New Yorkers are nuts.
Don’t get me wrong: I love New York. It is one of the few places I can live and not feel like my life TOO much homophobia and racism. And classicism. Oh, and the xenophobia. The trash, the congestion, the high prices, dumb-assed politicians, celebrities and celebrity wanna-be’s….what was I saying? Oh yeah, I love New York! Like, what other city in the world boasts a population representative of the world’s population? I can (and do) mingle with Armenians, Cubans, Nigerians, Parisians, Jamaicans, Moroccans, Haitians, Trinidadians… and the list goes on. I saunter through fab museums, mingle with established and upcoming writers, check out street artists. Here its easy to have the feeling that you can do anything you want and that all you need is to work, work, work at it! I can see obscure movies. All my friends are crazy like me! They do what they want! They live and breathe art! Hell we even set up a fucking art gallery in my apartment! Why? Because we can. In New York, you can make this happen. Sure you can make it happen in other cities, but please, this is New York. So nice you gotta say it twice! In New York you can be with millions of people or you can hole up in your overpriced, closet of an apartment and be alone. You can have it all in New York. And I do.
Still. When the blackout occurred, I was at my job (the library). One of my co-workers and I were talking while I worked on a writing project. Flick, flick, then dark. We laughed, and joined our other co-workers by a large bay window overlooking 135th and Lenox avenues. We looked at people walking into the subway station and coming out looking perplexed and annoyed. We watched shop owners close their businesses. We watched as our fellow staff members, along with library patrons, spill out onto the sidewalks. We witnessed a vigilante traffic guide do a damn good job of keeping cars moving. We laughed our asses off. We closed our division and we went home.
Fortunately I live five blocks from where I work, and so does my roomie, so she and I walked home. Two of her co-workers—Brooklynites—joined us. Both tried to connect with their boyfriends in order to make plans to get home. Cell phone service was spotty at best. One could only sustain a signal for a few seconds. A few hours later they both worked it out.
Since the trains were out, busses were packed. Bodegas had very long lines. Traffic was starting to get backed up. Gaggles of folks were walking past us going further uptown. The temperature didn’t help. It was about 86 degrees. People were frustrated. All I wanted to do is to get home and watch how this drama would unfold.
New York is a mass of schizophrenia behavior. Generally people weren’t freaking out but those who were gave me pause. Some were actuary crying. That boggled me. Crying? People: You might live in another borough. You are not sure how you will get home. You are stuck. Do you freak or remain calm? Sure it’s easy for me to be calm because I live five blocks from my apartment. But I am also certain that many people – as a result of living in cramped, expensive apartments, working jobs they hate, huddled up with lovers or spouses that drive them crazy – are using this frustrating situation to lose their minds.
For example: all kinds of all Al-Keida (how do you spell that word?) theories floated about. People argued. A woman who crossed a street yelled at STOPPED oncoming cars to STOP! THERE ARE CHILDREN CROSSING THE STREET! Couples bickered and dragged their kids along. Some 50-year old was sitting in his car with his portable television and waved neon green glow-stick. People sold bottles of water three times their worth. People knocked on the doors of packed buses that refused to stop. Typically loud residents became louder. I saw a police officer purchase a glow stick. To fight crime, I suppose.
As it grew darker, my darling Niki and I walked down 125th Street, downtown Harlem. People generally looked worried. I loved that. It was like Harlem had turned into Toledo, Ohio. The usual “don’t-fuck-with-me” and “you-gonna-respect- me” looks that New Yorkers normally shoot you were replaced with “I’m-taking-my-ass-home-sheeeeeit.” I was like a kid in a candy store. Scared New Yorkers! And the kicker was that everybody, from the well-to-do to those who didn't have pot to piss in, were equalized: everybody was in the dark. I like how chaos strips us down to our human-ess. Chaos always tells you who and what you are and what you are afraid of--I love that. I am soooo interested in those spaces in life. I am curious because I feel it is one of the few honest spaces we humans engage. What a spectacle. New York was closed for repairs.
Earlier in the day I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with work, and was a little bothered by my hair. My hair is growing (I usually sport a baldy—see picture at right), and it is getting on my nerves and I don’t want to think about it. Still, I think about it. Can someone else think about it for me? I have other things to do, like fucking live. With stupid thoughts like this floating in my head, two of my good friends called me at work and both were losing it. One wanted to quit her job and the other was sleeping on her job. Both cracked me up.
By 10 o’clock, the dramas of the day had played themselves out down to a quiet lull. The sky was clear and twinkled with stars. Candles flickered. Radio announcers constantly commented on how “civil” people were acting towards one another--kind and courteous. The reference point was the looting that took place in 1977, when the last blackout in New York City occurred. It reminded me about how I feel when I take in a movie at Magic Johnson Theatres. Before the film you came to see starts, Magic comes on says some stupid ass shit like “We can have own theatres in our own neighborhoods. We can enjoy popcorn and sit our asses down like real people.” I call it the “let’s-not-act-like-niggas-niggas” speech. It presupposes that black people have to be told how to act. That’s boring, dumb and insulting. Mayor Bloomberg and a slew of talking heads had similar commentary about these crazy-assed New Yorkers. Everybody knows that Brooklyn is the only borough we have to worry about.
Niki, her sister Dawn (in town for a visit and had to walk from Spring Street to 130th with a computer on her back and two bags in her hands) and I talked, ate and nodded off. After I read a few lines of s short story by Edgar Allen Poe by candlelight (the only real way to read Poe), and what seemed like an hour of helicopters circling above my apartment building (Black Hawk, down! Go to Brooklyn where they are looting shoe and cell phone stores!) I went to bed and thought that this blackout was just the lift my sprits needed!
Friday, August 15, 2003 @ 01:06 PM