Saturday, December 20, 2008

Take a bite

New York frightened the hell out of me when I first moved there. Lots of rather uptight and angry folks, and here I was, fresh faced and young with the notion that people would be happy to see someone like me coming into their place of work.
Well, it took close to four months to find a job. And the job was in the middle of New Jersey.
On repeat visits, I come back to find that what I found most frightening about the place has subsided. What makes the place so cold, it's huge size and population, also makes it relatively benign. Sure, no one knows you, but that also means they aren't bothered by you either. I think it's some kind of mental mechanism to try to fit seamlessly into a new place because of the notion that an outsider will be instantly recognized and...well, consequences...I suppose. It's rather irrational. Unless you are a spy, or there's a war on and you are in the middle of it pretending you are someone you really aren't, the worst thing that's going to likely to happen is being marked as a tourist.
Of course, there are outliers. Tourists have been the focus of violence and anger before. But it's not usually a problem if one has their wits about them.

Anyway, I never suffered anything worse than the ire of a few cab drivers in New York, and it's a fine town.

The rest of my trip went well. I got my Christmas shopping neatly out of the way, got to wander around town quite a bit, and had quite a good time with my friends.

I suppose it was Tuesday that we went out, Cait, Porsche, Dave, and Cait's friend from LA (Jen, was it?).

We started at The Levy, a fine Williamsburg establishment of relatively long standing. It's filled with cheap beer, cheap shots, and bowls of cheese balls. They have food, mostly odd things like nachos with cheese lotion and Frito pie. It happened to be the site of a night just before I moved when we played Truth of Dare and Dave ended up walking up to a man playing Big Buck Hunter and asked him if he were a buck, would the fellow hunt him. Between that and a few other engagements that involved a fair bit of noise, dancing, dancing with strangers trying to have their own conversations, possibly worse pickup lines than that above, and related hijinks we all got the feeling that we would be kicked out relatively shortly and decided instead to leave.

Tuesday, however, was much more sedate. We played Jenga on a wobbly table with a mixed package of blocks, drank and talked. Then we went over to Trash Bar, another fine establishment which lives up to its name. I think their drinks are a bit more expensive now, however. On the way, we got some chocolate covered pretzels. Jen has a wheat allergy, and didn't want any. After playing half a round of pool, however, she broke down and started eating them. We didn't stick around there too long. Dave wasn't feeling well, none of us are any good at pool, and Jen's allergy apparently causes narcolepsy. This I found intriguing.

After we woke her up, we decided to head into Manhattan. I talked to Jen.

"You'd make a terrible superhero with an Achilles's heel like that."
"Yep."
"Good nightcap, though."
"Indeed. Isn't this dangerous?"
She was referring to the ice on the sidewalk. As I recall, she'd just come from L.A. a few months before and wasn't entirely convinced that she could walk on icy sidewalks. Meanwhile, Cait and Porsche were almost falling down drunk ahead of us, but were not apparently worried. This seemed to worry Jen more.
I don't think it helped that she was liable to pass out at any moment. Eventually we made it to the subway, and she fell asleep.

Once we got her in a cab the remaining force went to one of Cait's old Lower East Side haunts. Place called the boxcar. It's shaped like one, has corrugated walls, some easy chairs, and the narrowest distance between seated bar patrons and walls that they could probably get away with. Cait hadn't been back in months and somehow showed up during the Christmas party. She was in her element, chatting amicably with a wide array of people she knew or wanted to know. She's got a confidence that would seem unlikely from my first impression of her as a Freshman in college.

Porsche and I decided to leave around 3AM. There weren't many trains running. Got back around 4 and passed out.

The next day I finished up the Christmas shopping, getting lost on my way to St. Marks Place.

Met up with Ellen, another friend from college. She was a freshman when we were all seniors out at Kenyon. She goes by Nell now and is studying for a PhD in linguistics on Long Island. We went to Supercore for a bite to eat. Don't know if I mentioned that place, quite a fine Japanese coffee shop in Williamsburg. Don't let the name fool you.

Then back to Porsche and Dave's apartment, discussing plans for the evening, a bit of catchup, etc. Dave was still under the weather, squeezing a bottle of honey directly into the back of his throat and wearing his down jacket even indoors. So he didn't join us going out to the bar.

We discussed Brooklyn and Long Island on the way to Maracuja. Williamsburg isn't a very Brooklyn area of Brooklyn, but it happens to be there, and to be the place I know.

Maracuja's a little Husband and Wife run place I've always enjoyed. Cheap, good drinks, a rather eclectic decor that all somehow works together, mural on the ceiling, and you can always find a place to sit. It's somewhere approaching a dive, but it has a certain class and hominess that sets it apart.

We ended up running into a few other Kenyon folks sitting at the bar. I didn't really know them very well. It was their first time in there, setting up for the conversation of the evening.

I talked with Nell and Porsche. We discussed the nature of relationship, the strange realm of emotions and their rise and fall, and how life keeps going. It was a conversation on par with the best I've ever had. I feel like Porsche opened up in a way during this trip that I had not seen even in the years I roomed with him. And it was quite good to see Nell. She has a great outlook on life.

Porsche went home, and the bar closed up about a half-hour later. We were the only ones there, and they gave us a free round before going. Fine people.

I went with Nell to the train station. Took close to an hour there and over an hour back with the late-night maintenance and stations being closed. Still managed to get back earlier than the previous evening.

The evening made me think a bit about what is possible in life, and what I've yet to do. But, rather than being a touch depressing, as these sort of thoughts often are, it was quite pleasant. There's the notion that the life you've led is the life you've led, and although you could certainly find fault with whatever you might have done or not done, it doesn't mean you can't be happy about it and still have a quite different future.

Life does keep going. But it's not that it keeps going, like the song says, even after the thrill of living is gone. The thrill can come and go in an instant, or over years, rising and falling softly, nearly unnoticed. The point is that life does keep going, it doesn't end in the great moments, or nearly thereafter, like a book or a movie. And while this is a little disconcerting at first, it does have the benefit of being an ongoing adventure. It would not seem that this is something that a person would find odd, but how many people have you wandered into saying that once they're married their lives will be changed? You are the same person you were yesterday, but with a day more behind you. And it's a fine thing to get married, I'm sure, but life doesn't freeze in the moment of happily ever after. There are still adventures to be had, life to be lived.

And it's going to be a great adventure ahead.

2 comments:

Caitlin said...

Your retelling of the Big Buck Hunter story made me laugh so hard that I sound like I'm choking. Good thing I'm the only one in the office right now, or they'd think I was possessed.

Unknown said...

Dan you have always been one of the most poetic people i know, and the last two paragraphs of that entry made me all mushy and nostalgic. and also contemplative. too bad im at work right now