Day eight
The day of action. I get up, pack my hotel room sprawl, and leave my bags with the front desk. From there, I head across town to the American Museum of Natural History. I’ve been here once before, back in 2008 or so, but that day I came straight from a red-eye flight, needing to kill time before my friend was off work and could take me and my stuff back to her apartment. So I dragged ass for a couple of hours, and I remember little except for looking longingly at empty corners, thinking I could sleep there.
Today was better. If my phone and feelings are right, I walked more than three miles inside the museum; their app is good and helped me see just about everything, but it led me back and forth so many times, through the gift shops one way and then another. I stared up at a Titanosaur, gazed at so many skeletons, felt strangely moved by the blue whale (and the covid vax clinic still happening by it), and learned that there’s such a thing as an effusive volcano eruption. I stayed there for more than four hours before beginning the biggest trek: to the hotel for my stuff and then to Brooklyn for my second location for this trip. I took a car across the bridge because, despite my well-earned reputation, I do take it easier on myself sometimes than I could. Sometimes.
I picked up my keys from the neighboring deli and checked in. After flopping on the bed for 20 minutes, I set out for the comedy show I’d bought a ticket for a couple of weeks ago, a local place with Janeane Garofalo headlining. I get there too early and circle the block for a while, talking to Sean and taking in the sights. I immediately feel more at ease than I did in the Lower East Side. I fit in the continuum of people here. The houses are beautiful, and so are the residents.
The comedy show is mainly local folks, which was what I wanted. I am one of maybe 17 people in the audience, which meant a lot of crowd work. I sit separately, hidden in a shadowy corner to stage right, drinking palomas to meet my two-drink minimum. I avoid the crowd work and am pretty much the only person who does. Not present in the evening: Janeane Garofalo, who had a scheduling conflict. Hey, ok. I saw comics I wouldn’t have otherwise, I laughed, and I got out. It’ll do.
Day nine
The day of friends. I wake up to drop laundry off for fluff and fold, and then I get a veggie-cheese wrap from the bodega and take it to Fort Greene Park to read, think, and eat. I watch people play tennis and am amazed that people make the same sort of quasi-sex grunts that they do with weightlifting. I had no idea. After, I head to Greenpoint to meet a friend for lunch. We have Mexican food in the restaurant’s robin’s-egg-blue outdoor structure. It’s wildly good to see her. We used to work together and still have tales; I think that, every time we talk, we both learn something new and weird about our shared experiences.
After, I walk an ambling path toward the water, through neighborhoods and past so many cafes. It’s overcast, the clouds thick and low, and the wind whips around me. I love this; I feel so alive in this kind of weather in a way I never do in the eternal-72-degree tepidness of northern California. I find a bench under a building’s overhang and write in my journal as I stare out at the grey-tinged water, waiting to see if the rain will come. It doesn’t until I walk to the subway, and I pull out the umbrella I brought mostly for sun and use it to dodge mist instead.
That night, I head to Crown Heights to meet another friend. (I am very fortunate in people.) Our intended lobster roll shop is closed for renovations, so we end up at a seafood soul food shop run by a man who’s a pure ray of sunshine (and the grilled seafood platter’s pretty great too). We go back to her apartment to eat our riches, including perfect tins of peach cobbler, and we just… catch up. It’s always felt like a miracle, connection and finding people I like so well, but after the worst lockdowns, renewing that connection feels like its own compounded miracle. How did I ever get this lucky? I stay late, talking about everything and nothing, and take a late train home. It’s gone cool and gentle out, and the considerable sweaty murk I build up waiting almost 20 minutes for my train begins to recede. I’m tired but happy.
Day ten
The day of ordinary living. I sleep in (after the last two days, I badly needed it) and wake up by eating a leftover quesadilla in bed along with a pint of blueberries. I find I do this every couple of days, this making a meal out of the odds and ends I’ve collected along the way. Around two, I head to the subway and go north to meet friends to climb. I got into a short routine of climbing again back in May, keeping at it for more than a month, but scheduling stuff put a pause on it for the last six-odd weeks. I don’t have to remember how not to be afraid of heights and falling the way I did back in May, but I’m shaky. My borrowed shoes are too big and make me feel unsteady, so I have to swap them out after the first climb. The harness is an unfamiliar model with a single loop. They use a different belay device than I’m used to. The holds aren’t what I’m used to, the route setters have different mental models of things, it’s actually air conditioned: it’s just a lot of change for my brain to chew on. But my friends are good climbing companions, and I climb until the skin of my hands hurts. Perfect.
