say that the loneliest places on Earth are the most crowded ones, and I felt this so strongly during my time in New York City. Six million people all stuffed several storey high onto the same old half mud, half bedrock, half water, half steel island. We were all so important, so primed and ready to hit it big any moment now. As I sat at my window and stared on to the brief green outside my building, I realized in more ways than one this was a deserted island. Nature in its true form had long fled this place, only remaining piece of it was tucked neatly at the center with right angles around it; almost a hostage the city was holding onto, in case the rest of nature came back to make claims. All these streets, all these buildings, these tunnels, all these dreams, they seemed all so empty, yet we stayed day after day; every day waking up with renewed hopes of stardom and wealth; every day digging the same old hole in the same old spot with no significant progress to show. We thought we were rowing on Hudson against the current and we knew we had it bad; but it was much worse than that; Hudson had eaten us alive and we did not know it yet.
As I walked in the September breeze, the streets were busy with people. Between 1st Avenue and Union Square I could run into two friends, hundreds of strangers and perhaps on any given day a few models and marginal celebrities. New York City was the ultimate Noah's Ark, we had two of everything; which made me wonder, where was my other half? Was he or she out here on this island too or was he the person I left behind in Texas?
Manhattan was a zoo; it was now mine, and I had my cage in it, labeled "100% genuine imported Turk". But really was I genuine anymore? After ten years in the US, what were the remains of my Turkish persona? Maybe it was the fact that I got upset so fast, that I expected things from people Americans do not; or perhaps it was my manners, my accent, my refusal to learn the proper names of trees and flowers. Perhaps just the simple fact that when I closed my eyes I still dreamt in Turkish. Or perhaps the fact that my family refused to give up their ways, and still called me up to two times a day.
Walking the streets, there were familiar faces on people I had never met. As they looked up from the pavement, our eyes would meet and right then and there we both knew it but no one dared to speak a word. It felt like I had checked myself in to a secret society and our secret handshake was avoiding eye contact at all cost.
I would frequently have these days where I would literally hide from acquaintances, friends. If I saw one from a distance I would quickly turn the corner and pick up the pace. In the US, this kind of behavior is classified as antisocial, perhaps abnormal. I have never considered it as such however. I see nothing wrong with wanting to be alone for a day. Seriously at what point did we lose our right to be by ourselves? In a city where everyone must mingle, everyone must work, everyone must fight and win, what if I was completely content with being alone and perhaps even willing to lose? Would that mean that I did not belong here? Should I have seen ahead before moving here that I was just not made of the right stuff for this city?
The storm was brewing, the September skies were clear blue. It was cold but without clouds or rain but something weighed down on my neck like a pair of heavy hands --comforting to some degree but a burden nevertheless. It hung over the city like a veil. It knew better and it was not going to tell anything.
Along the Hudson I walked with Hudson touching me every now and then in the breeze. I tried to learn the language of New York, I practiced every day, and I believed I could walk myself to being a true New Yorker. West Side Highway buzzed on to my left. My head was busy, my head was as crowded as this city; busy as a beehive with questions that have been asked many times before yet their enigma remained.
In the middle of my coming confused thirties crisis I was given the additional burden of knowing that there was nothing original or interesting about my suffering --but somehow this knowledge did not dull the pain nor did it justify its presence.
They say that the loneliest places on Earth are the most crowded ones, and I felt this so strongly during my time in New York City. Six million people all stuffed several storey high onto the same old half mud, half bedrock, half water, half steel island. We were all so important, so primed and ready to hit it big any moment now. As I sat at my window and stared on to the brief green outside my building, I realized in more ways than one this was a deserted island. Nature in its true form had long fled this place, only remaining piece of it was tucked neatly at the center with right angles around it; almost a hostage the city was holding onto, in case the rest of nature came back to make claims. All these streets, all these buildings, these tunnels, all these dreams, they seemed all so empty, yet we stayed day after day; every day waking up with renewed hopes of stardom and wealth; every day digging the same old hole in the same old spot with no significant progress to show. We thought we were rowing on Hudson against the current and we knew we had it bad; but it was much worse than that; Hudson had eaten us alive and we did not know it yet.
As I walked in the September breeze, the streets were busy with people. Between 1st Avenue and Union Square I could run into two friends, hundreds of strangers and perhaps on any given day a few models and marginal celebrities. New York City was the ultimate Noah's Ark, we had two of everything; which made me wonder, where was my other half? Was he or she out here on this island too or was he the person I left behind in Texas?
Manhattan was a zoo; it was now mine, and I had my cage in it, labeled "100% genuine imported Turk". But really was I genuine anymore? After ten years in the US, what were the remains of my Turkish persona? Maybe it was the fact that I got upset so fast, that I expected things from people Americans do not; or perhaps it was my manners, my accent, my refusal to learn the proper names of trees and flowers. Perhaps just the simple fact that when I closed my eyes I still dreamt in Turkish. Or perhaps the fact that my family refused to give up their ways, and still called me up to two times a day.
Walking the streets, there were familiar faces on people I had never met. As they looked up from the pavement, our eyes would meet and right then and there we both knew it but no one dared to speak a word. It felt like I had checked myself in to a secret society and our secret handshake was avoiding eye contact at all cost.
I would frequently have these days where I would literally hide from acquaintances, friends. If I saw one from a distance I would quickly turn the corner and pick up the pace. In the US, this kind of behavior is classified as antisocial, perhaps abnormal. I have never considered it as such however. I see nothing wrong with wanting to be alone for a day. Seriously at what point did we lose our right to be by ourselves? In a city where everyone must mingle, everyone must work, everyone must fight and win, what if I was completely content with being alone and perhaps even willing to lose? Would that mean that I did not belong here? Should I have seen ahead before moving here that I was just not made of the right stuff for this city?
The storm was brewing, the September skies were clear blue. It was cold but without clouds or rain but something weighed down on my neck like a pair of heavy hands --comforting to some degree but a burden nevertheless. It hung over the city like a veil. It knew better and it was not going to tell anything.
Along the Hudson I walked with Hudson touching me every now and then in the breeze. I tried to learn the language of New York, I practiced every day, and I believed I could walk myself to being a true New Yorker. West Side Highway buzzed on to my left. My head was busy, my head was as crowded as this city; busy as a beehive with questions that have been asked many times before yet their enigma remained.
In the middle of my coming confused thirties crisis I was given the additional burden of knowing that there was nothing original or interesting about my suffering --but somehow this knowledge did not dull the pain nor did it justify its presence.
Category :
If you've just moved to New York City and you think that this is the hottest shit of a place you've ever seen, you just wait, more than likely this summer you will be proven right. For when August rolls in, and the winds completely stop, the temperatures reach and jump over the higher nineties and even dare to climb onto the hundreds a horrid stench starts to rise from the city. It seems everything starts to heat, then melt, and then steam releasing an evil brew of asphalt, human breath, last week's trash, sewage and that hard to describe smell of the subway tunnels. Of all of these the most unfamiliar was the subway smell.
It was a like a strange sci-fi creature, half organic, half metallic, half machine, half current it was ever present but never seen. As the months went by, August suddenly came by. Everyone told I must dread August in New York City but I just could not believe that NYC was going to get all that hot. Well it did, and this year it seemed to be worse than others according to the locals. In the office I was fine, the A/C was always in high gear there. At home I was in good hands thanks to the two windows units I had. But on the street... On the street there was simply no escape from the heat. As I walked back from the 1st Avenue Subway station back to my apartment it felt like I was in an oven with both the grill and oven turned on at the same time. The pavement that had been absorbing the heat all day long now had reached its threshold and had no intention of keeping all of this heat to itself --so it released the heat, steadily and viciously. As I reached my apartment, my backpack's straps were beginning to leave sweat marks on the front of my shirt.
At first I thought, ah this will pass, it is a day or two of real hot weather, I can do this, no problem. Then as the weeks of August progresses what I thought would be the exception became the norm. A scolding hot day after another followed.
Waiting at the subway station for the train went from being a torture because of the irregular unreasonable schedules of the trains to one that just involved cooking in there until my turkey button popped out.
The interesting thing was, here was I in shorts and a thin white t-shirt sweating like a turkey before thanksgiving while the businessmen headed downtown seemed to be doing just fine in their three piece business suits. Perhaps the Wall Street bunch were indeed cold blooded. That's an unfair thought, I thought to myself as I smirked. The train arrived after pushing another piston full of stale subterranean air through the station. The doors opened, and the cool air rushed out; the torture was over. Well at least until I reach my destination.
It was a like a strange sci-fi creature, half organic, half metallic, half machine, half current it was ever present but never seen. As the months went by, August suddenly came by. Everyone told I must dread August in New York City but I just could not believe that NYC was going to get all that hot. Well it did, and this year it seemed to be worse than others according to the locals. In the office I was fine, the A/C was always in high gear there. At home I was in good hands thanks to the two windows units I had. But on the street... On the street there was simply no escape from the heat. As I walked back from the 1st Avenue Subway station back to my apartment it felt like I was in an oven with both the grill and oven turned on at the same time. The pavement that had been absorbing the heat all day long now had reached its threshold and had no intention of keeping all of this heat to itself --so it released the heat, steadily and viciously. As I reached my apartment, my backpack's straps were beginning to leave sweat marks on the front of my shirt.
At first I thought, ah this will pass, it is a day or two of real hot weather, I can do this, no problem. Then as the weeks of August progresses what I thought would be the exception became the norm. A scolding hot day after another followed.
Waiting at the subway station for the train went from being a torture because of the irregular unreasonable schedules of the trains to one that just involved cooking in there until my turkey button popped out.
The interesting thing was, here was I in shorts and a thin white t-shirt sweating like a turkey before thanksgiving while the businessmen headed downtown seemed to be doing just fine in their three piece business suits. Perhaps the Wall Street bunch were indeed cold blooded. That's an unfair thought, I thought to myself as I smirked. The train arrived after pushing another piston full of stale subterranean air through the station. The doors opened, and the cool air rushed out; the torture was over. Well at least until I reach my destination.
Category :
--A step by step guide into claiming your sanity, your life, your neighborhood back.
Meriam-Webster Definition:
1 : an act of crushing
2 : the quantity of material crushed
3 a : a crowding together (as of people) b : CROWD, MOB; especially : a crowd of people pressing against one another
4 : an intense and usually passing infatuation; also : the object of infatuation
Definition number four is the winner.
The strange thing about a crush is, he was there the same spot you saw him for the first time, perhaps yesterday, doing the same old things being the same all crushing person he is, perhaps for someone else. This is before you saw him and granted him the rights to crushing you indefinitely.
We're talking about someone who you run into regularly in a public setting and you never get to meet them. After a while they usually know that you're insane, and that you have this crush thing going which of course makes it all the more impossible to meet the person because they believe you're a freak.
So you see them day after day, week after week and never get to talk to them. You see them at the grocery store, at the westside highway running, or if you're gay at your local gym.
Then slowly a story emerges. First you make up a name for him. The red tanktop guy, the skinhead guy, the shoulders guy, the nike guy, the list goes on. You pick a certain physical aspect that makes this guy noticeable to you and make it their name. Then follows the rest of the story. You start inventing their character, perhaps after overhearing a conversation, or maybe observing what they're wearing, they're carrying.
Before you know, you're asking friends about him, pointing him out openly at the gym, trying to get to meet him, looking for him on friendster, looking for him in clubs that you do not want to go to....until...until you're a full-fledged stalker that's picking up receipts from the trash to find out his real name.
What started out as a fun game now has started to consume a significant part of your life. And it seems every time you actually find out something about the person instead of calming you down, it adds fuel to the fire.
Come here my friend, let me give you a hug. You have a crush, and if you do not stop and listen now, it will eventually crush you. That's why they call it that.
So here's a crush junkie's guide to ridding yourself off of nasty crushes and hopefully avoiding new ones:
Remedy #1:
Don't get a crush in the first place. What the hell am I talking about like you're going to be able to do this. Skip to step 2.
Remedy #2:
Go meet the damn guy. Yeah right, if you could do that you would not be reading this entry. But seriously, if at all possible go and meet him. You will find that the moment you meet him there will be an immediate crack appearing in the crush. Soon as you find out more about this person, you will realize that he has nothing to do with who you thought he was.
Remedy #3:
If at all possible, try to avoid going to the places you go to run into your crush. Now dont'cha start saying it's blind luck. Don't lie, I know you're going to the gym at 6:30pm to run into him although going there at that time requires you to brave two extremely crowded trains, the pouring rain, and perhaps a rough cab ride.
Change the time, change the location, mix your life up a little. The monotony of your life is the reason you got yourself a crush in the first place. Go on a vacation, give yourself a break. When you come back you will wonder what you were so obsessed about.
Remedy #4:
Unfortunately, after applying remedy #3, and feeling just fine afterwards, at least more than 50% of you will run into your crush and the whole thing will start all over. If you're in the other group, I take my hat off to you, you're what progress is made of.
So, here you are again, getting crushed, and not in a good way. you tried meeting him, it did not work, you tried avoiding him it did not work. Soon there are parts of the town you can not go to, certain restaurants you can not dine at, hell even shopping is not what it used to be. So it seems like you're a prisoner in your own city and you deserve better than that.
Well, go get yourself a boyfriend. Easier said than done, this if accomplished will rid you of 99% of most crushes. This is because you will focus on this new person you're dating and I hope this shift in focus will mean you will have less attention span for other people.
If the relationship does not last, go get yourself another one and another one, and another one. Be a serial monogamist and enjoy it. I would rather have you become a serial monogamist than a serially crushed person.
Remedy #5:
Use only if the dating thing does not work. Move to another town completely. Just pick up and go. The crush will not follow unless of course he has a crush on you too. Gosh people, why can't you be more normal??? *just kidding*
Final Remedy:
Well this one actually is a catch all. Feel free to use this before or after any of the above listed remedies.
Just listen to me. The person you're obsessed about is human. Beside being physically attractive to you, this is just an ordinary guy. As Rita Hayworth said about her troublesome love life: "they go to bed with Gilda, and they wake up with me". For those of you not familiar with her movies, Gilda is her temptress-gone-bad mix of Satine, the courtesan, and the film noir black widow.
Your crush is the same. If there was any chance you met your crush, and dated him, you would be highly dissapointed with him, with the relationship, with yourself, and perhaps with everything. This is because your expectations are unrealistic. You are attached to an unreal person you created in your head and then projected onto a walking breathing pile of meat.