After, we meet friends of theirs for late lunch, and I have genuinely excellent vegetable pho and a jar full of bubble tea. It feels good to just sit and talk to new people and remember how to trust myself to relate to other humans as a fellow human, to remember what it is to actively find other people fascinating while also having useful stuff to contribute to the conversation. By the time we’re done, it’s past six, and I realize I might be done for the day. I leave the option open to take myself out to dinner, but I find I’m content to write in bed, catch up with friends online, think for a little while, and talk to no one. It’s been a wonderful day and a half of catching up with people I adore, but like my forearms, my socializing muscles are out of shape. Best to go easy as I learn to use them again and trust the strength will return.
Day eleven
The day of uncharted territory. I get up and have an excellent brunch, sitting outside and watching Brooklyn walk by as I write postcards. Fortunately, plenty of restaurants here define “brunch” the way I do: anytime until dinner. After I’m full of eggs Benedict with salmon, I head into the city and seek out the PATH train. I have story research to do, and that means… Hoboken.
Which is like any other second- or third-tier city I’ve ever been to: pretty, with nice restaurants and the kind of old buildings I like a lot. It reminds of me St. Louis or Tacoma or Albany, any of these places that would be known as a nice place to go if they weren’t overshadowed by another major city in the vicinity. I walk along the waterfront until the path runs out and then turn back, and then I roam through downtown. I verify some of the things I made up and figure out which ones need to be adjusted. I walk through the old train station, which also serves ferries. My dinner plans fall through, so instead I go back to Manhattan, where I swing by Stonewall to take pictures for a young friend. I get a cup of Big Gay Ice Cream and wander around while I eat it.
After that, I return to Brooklyn for the important writing I punted until the end of the day. It’s the last day of the Clarion West Write-a-thon, and I’m going to finish a first draft of a fantasy novel. I write a bit over 1,600 words, and then I’m done. I intend to celebrate by going out to dinner, but I realize that a pre-pandemic weakness of mine has only gotten worse: I cannot tell when restaurant kitchens close. It’s not when the restaurant closes. Is it 30 minutes before? An hour? Something else? I inquire at a couple of places that the internet told me would still be open, but they are not. Instead, I go to the bodega by where I’m staying, and miraculously their deli is still open. The guy in front of me turns to me when he finishes his own order. “Sister, you’d better order fast. They’re almost closed,” he tells me. I thank him and then do exactly that. I celebrate finishing a novel with a Nantucket Nectars orange-mango juice (an old favorite from college), a falafel wrap, and a pre-packaged chocolate-dipped waffle. Very well, then.
Day twelve
The day of the depths of Brooklyn. I wake up a little early and head out for my 12:45 reservation at the City Reliquary, a suggestion from a friend who lives here, whose mom loves weird little museums. This is an excellent one: all ephemera, the pointillist approach to museuming. A wall of Jackie Robinson, cases of World’s Fair souvenirs, handles from many eras of subways, pieces of rubble from demolished buildings of note. There’s just so much packed into one room, all staffed by a volunteer. I am utterly charmed.
After, I grab a very heavy slice with large blobs of ricotta on it. I’ll need it; it’s going to be an active day. I stop at Quimby’s (but not Desert Island; they won’t be open again until Wednesday, too late for me). Among other things, I buy a fanzine for The Cure that was published in 2020. Bless. I also buy a copy of We’ll Never Have Paris, which includes an essay from the owner of Quimby’s NYC that explains, among other things, how he came to open this one after the original Chicago location. As I had no idea there was a second one until I walked by it, this is pleasingly full circle.
I take the subway to Park Slope and, instead of transferring to another train for the last 15 blocks, I just walk and see what things look like. I stop at a bodega for a water and ask the cashier how he’s doing. “Not great,” he says. “People today.” I ask him if he thinks the problem is him or everyone. “Everyone,” he sighs. “A lady started yelling at me for not wearing a mask while I’m unvaccinated.”
I thank him and vacate the bodega quickly, just short of levitating backwards out the door.
After, appropriately enough, I go to Green-Wood Cemetery. It’s been on my New York to-do list forever, but when you have three days or five or seven in New York, it’s really easy to focus on Manhattan. Two weeks gave me the chance to finally get down here, and it’s wonderful. California cemeteries are intriguingly weird to visually parse because things don’t age the same way they do elsewhere; graves from 80 years ago look like they could’ve been put in place last year. Not so here; there are graves going back to the early 1800s, and all manner of extensive aging. They’re beautiful and sometimes strange.