Remember, when he opens his mouth, you know he is going to be all like "Ghurrll", then he will smile and you will see his ugly teeth, next he will take off his shirt, and he will have the biggest ugliest scar on his arm, then he will speak and all that he will be talking about will be his last trick, and how he has slept with all of Manhattan and half of Brooklyn and Jersey. He will be eating dinner with you in the restaurant, picking his teeth with his fingers, he will be spitting pieces and not closing his mouth while he is chewing, perhaps he will be burping, and even laughing about it. He will go to bed with you, the sex might totally suck, or worse yet after a great night of sex, he will turn around, release a largest fart you have ever heard and experienced in technicolor THX surround sound. In the mornin,g he will wake up with drool running down his cheek, and his face will look like hell, he will clip his toenails while still in bed, perhaps even leave the bathroom door open when he goes to do a number 2. Later after a few weeks of dating, while doing laundry you will get to marvel at his skid marks, you will find his dildos next, and the video tape he made with his previous lover, he probably will not stop talking about his exes, or maybe he will spend your money until you're broke, he might even ask you to buy things constantly, or cheat on you from day one.
I don't want to sound bitter and I do not want to make you bitter but the truth is we're all human. I assure you that one person alone will not have all of the shortcomings I listed above, but they all will have one or the other.
What you need to realize is, your guy on the big pedestal is not chiseled out of marble, he is just flesh and bones; what seems like a perfect complexion from 6 feet away sometimes turns out to be a skin covered with millions of dark freckles from over-tanning.
Keep these things on your mind; and above all else, love yourself. You're hotter, smarter, and more shaggable than you think. For once look at the mirror and see your real self. He's been there in the mirror waiting for you to see him all this time.
Meriam-Webster Definition:
1 : an act of crushing
2 : the quantity of material crushed
3 a : a crowding together (as of people) b : CROWD, MOB; especially : a crowd of people pressing against one another
4 : an intense and usually passing infatuation
Definition number four is the winner.
The strange thing about a crush is, he was there the same spot you saw him for the first time, perhaps yesterday, doing the same old things being the same all crushing person he is, perhaps for someone else. This is before you saw him and granted him the rights to crushing you indefinitely.
We're talking about someone who you run into regularly in a public setting and you never get to meet them. After a while they usually know that you're insane, and that you have this crush thing going which of course makes it all the more impossible to meet the person because they believe you're a freak.
So you see them day after day, week after week and never get to talk to them. You see them at the grocery store, at the westside highway running, or if you're gay at your local gym.
Then slowly a story emerges. First you make up a name for him. The red tanktop guy, the skinhead guy, the shoulders guy, the nike guy, the list goes on. You pick a certain physical aspect that makes this guy noticeable to you and make it their name. Then follows the rest of the story. You start inventing their character, perhaps after overhearing a conversation, or maybe observing what they're wearing, they're carrying.
Before you know, you're asking friends about him, pointing him out openly at the gym, trying to get to meet him, looking for him on friendster, looking for him in clubs that you do not want to go to....until...until you're a full-fledged stalker that's picking up receipts from the trash to find out his real name.
What started out as a fun game now has started to consume a significant part of your life. And it seems every time you actually find out something about the person instead of calming you down, it adds fuel to the fire.
Come here my friend, let me give you a hug. You have a crush, and if you do not stop and listen now, it will eventually crush you. That's why they call it that.
So here's a crush junkie's guide to ridding yourself off of nasty crushes and hopefully avoiding new ones:
Remedy #1:
Don't get a crush in the first place. What the hell am I talking about like you're going to be able to do this. Skip to step 2.
Remedy #2:
Go meet the damn guy. Yeah right, if you could do that you would not be reading this entry. But seriously, if at all possible go and meet him. You will find that the moment you meet him there will be an immediate crack appearing in the crush. Soon as you find out more about this person, you will realize that he has nothing to do with who you thought he was.
Remedy #3:
If at all possible, try to avoid going to the places you go to run into your crush. Now dont'cha start saying it's blind luck. Don't lie, I know you're going to the gym at 6:30pm to run into him although going there at that time requires you to brave two extremely crowded trains, the pouring rain, and perhaps a rough cab ride.
Change the time, change the location, mix your life up a little. The monotony of your life is the reason you got yourself a crush in the first place. Go on a vacation, give yourself a break. When you come back you will wonder what you were so obsessed about.
Remedy #4:
Unfortunately, after applying remedy #3, and feeling just fine afterwards, at least more than 50% of you will run into your crush and the whole thing will start all over. If you're in the other group, I take my hat off to you, you're what progress is made of.
So, here you are again, getting crushed, and not in a good way. you tried meeting him, it did not work, you tried avoiding him it did not work. Soon there are parts of the town you can not go to, certain restaurants you can not dine at, hell even shopping is not what it used to be. So it seems like you're a prisoner in your own city and you deserve better than that.
Well, go get yourself a boyfriend. Easier said than done, this if accomplished will rid you of 99% of most crushes. This is because you will focus on this new person you're dating and I hope this shift in focus will mean you will have less attention span for other people.
If the relationship does not last, go get yourself another one and another one, and another one. Be a serial monogamist and enjoy it. I would rather have you become a serial monogamist than a serially crushed person.
Remedy #5:
Use only if the dating thing does not work. Move to another town completely. Just pick up and go. The crush will not follow unless of course he has a crush on you too. Gosh people, why can't you be more normal??? *just kidding*
Final Remedy:
Well this one actually is a catch all. Feel free to use this before or after any of the above listed remedies.
Just listen to me. The person you're obsessed about is human. Beside being physically attractive to you, this is just an ordinary guy. As Rita Hayworth said about her troublesome love life: "they go to bed with Gilda, and they wake up with me". For those of you not familiar with her movies, Gilda is her temptress-gone-bad mix of Satine, the courtesan, and the film noir black widow.
Your crush is the same. If there was any chance you met your crush, and dated him, you would be highly dissapointed with him, with the relationship, with yourself, and perhaps with everything. This is because your expectations are unrealistic. You are attached to an unreal person you created in your head and then projected onto a walking breathing pile of meat.
Remember, when he opens his mouth, you know he is going to be all like "Ghurrll", then he will smile and you will see his ugly teeth, next he will take off his shirt, and he will have the biggest ugliest scar on his arm, then he will speak and all that he will be talking about will be his last trick, and how he has slept with all of Manhattan and half of Brooklyn and Jersey. He will be eating dinner with you in the restaurant, picking his teeth with his fingers, he will be spitting pieces and not closing his mouth while he is chewing, perhaps he will be burping, and even laughing about it. He will go to bed with you, the sex might totally suck, or worse yet after a great night of sex, he will turn around, release a largest fart you have ever heard and experienced in technicolor THX surround sound. In the mornin,g he will wake up with drool running down his cheek, and his face will look like hell, he will clip his toenails while still in bed, perhaps even leave the bathroom door open when he goes to do a number 2. Later after a few weeks of dating, while doing laundry you will get to marvel at his skid marks, you will find his dildos next, and the video tape he made with his previous lover, he probably will not stop talking about his exes, or maybe he will spend your money until you're broke, he might even ask you to buy things constantly, or cheat on you from day one.
I don't want to sound bitter and I do not want to make you bitter but the truth is we're all human. I assure you that one person alone will not have all of the shortcomings I listed above, but they all will have one or the other.
What you need to realize is, your guy on the big pedestal is not chiseled out of marble, he is just flesh and bones; what seems like a perfect complexion from 6 feet away sometimes turns out to be a skin covered with millions of dark freckles from over-tanning.
Keep these things on your mind; and above all else, love yourself. You're hotter, smarter, and more shaggable than you think. For once look at the mirror and see your real self. He's been there in the mirror waiting for you to see him all this time.
Category :
The air, the condition, and the conditioner
Getting a brand new apartment in the possibly the quietest part of town made me assume that I had the equivalent of a first row center seat in a Broadway theater. Well like any other theater seat this one had its own set of surprises. First of all everything seemed further than I thought. Union Square was blocks and blocks away, my gym was a good 30 minutes walk and getting to the nearest subway stop was at least 10 minutes. So far the seat is broken and I am wedged between a fat lady and a bodybuilder -- both are overflowing into my seat from the armrest up.
The apartment at least on the inside was amazing. Granite counters in the kitchen, all new appliances, newly stripped and finished floors, new fixtures, new bathroom tile, new new new, even new air-conditioning units. I was thrilled. Except after a few nights of unusually light sleep I was starting to wonder why this apartment of wonder was not the dream cradle I hoped it would be. I soon traced the problem to this strange humming slash rattling noise that was in my bedroom. The noise was coming from the really powerful GE brand air-conditioner window unit. The fan noise sounded normal but when the compressor kicked in it felt like I was sleeping in a factory instead of what I thought to be a quiet apartment in East Village.
So slowly and surely this incessant noise drove me insane. First I tried to sleep in the summer heat without any A/C only to wake up 4 hours later in soaking sheets and a real bad temper. Then I got into to the art of jiggling the A/C unit. It seemed that if you pushed it around in its frame a certain way, the noise would stop. But of course the noise eventually came back like a high school bully haunting me for the rest of my life. As overdramatic as this all sounds, believe me when you're sleep deprived and have to get up at 6:30 am to get to work at 9am, things seem a lot more depressing.
I felt so defeated. I felt betrayed. The A/C unit, my only support system in the humid heat of New York was also depriving me of the sleep I needed so bad. It fit the pattern. Even my relationship with my A/C unit was a dysfunctional one. Lovely, I thought.
After I gave up with wrestling with the A/C unit night after night for a week or two, I called the management office and told them my A/C needed service. Deep down I knew they would come out, check the unit out and tell me that the noise was normal but hey I had to do something. Surely enough, a crew was sent. First of all they did not even hear the noise I was talking about. It was almost magical, the noise seemed to appear only at night and only I seemed to hear it. Am I already going insane I thought?
Finally after two visits I was told that this unit is a little noisier than others out in the market but this unit is brand new and that they're not planning to change it. So I was told pretty much to shut up or move out. It had been just three weeks since I moved in, and the New York Gods were already screwing me.
A few days later I noticed something. The noise was not so bad when I was up and about during the day. This was either because I was not paying attention to it or something else was going on. It turned out, because my bed was putting my head closer to the corner opposite the one the A/C was on, somehow the noise was getting magnified in the particular spot I was trying to sleep at.
The solution however crass in terms of the feng shui of the room was a home run. I moved the bed to the opposite side of the room and the noise was almost completely gone. So that's the thing about life and life in New York City. Sometimes you run into problems you would rarely run anywhere else, and you try all of the tried and true solutions only to realize that the only way to bend the spoon is to well bend it with your own two hands.
So slowly and surely this incessant noise drove me insane. First I tried to sleep in the summer heat without any A/C only to wake up 4 hours later in soaking sheets and a real bad temper. Then I got into to the art of jiggling the A/C unit. It seemed that if you pushed it around in its frame a certain way, the noise would stop. But of course the noise eventually came back like a high school bully haunting me for the rest of my life. As overdramatic as this all sounds, believe me when you're sleep deprived and have to get up at 6:30 am to get to work at 9am, things seem a lot more depressing.
I felt so defeated. I felt betrayed. The A/C unit, my only support system in the humid heat of New York was also depriving me of the sleep I needed so bad. It fit the pattern. Even my relationship with my A/C unit was a dysfunctional one. Lovely, I thought.
After I gave up with wrestling with the A/C unit night after night for a week or two, I called the management office and told them my A/C needed service. Deep down I knew they would come out, check the unit out and tell me that the noise was normal but hey I had to do something. Surely enough, a crew was sent. First of all they did not even hear the noise I was talking about. It was almost magical, the noise seemed to appear only at night and only I seemed to hear it. Am I already going insane I thought?
Finally after two visits I was told that this unit is a little noisier than others out in the market but this unit is brand new and that they're not planning to change it. So I was told pretty much to shut up or move out. It had been just three weeks since I moved in, and the New York Gods were already screwing me.
A few days later I noticed something. The noise was not so bad when I was up and about during the day. This was either because I was not paying attention to it or something else was going on. It turned out, because my bed was putting my head closer to the corner opposite the one the A/C was on, somehow the noise was getting magnified in the particular spot I was trying to sleep at.
The solution however crass in terms of the feng shui of the room was a home run. I moved the bed to the opposite side of the room and the noise was almost completely gone. So that's the thing about life and life in New York City. Sometimes you run into problems you would rarely run anywhere else, and you try all of the tried and true solutions only to realize that the only way to bend the spoon is to well bend it with your own two hands.
Category :
Before I knew things were bad; before I knew two huge towers could come down so fast, it was a beautiful spring, my first one in New York City. It was June, and I had nothing to fear other than my checking account that always faired closer to the fewer zeros right side of the number universe. I had moments of optimism; and this for me is an anomaly in general. But still I had these moments. I believed that I was going to get a raise, I believed that my company was honestly going to get me a green card. I believed that I could transition my perfect relationship in Austin to the big apple and live the life of Sex and the City, my favorite TV show at the time.
After I spent another Saturday afternoon with my cousin Melih, taking one of our record length walks across Manhattan, we decided to join a schoolmate of ours from Turkey for drinks at the ever so trendy for its own good Hudson Hotel. Just like any other situation involving my cousin and I, there was the usual lack of planning and strategic errors on this day. We had left our apartments hours ago, and had for some reason skipped dinner. We were dehydrated, we were in shorts, and perhaps after such a long walk not as fresh as one should be going to a trendy Manhattan Hotel. This was not Austin TX, where you could walk in anywhere in almost any decent attire. This was Man-fucking-hattan and what you wore pretty much said it all in terms of your worth for an establishment.
Hudson Hotel is beautiful, ok I will admit it, it really is breath-taking at times and always full of surprises. The surprises are partly due to the fact that the whole hotel is on an perpetual dimmer effect and it is so very dark that it fells like all of one's past can fit into the dark corners of the long brick lined hallways. Perhaps this is what is so enigmatic about this hotel, I seem to relive the experiences past every time I go back.
So we show up at the hotel, Serra, our friend meets us at the lobby and we head towards the bar. She is more beautiful than I remember her. She was recently married and she exuded the confidence a normal teenager feels when they get their first full-fledged erection. Her life was together, she was married to this great guy, her career was on track, she was making lots of money and she was cool hip and a whole tall drink of water to wash it all down.
We walked over to the Library bar located inside the hotel. We were greeted by the Matre’D who perfectly fitting the Hudson tradition was yet another snooty employee waiting to make us feel bad about ourselves for not being worthy, for not being cool enough for this exclusive location. Serra did not even pick up on this, she walked right in while he went on about how we did not have reservation and that we can not stay because we did not have a reservation. She kept saying, we will stay until the people with the reservation show up. It was a good plan I must admit; I must also admit we probably would not have gotten as much of a protest from them if Melih and I looked a little more dressed up for the occasion. We looked like Americans in Paris, foreign, crude, and ever-so-underdressed.
Once we were settled into a corner that was so not ours to have, we sort of got into conversation frequently washed down with strong Cosmopolitans. Serra could have been a girl out of one of the episodes of Sex and the City. Melih and I were, well out of our element. Serra kept asking me all these very upfront-direct-somewhat inappropriate questions and I continued to answer them with cooperation only found in people who are unable to ask such questions to others.