I have a rough plan to walk across the cemetery to emerge and point myself toward Prospect Park, but the combination of following my bliss and Google Maps being like “I dunno” when I check my location means that, after two hours of walking, I see the same entrance I came in. Dang it. I reposition myself and try again; 30 minutes later, I’ve looped around yet again. The next time, I stick strictly to specific streets, following a deliberate route, and I finally get to the other entrance.
I walk through Park Slope and get to Prospect Park, where I begin another wander, past elaborate barbecue setups and volleyball games, flocks of joggers and cyclists. I end up at an outdoor concert, where I hear an opera singer and catch a Marina Franklin set. I move at one point to avoid being hit with a piece of wood as a consequence of a certain whimsical style of parenting. Ah, Park Slope. I may have moved out of Berkeley in 2019, but it’s a bit like Hotel California: you can check out, but you’ll never really leave.
As I start walking out of the park to catch my 8 pm dinner reservation, I end up on a path and stop short as I understand what’s happening in front of me: they have lightning bugs in New York. I didn’t know that. The last time I saw them was probably 20 years ago at my grandparents’ house in southern Illinois. The population steadily diminished as I grew up. I try and fail and try and fail to take a long exposure that captures them, despite not having a tripod or a cable release, and so instead I end up staring into the woods, utterly entranced.
But I do have to get going. I make it in time for dinner, and I have the celebratory meal I didn’t manage yesterday, as I made an actual reservation at an Italian restaurant. I eat a brick of polenta with creamy mushroom sauce, black spaghetti with kale and shrimp, and panna cotta with a cherry sauce. I’m stuffed but very happy.
I’ve walked ten miles, so I come back to my Airbnb and promptly flop onto my side for an hour, waiting to get the energy to shower. It comes eventually. It usually does.
Day thirteen
The day of low motivation. I peel myself out of bed just before two and go to a restaurant the friend who pointed me to Fort Greene recommended. I tried to go on day eleven but came by just as their kitchen had closed. Blessed art platters of cold hummus and chickpea salad on a hot day. After, I read in Fort Greene Park for a little while, watching people go by, listening to tennis players grunt again.
I have generally tried (but often failed) to keep from becoming a giant sweatball while on this trip, but today has a special need for it: I am going shopping. I’ve had a goal to go to Trash and Vaudeville this entire trip, but between energy, sweatball status, and not wanting to accumulate more stuff before my mid-trip location change, I waited. And mentally, today doesn’t feel like a great day for it. Shopping for clothes requires a certain force of will, which I’d say I have about half the time. It requires the mindset that something not working is the fault of the clothes, not the wearer. And today’s just been without that force. If I hadn’t bought a ticket for a 6 pm museum slot, I might not have left the house at all.
But it turns out it’s… great. They’re playing Peter Murphy when I walk in, which I appreciate. I talk to one employee about shared California backgrounds, about changing mask mandates, about how cute my hair is. (Telling me my hair is great is a wonderful way to get off on the right foot with me.) And then I try on things and they’re… really good. A couple things will be good for work, once that’s a thing again and I once again get the chance to be the resident Office Character, but the silver vinyl zip-up top and the black one with boning and a couple dozen hooks and eyes will probably be only and exclusively worn out dancing. (Probably.) I am reasonably sure I’ve never deliberately bought clothes specifically for clubbing before. It took me a while, but here I am. When I check out, I have a fun conversation with the other person working there – about hair dye being discontinued, about what you can and can’t depend on. I walk out with a bag of fancy new things and a smile.
I go hang out in Tompkins Square Park for a little while to kill some time, just listening to people and reading. When it’s time, I head north to Fotografiska NYC, a New York location of a photography museum in Stockholm that I loved. This one’s great too – they’re trying to straddle Serious Museum with “you can get a drink from the bar and take it with you” (which is what I was told when I walked in). I see Tom of Finland’s photographs, some with the sketches they inspired. I see wild, bright, surreal, and rather wonderful photos from Miles Aldridge, which I love, but alas, his books are expensive – the one I pick up is $420. (I put it down quickly and carefully.) Stunning photos from a famous Houston strip club by Adrienne Raquel, beautiful explorations of a relationship and gender roles from Pixy Liao, and an inquisitive look at the collision of international fashion from Hassan Hajjaj. I loved it, and it was worth leaving the house for.