She asked me questions about my work, my company, my living situation. It was not all bad, she was getting impatient with our social awkwardness and was trying to melt the ice. The martinis kept coming despite my protests. I usually set myself a ceiling of two martinis per outing.
By the time the night was coming to a close, I had already washed down four martinis. We had been kicked out of our seats by the people with the reservation, so we were camping out next to the tiny bar. You have to understand, this bar was named the library but it was just one square room with a real high ceiling. So naturally it did not even have a full bar with stools and everything. As the night progressed the room filled up and soon the hotel people had forgotten about us. We were sort of blending with the pickled semi-marginal celebrities of the Manhattan scene.
Of course all flood gates had been opened for me thanks to the martinis. By the end of the night I had already confessed to Serra that I was gay and how it was great to finally have that out. The three of us were trapped in our sick Manhattan-Turkish mix version of the "I love you man" banter.
Finally around 1 am we left the bar. I realized after having to walk a few feet that I was certainly not gonna make it home. Melih was also currently staying at the Hudson hotel because he was between apartments. So Melih and I decided to go up to his room and give me some time to sober up or possibly worst case scenario, spend the night there.
Well I do not remember how we got up to the room. Melih was being very nice to me considering I was stinky-damn-drunk. I laid on his bed and passed out for a while. Then I woke up with the sudden urge to throw up. I barely made it to the bathroom as I felt everything inside me turn into this bitter, hot, venomous mix of evil that obviously would not let me sleep until it was all out.
Out it all came, the light lunch, the dinner I did not eat and yes the martinis, every last shaken and not stirred drop of them. But it did not stop there, the contractions continued, I was trying to throw up things that did not even have a physical existence all the frustration, the bitterness of the move, the worsening situation with my parents, my stupid gay life that always seemed to mimic heterosexual norms with none the credit that goes with conformism, the lack of friends in New York, my frustration with my relationship, and all the other things that made me miserable in New York City.
After two hours of my head in the toilet, Melih was starting to get worried. Every time I came back from the bathroom I was getting worse. I soon started shivering, and feeling very very cold. I do not think I have felt that cold before not even in cold weather. I finally told Melih that we may have to go to ER to get things checked out. Then I passed out.
Next thing I know he woke me up and then walked me down to the lobby. The lobby that is usually quiet during the day had transitioned into a club with a disco ball and lights and semi-important Manhattanites everywhere. Leaving the hotel like that in my cousin's arm, almost limping in my daze was my sort of strange fifteen minutes of fame. Everyone in the lobby moved aside and opened a pathway for the two of us to exit through. I swear, it felt like the music even stopped but I am sure this scene was forgotten five minutes after we were gone. It felt like I was a celebrity on a binge, it felt like I was cool, it felt like I was the biggest loser on earth who could get alcohol poisoning from four martinis.
We called a cab and went to the nearest hospital. There was not a soul in the waiting room of the ER unit. But they kept making us wait. By this time I was truly out of it, snapping in and out of consciousness. In a final attempt to get us into the ER unit, my cousin started throwing them legal threats (he was attending Columbia Law School at the time.) Well that actually worked, we were taken into the unit in no time.
Soon a nurse came by and with a disapproving and put an IV to my arm. The IV made me feel better almost within minutes. We never got the final diagnosis but I spent about two hours sleeping in the ER unit and then woke up at 5 am feeling just fine, ready to go home. They reluctantly let us out, but I guess they did not feel too bad for me considering the guy behind the curtain next to me passed away due to cardiac arrest while I was sleeping away in my bed.
Melih put me into a cab and soon I was home and in bed. I must have slept most of the Sunday. Strangely, I did not have a hangover. Well not yet, the hangover arrived on Monday and it was rough shitty rough. I missed work that day and did not even have the guts to tell my boss I was missing work because I could not handle my booze. This would have been the cardinal sin in the city of perpetually pickled over-achievers.
I never saw Serra again. Neither Serra I had the guts to face each other after this embarrassing experience. I was worried about her judgement of my alcohol tolerance and I was more worried about how much of my confessions she remembered. She on the otherhand either was too busy for me, or felt a little guilty for getting me shitfaced and ER-bound faster than a ray of light.
So we show up at the hotel, Serra, our friend meets us at the lobby and we head towards the bar. She is more beautiful than I remember her. She was recently married and she exuded the confidence a normal teenager feels when they get their first full-fledged erection. Her life was together, she was married to this great guy, her career was on track, she was making lots of money and she was cool hip and a whole tall drink of water to wash it all down.
Once we were settled into a corner that was so not ours to have, we sort of got into conversation frequently washed down with strong Cosmopolitans. Serra could have been a girl out of one of the episodes of Sex and the City. Melih and I were, well out of our element. Serra kept asking me all these very upfront-direct-somewhat inappropriate questions and I continued to answer them with cooperation only found in people who are unable to ask such questions to others.
She asked me questions about my work, my company, my living situation. It was not all bad, she was getting impatient with our social awkwardness and was trying to melt the ice. The martinis kept coming despite my protests. I usually set myself a ceiling of two martinis per outing.
By the time the night was coming to a close, I had already washed down four martinis. We had been kicked out of our seats by the people with the reservation, so we were camping out next to the tiny bar. You have to understand, this bar was named the library but it was just one square room with a real high ceiling. So naturally it did not even have a full bar with stools and everything. As the night progressed the room filled up and soon the hotel people had forgotten about us. We were sort of blending with the pickled semi-marginal celebrities of the Manhattan scene.
Of course all flood gates had been opened for me thanks to the martinis. By the end of the night I had already confessed to Serra that I was gay and how it was great to finally have that out. The three of us were trapped in our sick Manhattan-Turkish mix version of the "I love you man" banter.
Finally around 1 am we left the bar. I realized after having to walk a few feet that I was certainly not gonna make it home. Melih was also currently staying at the Hudson hotel because he was between apartments. So Melih and I decided to go up to his room and give me some time to sober up or possibly worst case scenario, spend the night there.
Well I do not remember how we got up to the room. Melih was being very nice to me considering I was stinky-damn-drunk. I laid on his bed and passed out for a while. Then I woke up with the sudden urge to throw up. I barely made it to the bathroom as I felt everything inside me turn into this bitter, hot, venomous mix of evil that obviously would not let me sleep until it was all out.
Out it all came, the light lunch, the dinner I did not eat and yes the martinis, every last shaken and not stirred drop of them. But it did not stop there, the contractions continued, I was trying to throw up things that did not even have a physical existence all the frustration, the bitterness of the move, the worsening situation with my parents, my stupid gay life that always seemed to mimic heterosexual norms with none the credit that goes with conformism, the lack of friends in New York, my frustration with my relationship, and all the other things that made me miserable in New York City.
After two hours of my head in the toilet, Melih was starting to get worried. Every time I came back from the bathroom I was getting worse. I soon started shivering, and feeling very very cold. I do not think I have felt that cold before not even in cold weather. I finally told Melih that we may have to go to ER to get things checked out. Then I passed out.
Next thing I know he woke me up and then walked me down to the lobby. The lobby that is usually quiet during the day had transitioned into a club with a disco ball and lights and semi-important Manhattanites everywhere. Leaving the hotel like that in my cousin's arm, almost limping in my daze was my sort of strange fifteen minutes of fame. Everyone in the lobby moved aside and opened a pathway for the two of us to exit through. I swear, it felt like the music even stopped but I am sure this scene was forgotten five minutes after we were gone. It felt like I was a celebrity on a binge, it felt like I was cool, it felt like I was the biggest loser on earth who could get alcohol poisoning from four martinis.
We called a cab and went to the nearest hospital. There was not a soul in the waiting room of the ER unit. But they kept making us wait. By this time I was truly out of it, snapping in and out of consciousness. In a final attempt to get us into the ER unit, my cousin started throwing them legal threats (he was attending Columbia Law School at the time.) Well that actually worked, we were taken into the unit in no time.
Soon a nurse came by and with a disapproving and put an IV to my arm. The IV made me feel better almost within minutes. We never got the final diagnosis but I spent about two hours sleeping in the ER unit and then woke up at 5 am feeling just fine, ready to go home. They reluctantly let us out, but I guess they did not feel too bad for me considering the guy behind the curtain next to me passed away due to cardiac arrest while I was sleeping away in my bed.
Melih put me into a cab and soon I was home and in bed. I must have slept most of the Sunday. Strangely, I did not have a hangover. Well not yet, the hangover arrived on Monday and it was rough shitty rough. I missed work that day and did not even have the guts to tell my boss I was missing work because I could not handle my booze. This would have been the cardinal sin in the city of perpetually pickled over-achievers.
I never saw Serra again. Neither Serra I had the guts to face each other after this embarrassing experience. I was worried about her judgement of my alcohol tolerance and I was more worried about how much of my confessions she remembered. She on the otherhand either was too busy for me, or felt a little guilty for getting me shitfaced and ER-bound faster than a ray of light.
Category :
These are your feet
that walk not in my direction.
This is your fleshy hand
that you do not put in mine.
These are your lips, so shy
they never smile to me.
This is your poem,
one of the two I meant to write.
All the lines above you read
they were not here before you came.
If I dropped out of school, got fired
would a single leaf move in your forest?
My body wraps itself around you,
it is a boa constrictor lost in manhattan.
I changed jobs, I changed towns and
I still see you in strangers' faces.
I went for months without knowing your name,
you lived for six months before you met me.
Later I realized I misheard your name
and you had forgotten mine.
Strange it may be,
it is only you that does not want me
that I want;
and you know what that says about me.
Troy James Vega
For the record, his name was Wade.
that walk not in my direction.
This is your fleshy hand
that you do not put in mine.
These are your lips, so shy
they never smile to me.
This is your poem,
one of the two I meant to write.
All the lines above you read
they were not here before you came.
If I dropped out of school, got fired
would a single leaf move in your forest?
My body wraps itself around you,
it is a boa constrictor lost in manhattan.
I changed jobs, I changed towns and
I still see you in strangers' faces.
I went for months without knowing your name,
you lived for six months before you met me.
Later I realized I misheard your name
and you had forgotten mine.
Strange it may be,
it is only you that does not want me
that I want;
and you know what that says about me.
Troy James Vega
For the record, his name was Wade.
Fence
I need a fence to hold me close
to feelings I cherish, and
to things I chose before I knew better.
I need a fence to hold my breath
pressing my face against the metal bars
perhaps my fears will suffocate.
So cold, so bare, yet the rust is inviting.
Between my fingers the chocolate bar melts,
and my hands coil like worms
still searching for that lasting hold.
I need a fence to make mine right now
bright red and green spikes at the top
like on the streets of London
barring the ordinary from the extraordinary.
Troy James Vega
I need a fence to hold me close
to feelings I cherish, and
to things I chose before I knew better.
I need a fence to hold my breath
pressing my face against the metal bars
perhaps my fears will suffocate.
So cold, so bare, yet the rust is inviting.
Between my fingers the chocolate bar melts,
and my hands coil like worms
still searching for that lasting hold.
I need a fence to make mine right now
bright red and green spikes at the top
like on the streets of London
barring the ordinary from the extraordinary.
Troy James Vega
Category :
A calm Saturday morning the phone rings. I should have know that it was going to be a strange Saturday right from the start. No one dares to call me on a Saturday, much less in the morning. Sleeping all weekend is one of the biggest indulgences for my otherwise plain and somewhat repetitive New York life.
I pick the phone and it's my college buddy Ed who lives a block down from my place. He finally has some time off from his crazy rotations and wants to go to a free concert in Central Park. I get out of bed trying to make my voice sound as awake as possible while he goes on about how famous this guy is and how big an event the concert is going to be. Somehow either because I have not seen him in a while or because I am too sleepy to say no, I say yes.
We take our sweet old time to get here and when we finally reach the site of the summer concert, the place is already packed and the gates are closed. We watch the hundreds of people still in line wondering what they're waiting for since it looks like no one is really going to leave the concert until it is over.
There are literally hundreds of people around the concert stage all on blankets, eating, chatting, drinking, getting a tan and being New York style fabulous and all. Maybe it is just me but taking a stroll in Central Park in the summer is like taking a trip over to the meat market, and a very depressing one at that. These people obviously were spending too much time between going to the gym and roasting on a regular basis in the solarium. There was also the remote yet viable possibility of these people belonging to another race, another species, perhaps another planet.
Anyhow, as we went through the crowd, Ed and I spotted one of those large volcanic rocks that have been scattered all over Central Park. It had all the characteristics of a strategic spot, good sound, lots of people walking by, yet providing isolation from the crowd's madness. In New York you can never really hope to the first person to find a good spot.
You learn this fast, and instead hope that you're not the last person to find the good spot. The rocks was already half covered with yuppies, students, and other strange New York types that I do not yet have names for. The concert started and Ed and I both listened to the bands and carried on a conversation about Ed's latest dating experiences. All seemed well.
Then without a warning, a saw a squirrel (aka tree rat) run towards our rock. At first I was a little puzzled yet I did not take full notice of the squirrel running like mad in our direction. Squirrels are neurotic animals, it is normal for them to freak out at the drop of a leaf so everything seemed typical so far. Soon the squirrel was climbing our rock and making its way to the left side of the rock where a bunch of incense burning, cool looking dudes and gals were rocking to the beat of the music. Let me tell ya, all those laid back and cool dudes jumped 3 feet up in the air when they saw the squirrel run towards them. What's worse is, the squirrel took much offense at this strong reaction and started to run in the opposite direction. It ran into another blanket full of people who strangely reacted to it like they have never seen a squirrel in their whole lives. So this continued much like a particle accelerator, until the squirrel was literally running all over the rock at the speed of light (ok so he was not about to engage in time travel but you know what I mean, it was no longer a squirrel running, it was blur). Next thing I know before I could move the squirrel was running towards us. I decided that my best best was to stay calm and statitionary since a moving object was more confusing to the squirrel which was in a mad rage by now. Strangely enough this turned out to be the worst choice because the squirrel kept running and running and rammed into my left ankle head first. I swear I felt his wet mouth on my leg. And then he turned and started running in another direction, the screams and people jumping in the air following his course of course.
I could see that it was about to turn back to direction (and possibly come and hit me again) so that was that. I got up and started to shout the following: "it is a god damn squirrel, calm the fuck down! you're freaking it out!!" Before my adrenaline wore off I realized that the whole rock was laughing at my statement, not because it was funny but I guess because it had been such a New York moment.
I could not see the squirrel anymore, it had ran to some obscure unseen direction by then. When I looked down I saw that my ankle was bleeding from three long scratches. Obviously the squirrel had decided to use my leg to pick up speed and in the meantime left me with my first physical and perhaps emotional scar from New York.
Ed and I got up and searched for an onsite medical team but there was none. The cops who were providing concert security told me that they could call me an ambulance but that did not seem right. Not for a simple bleeding scratch.
Because I was not sure whether the squirrel had bitten me or not we ended up going to an ER somewhere in Upper East Side. After waiting for an hour, a nurse took a look at my leg in triage and told me that there was no risk of rabies even if the squirrel bit me. My leg was cleaned and bandaged and I was out of there.