I hang around Madison Square Park for a while after, on the phone, watching people eat Shake Shack. After, I walk to the Peter McManus Cafe, a suggestion from my friend who used to live near it. Not McSorley’s, he said – go for the real thing. Since I’m only eating outside, “real” is relative, so I order my cider and veggie burger at the bar and get them at the al fresco dining shack across the sidewalk. But I see it, and I like it, and I learn it was the bar in Highlander. The bartender has that serious air about him that I like in people who do his job; he genuinely just wants everything to work well. He’s very earnest when he asks me if everything was ok. And it was.
After, I walk back north, intending to finally get that shake… but Shake Shack closed early tonight for building work. Oh well. I go home instead, still carrying my bag of new clothes, via a trek that includes four wrong subway entrances before I find the single correct one and then get on a train that goes only one stop before going out of service. But I get back to Fort Greene eventually, and I get a cookies-and-cream ice cream bar at the bodega on the corner before I go back to my Airbnb.
Tomorrow is my last full day. It came fast and also took a beautiful forever to get here. I’ve already decided I’m coming back here for a couple weeks in the spring. I think I decided that on about day two, really, wordlessly and deep inside of me, once the initial OMG PEOPLE terror began to wane, and dormant parts of me started to come back to life.
Day fourteen
The day of public transit and infinite pumpkins. I put today’s outing so late in the trip because I wanted to build up to long journeys across public transit and also because it was the first day the infinite mirror room was available. Today, I went from Brooklyn to the Bronx to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden. It’s not the worst trek, but it’s a long ride on the 5 and then a bus, and if today is any indication, buses in the Bronx are a whole thing I’m not excited to do again.
The exhibits, however, are just right. All joy and sparkle and brightness and color and whimsy and untethered imagination. Setting them in the garden worked perfectly. The way they managed access and crowds worked perfectly. I don’t think I could’ve picked a better finale for this trip.
On the way back, I sit next to a gentleman in a beautiful war bonnet, all black and teal feathers. Sharing a bench on the train, I felt like we could’ve been another “this is the future liberals want” picture. I love New York.
That night, I go to one last brass night at Barbés, a last hurrah before I go home and quarantine until I get a clear covid test. On the way home, I order an omelet online from the one-block-further bodega, the one open 24 hours. When I walk in, I join two cops, a guy talking fast about how the cigarettes weren’t for him, and another guy just loitering in the way people sometimes do when it’s one am and you’re in a convenience store. “Hello, lady!!!” the cashier greets me. He has my omelet. I speed home. Late dinner or early breakfast? Or maybe just both.
Day fifteen
The day of endings. My flight isn’t until seven, so I have some time to go do things. My hosts are kind enough to let me leave my stuff at their apartment, so I fly untethered. First I go to the Museum of Chinese in America, which I didn’t make it to last week. It’s good and dense, and a friend gave me a couple things to look for that figure into her family history, which added a lovely dimension to things. I walk around reading for an hour and emerge to a protest, which I learn is scheduled twice weekly, that has to do with management and funding. More dimensions. From there, I wander around a little before taking the subway north to Madison Square Park, because I really want that shake. Alas, the line is predictably long, and it’s not to be. (This is not wildly upsetting; Oakland has a Shake Shack now too, and this is more reason to make myself go there.) Instead, I walk across the street to Eataly and get a pizza, which I eat back in the park as I write some last postcards.
I am aware (and have it confirmed later) that I could stay another hour there, but I also know how I feel on travel days; going to a museum and having lunch out without feeling out of my mind is enough achievement. So I get back on the subway, go collect my stuff, and take the LIRR to JFK. I considered taking a car, trying to be nice to myself again, but the price would have been over a hundred dollars – no thank you. Instead, I end up on the train, listening to three guys who have a look of construction or maybe electrician to them talk. Deep New York accents, jokes about cramming themselves into Priuses when they get rides between jobs. I’m travel jittery, but they’re a joy to listen to.
JFK is kind of my least-favorite airport, largely because of a really terrible international connection there in 2013, but it’s… fine. I get incredibly dodgy pad Thai for late lunch. I try to mentally prepare myself to go home but realize I kinda can’t, and that’s ok. Mostly, I just wait.
After the flight, I encounter a bunch of weird SFO problems in trying to just get to BART and then have the single worst BART ride of my life on the way home. It’s a hell of a thing to spend a couple of weeks feeling very independent and steady (though that’s mostly just money; I have money, therefore New York is of a manageable scale to me) and then to reenter the familiar and find myself terrified of one shitty dude. But I make it home, and I wonder what it’ll be to reacclimate. Remind myself that I don’t actually believe in signs. Remind myself that I’ll probably be just fine. I most always am.
But I wonder, once again, where home is now and what that means in this era. To be determined.