It took almost a whole week for the scratches to heal and there are three scars on my leg after three weeks.
This experience proved to me that even going to a free concert in New York has a price, in my case it was three scars in my left ankle and a damn good story to tell over drinks.
I pick the phone and it's my college buddy Ed who lives a block down from my place. He finally has some time off from his crazy rotations and wants to go to a free concert in Central Park. I get out of bed trying to make my voice sound as awake as possible while he goes on about how famous this guy is and how big an event the concert is going to be. Somehow either because I have not seen him in a while or because I am too sleepy to say no, I say yes.
We take our sweet old time to get here and when we finally reach the site of the summer concert, the place is already packed and the gates are closed. We watch the hundreds of people still in line wondering what they're waiting for since it looks like no one is really going to leave the concert until it is over.
There are literally hundreds of people around the concert stage all on blankets, eating, chatting, drinking, getting a tan and being New York style fabulous and all. Maybe it is just me but taking a stroll in Central Park in the summer is like taking a trip over to the meat market, and a very depressing one at that. These people obviously were spending too much time between going to the gym and roasting on a regular basis in the solarium. There was also the remote yet viable possibility of these people belonging to another race, another species, perhaps another planet.
Anyhow, as we went through the crowd, Ed and I spotted one of those large volcanic rocks that have been scattered all over Central Park. It had all the characteristics of a strategic spot, good sound, lots of people walking by, yet providing isolation from the crowd's madness. In New York you can never really hope to the first person to find a good spot.
You learn this fast, and instead hope that you're not the last person to find the good spot. The rocks was already half covered with yuppies, students, and other strange New York types that I do not yet have names for. The concert started and Ed and I both listened to the bands and carried on a conversation about Ed's latest dating experiences. All seemed well.
Then without a warning, a saw a squirrel (aka tree rat) run towards our rock. At first I was a little puzzled yet I did not take full notice of the squirrel running like mad in our direction. Squirrels are neurotic animals, it is normal for them to freak out at the drop of a leaf so everything seemed typical so far. Soon the squirrel was climbing our rock and making its way to the left side of the rock where a bunch of incense burning, cool looking dudes and gals were rocking to the beat of the music. Let me tell ya, all those laid back and cool dudes jumped 3 feet up in the air when they saw the squirrel run towards them. What's worse is, the squirrel took much offense at this strong reaction and started to run in the opposite direction. It ran into another blanket full of people who strangely reacted to it like they have never seen a squirrel in their whole lives. So this continued much like a particle accelerator, until the squirrel was literally running all over the rock at the speed of light (ok so he was not about to engage in time travel but you know what I mean, it was no longer a squirrel running, it was blur). Next thing I know before I could move the squirrel was running towards us. I decided that my best best was to stay calm and statitionary since a moving object was more confusing to the squirrel which was in a mad rage by now. Strangely enough this turned out to be the worst choice because the squirrel kept running and running and rammed into my left ankle head first. I swear I felt his wet mouth on my leg. And then he turned and started running in another direction, the screams and people jumping in the air following his course of course.
I could see that it was about to turn back to direction (and possibly come and hit me again) so that was that. I got up and started to shout the following: "it is a god damn squirrel, calm the fuck down! you're freaking it out!!" Before my adrenaline wore off I realized that the whole rock was laughing at my statement, not because it was funny but I guess because it had been such a New York moment.
I could not see the squirrel anymore, it had ran to some obscure unseen direction by then. When I looked down I saw that my ankle was bleeding from three long scratches. Obviously the squirrel had decided to use my leg to pick up speed and in the meantime left me with my first physical and perhaps emotional scar from New York.
Ed and I got up and searched for an onsite medical team but there was none. The cops who were providing concert security told me that they could call me an ambulance but that did not seem right. Not for a simple bleeding scratch.
Because I was not sure whether the squirrel had bitten me or not we ended up going to an ER somewhere in Upper East Side. After waiting for an hour, a nurse took a look at my leg in triage and told me that there was no risk of rabies even if the squirrel bit me. My leg was cleaned and bandaged and I was out of there.
It took almost a whole week for the scratches to heal and there are three scars on my leg after three weeks.
This experience proved to me that even going to a free concert in New York has a price, in my case it was three scars in my left ankle and a damn good story to tell over drinks.
Category :
Just the other day, I was trying to describe my NY commute to a friend of mine and I realized all the little details were already gone. So before it all runs away from me, I wanted to capture my commute.
I lived in East Village at the corner of 14th street and Avenue C (yes it was almostBrookyln.com). I had to first walk from Avenue C to 1st Avenue and enter the L subway station. If you do not know the L line (Loser as I used to call it.), this is a major line that runs pretty deep into Brookyln and then runs underneath the east river and emerges in Manhattan right at 14th street and 1st Avenue. I soon realized that unlike my apartment broker's version of the story, L was an infrequent, overcrowded, and poorly maintained line. The schedule never seemed to make sense to me. Some days 3 trains would arrive one after the other, or some mornings I would wait 30 minutes with no trains. And then there were the times the train would arrive and it would have everyone and their grandmother from Brookyln on it.
The thing with subways is they're the ultimate tool of democracy. There's nothing like public transport to bring everyone down to the same level of misery. So here we were, the Wall Street ingénues, the new economy turds, the clueless Turks, the school children with questionable clothing and the last but not the least the homeless ... all stuffed into the same steel container speeding underneath the city of sex and glamour. Strangely enough there was nothing sexy nor glamorous about my commute. On the L line, designated with a round gray emblem, there were no colors, we were all washed out, tired, upset, bored, too late to places we never thought we would rush to this early in the morning.
The L line on Manhattan does not go far; and for a good reason too. The L line goes from the East side of Manhattan to the West side in a straight line. If you know Manhattan you will realize it's in the shape a long turd so it does not take long to cut it from side to side. Anyhow, enough about turd, the stops on Manhattan are 1st Ave, 3rd Ave, Union Square, 6th Ave, and final stop at 8th Avenue.
During the first few months, I took L to 6th Avenue changed over to the red line: 1,2,3 and 9. These different trains are on the same line but two were express and two were local. The groups of two further had unique stops, destinations and quirks as soon as they left Manhattan. To tell you the truth, I do not remember all the small details about these lines because I never used them for anything other than going to work and going to my cousin's apartment on Upper West Side.
To switch between L and the red line stations, you have to walk down this really long, and sometimes depressing underground tunnel. The only time that tunnel was fun was when they had street performers down there. I remember, there was this very tall, thin black guy that used to sing and play his guitar with the widest smile on his face. He brightened my day anytime I ran into him. I always tipped him, always --anyone who can brighten up your day in that city needs to be tipped. Perhaps this is why we pay so much money to entertainers, to all these movies, and musicians. They make our unbearable lives bearable. So in a sense we take what we should be entitled to: good living, and turn it into this rare feast, an occasional decadence, a shot of our favorite drug of choice and compensate for it with entertainment be it chemical, mental, physical or all of the above. I don't know where I fit in all of this. I seem to be pointing a lot of things and shitting all over everything but I am just as guilty of as anyone else for buying into, and contributing to the mess.
From 6th Avenue Red line station, I would throw myself into an express train and that usually was a major feat. The express trains were always sardine packed with the Wall Street people. A group of people that never seemed to dress down even during the sweltering hot of the summer months. I do believe that they really must be cold-blooded --otherwise there is no way anyone can have three layers of clothes on in the subway in August and not break a sweat.
The express line took me to World Trade Center station within one hop. It was amazing. I would stand in the train looking outside and watching all these stations race past us in a mad rage, all the colors, the light, the dark, the sirens all blending, running into each other like a Van Gogh painting. And there was a strange hope, a strange thrill there, as in now that I was moving faster I was somehow making up for all the time wasted?
World Trade Center station was amazing. It was not the most beautiful mall I have seen but it was full of stylish stores, all these tunnels and exits, and finally the entrance to Path, the New Jersey trains.
You have to appreciate the strangeness of the situation. In the morning everyone from NJ is commuting to the World Trade Center with the Path trains and I am commuting out along with a handful group of crazy people. So I would literally have to swim against the current of people flowing out of the Path stations and go down to the trains. The Path trains were always cleaner and mostly on time. They actually had a schedule if you can believe.
Almost there. The path train would eventually fill up and the doors would close and the train would always do this strange loopey turney thing so that it could re-enter the NJ PATH tunnel. We would speed underneath Hudson, and soon enough I was finally at my final destination, Exchange Place New Jersey.
A couple of months into my employment in NY, a coworker of mine recommended a less stressful route. Instead of taking the red line she suggested I take the orange like, the N and the R. It really was less stressful but it sometimes did not seem fast enough. NR transverse the same distance and roughly the same number of stops as 1,2,3,9 but there were no express trains, well at least for the part of Manhattan I was traveling in.
My cousin affectionately had named the NR, the Never and the Rarely. And that name says it all really. These trains would disappear for 30 mins at a time and would keep you waiting at the scalding hot platforms for minutes on end. When you finally got onto one of these, the cars were usually old, the A/C broken. I must admit however the most colorful people were always on the NR.
NR also converged at the WTC station. In fact many of the lines that traveled down to lower Manhattan were connected to WTC in one way or another.
I did not like my commute. I did not like the first day I did it, I did not like it the last day I had to do it. I never cared for underground trains, especially the ones in the US. If I was in London on the Jubilee line maybe my story would have been different and I would be raving. But I have a hunch that you could put me on a golden subway line with free express service to any station, I still would manage to be unhappy on it.
Maybe it's not the cities, maybe it is not the subway, maybe it is not a job, maybe it is not my parents, maybe it is not anything at all, perhaps it is not even me.
I lived in East Village at the corner of 14th street and Avenue C (yes it was almostBrookyln.com). I had to first walk from Avenue C to 1st Avenue and enter the L subway station. If you do not know the L line (Loser as I used to call it.), this is a major line that runs pretty deep into Brookyln and then runs underneath the east river and emerges in Manhattan right at 14th street and 1st Avenue. I soon realized that unlike my apartment broker's version of the story, L was an infrequent, overcrowded, and poorly maintained line. The schedule never seemed to make sense to me. Some days 3 trains would arrive one after the other, or some mornings I would wait 30 minutes with no trains. And then there were the times the train would arrive and it would have everyone and their grandmother from Brookyln on it.
The thing with subways is they're the ultimate tool of democracy. There's nothing like public transport to bring everyone down to the same level of misery. So here we were, the Wall Street ingénues, the new economy turds, the clueless Turks, the school children with questionable clothing and the last but not the least the homeless ... all stuffed into the same steel container speeding underneath the city of sex and glamour. Strangely enough there was nothing sexy nor glamorous about my commute. On the L line, designated with a round gray emblem, there were no colors, we were all washed out, tired, upset, bored, too late to places we never thought we would rush to this early in the morning.
The L line on Manhattan does not go far; and for a good reason too. The L line goes from the East side of Manhattan to the West side in a straight line. If you know Manhattan you will realize it's in the shape a long turd so it does not take long to cut it from side to side. Anyhow, enough about turd, the stops on Manhattan are 1st Ave, 3rd Ave, Union Square, 6th Ave, and final stop at 8th Avenue.
During the first few months, I took L to 6th Avenue changed over to the red line: 1,2,3 and 9. These different trains are on the same line but two were express and two were local. The groups of two further had unique stops, destinations and quirks as soon as they left Manhattan. To tell you the truth, I do not remember all the small details about these lines because I never used them for anything other than going to work and going to my cousin's apartment on Upper West Side.
To switch between L and the red line stations, you have to walk down this really long, and sometimes depressing underground tunnel. The only time that tunnel was fun was when they had street performers down there. I remember, there was this very tall, thin black guy that used to sing and play his guitar with the widest smile on his face. He brightened my day anytime I ran into him. I always tipped him, always --anyone who can brighten up your day in that city needs to be tipped. Perhaps this is why we pay so much money to entertainers, to all these movies, and musicians. They make our unbearable lives bearable. So in a sense we take what we should be entitled to: good living, and turn it into this rare feast, an occasional decadence, a shot of our favorite drug of choice and compensate for it with entertainment be it chemical, mental, physical or all of the above. I don't know where I fit in all of this. I seem to be pointing a lot of things and shitting all over everything but I am just as guilty of as anyone else for buying into, and contributing to the mess.
From 6th Avenue Red line station, I would throw myself into an express train and that usually was a major feat. The express trains were always sardine packed with the Wall Street people. A group of people that never seemed to dress down even during the sweltering hot of the summer months. I do believe that they really must be cold-blooded --otherwise there is no way anyone can have three layers of clothes on in the subway in August and not break a sweat.
The express line took me to World Trade Center station within one hop. It was amazing. I would stand in the train looking outside and watching all these stations race past us in a mad rage, all the colors, the light, the dark, the sirens all blending, running into each other like a Van Gogh painting. And there was a strange hope, a strange thrill there, as in now that I was moving faster I was somehow making up for all the time wasted?
World Trade Center station was amazing. It was not the most beautiful mall I have seen but it was full of stylish stores, all these tunnels and exits, and finally the entrance to Path, the New Jersey trains.
You have to appreciate the strangeness of the situation. In the morning everyone from NJ is commuting to the World Trade Center with the Path trains and I am commuting out along with a handful group of crazy people. So I would literally have to swim against the current of people flowing out of the Path stations and go down to the trains. The Path trains were always cleaner and mostly on time. They actually had a schedule if you can believe.
Almost there. The path train would eventually fill up and the doors would close and the train would always do this strange loopey turney thing so that it could re-enter the NJ PATH tunnel. We would speed underneath Hudson, and soon enough I was finally at my final destination, Exchange Place New Jersey.
A couple of months into my employment in NY, a coworker of mine recommended a less stressful route. Instead of taking the red line she suggested I take the orange like, the N and the R. It really was less stressful but it sometimes did not seem fast enough. NR transverse the same distance and roughly the same number of stops as 1,2,3,9 but there were no express trains, well at least for the part of Manhattan I was traveling in.
My cousin affectionately had named the NR, the Never and the Rarely. And that name says it all really. These trains would disappear for 30 mins at a time and would keep you waiting at the scalding hot platforms for minutes on end. When you finally got onto one of these, the cars were usually old, the A/C broken. I must admit however the most colorful people were always on the NR.
NR also converged at the WTC station. In fact many of the lines that traveled down to lower Manhattan were connected to WTC in one way or another.
I did not like my commute. I did not like the first day I did it, I did not like it the last day I had to do it. I never cared for underground trains, especially the ones in the US. If I was in London on the Jubilee line maybe my story would have been different and I would be raving. But I have a hunch that you could put me on a golden subway line with free express service to any station, I still would manage to be unhappy on it.
Maybe it's not the cities, maybe it is not the subway, maybe it is not a job, maybe it is not my parents, maybe it is not anything at all, perhaps it is not even me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)