2001-05-24 - 1:56 p.m.

(This is basically a repeat of 2 previous entries, inserted here for order�s sake with minor editing. I'll update again soon. For something new and exciting, check out my humble roommate Saint Francis and our L.A. contact, The Evanator.)

Other parts of this story:

Intro

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

(in which our young hero goes to the East Coast, then runs some errands)

I go to New York. I�ve still got a little money left over from my old job and some more coming in from my drone temp job, so I figure I�d better go now while the going�s good. A strong contingent of old college and high school friends have congregated there in search of fortune, and some of them have found it. I drive nine hours to Buffalo, where my brother is finishing his degree, then eight hours to Boston, where I celebrate Easter with my family, then four hours down to New York. My car is very tired.

My friends may be paying twice the money for half the apartment I have in Chicago, but they are living it up in New York. Money is treated like a plaything � you make your money, you spend your money. You eat out four days a week or you go out drinking till six in the morning. They are treating themselves more because I am there, but still, the economics of the situation just work out this way, Jason tells me. Rents are so high where he lives, on Manhattan�s Upper East Side, that adequate kitchen space is too expensive, and the grocery stores are tiny and expensive, too. It�s easier and more tasty to patronize one of the dozen ethnic restaurants on your block.

The selection of restaurants doesn�t make life any easier. When I stay with Jason and Emily, we have so many choices that we agonize for half an hour over where to go. Jason wants sushi, Emily wants Italian. If you go out to eat enough, you have to wait until you are in the mood for a certain type of food. Back in Chicago, I am usually in the mood for anything that isn�t a Lipton noodle packet, but that�s what I usually wind up with anyway.

To help us make our decision, I step onto their tiny balcony and look in either direction. We will choose among the six or seven restaurants I can physically see from their balcony, and we settle finally on Thai food.

This is my fifth meal out in four days. As I am running out of money, I select from the less expensive items. Then Emily notes the frog legs, which cost five dollars more than the item I planned to get. I think back to my childhood watching the Muppet show, and how Kermit would cringe at the idea of frog legs, and I think how I always wondered at what frog legs would look or taste like. I realize that I had always thought I would get them some day. I see that this is my chance � to make this meal not just another gorging in the whirlwind New York tour, but to make it the memorable once-in-a-lifetime occasion when I got frog legs.

The meals come. My frog legs look and taste like little strips of chicken. Not even particularly good chicken. I can hardly even believe that these strips of meat ever belonged to a frog. I sense that I have been had. But we share the food all around and enjoy it, and I can say I have fulfilled my childhood dream of at least ordering the frog legs. Besides, I think, this will probably be my last meal out, as I am leaving the next day.

The next day, though, I decide to stay to see a show with David � a one-man show by a gay black man and about his life. Afterwards, he asks if I am hungry. I tell him no. We just had some hummus and vegetables a few hours ago, and besides, I�m running out of money. He�ll take none of that, so we go to this little spot on Avenue A with an outdoor table just for us. It�s a nice night and a fine meal and we are treated well, but I try to articulate why, today, I have decided that I don�t feel much like going out to eat.

There�s one obvious reason � I just don�t enjoy food that much. I put it in my mouth, taste it, it goes away. Maybe it�s because I don�t have much of a sense of smell. Or maybe it�s partly because I�m always a bit too aware of how much money I�m spending on each bite.

David is in another place in his life here in New York. Having spent his college years scraping by selling his plasma and collecting change from under the couch, he finally feels free. He is making more money than he ever has at a part-time Internet job, he has paid off his debts, he is free of his parents. He has his own place and his own studio and he just wants to relax, to make a little money and spend a little money and enjoy himself a bit. I can appreciate this.

Besides, going out to eat is just what one does here in New York. Nobody makes their own dinner. It�s what you do to commune with your friends, he says. This may be true, I think, but I wonder if it is a good thing. Is it a good thing that you have to spend money in order to commune? That you have to become part of the lifestyle of consumption to relax?

I have heard from many sources that once you�ve lived in New York, it�s hard to live anywhere else. You become so accustomed to the lifestyle, to ordering fine cuisine from nearly any country at any time, from having your choice of every imaginable sort of entertainment, to being able to wake up at four in the morning and have a veggie burrito delivered to your door, that living anywhere else seems like it�s not living.

Perhaps they live more fully in New York because of this. Some do, anyway. But not everybody�s happy. Some, I imagine, become accustomed to the lifestyle and they start to expect it. There are diminishing returns on so much eat-til-you�re-stuffed living. You can only enjoy a treat so many times before it stops being a treat and becomes part of the routine. And your mind turns to something else while your top-notch appetizers, meal and dessert are being delivered to you without your having to lift a finger except to select from the hundred choices on the menu.

Because the enjoyment isn�t in the food, it�s in you. It�s in your being able to appreciate the raisin or the slice of bread as much as you possibly can. It�s in learning to appreciate the people sitting on the subway or loafing in the park, not just the high art of the finest museums and performances. It�s learning to love life without money, because once you can you can never be unhappy. And then, when you�ve really discovered those things, then you can work yourself up slowly, giving yourself a little treat here and there, and recognizing it as a luxury, even if the luxury is as simple as buying the brand-name cereal rather than the generic brand. At least that�s my going theory.

Everybody has little neurons of some sort in their brains, I�m not sure exactly how they work, but they fire off when you experience pleasure. Maybe just getting those neurons firing off is what makes life worth living. We�re just wired that way. So you have to figure out how to get those neurons firing as much as possible for as long as possible, to get the most pleasure for your actions. If you don�t do anything for yourself then those neurons don�t fire and you can�t be happy. But if you overload your senses then maybe they get a little tired and readjust, so the same experience doesn�t have the same impact in your brain. You can�t appreciate what you have anymore. But if you can learn to appreciate just life, stripped of any major excitements or indulgences, and slowly work your way up when you�re ready for new experiences, chances are you�ll have the neurons trained to fire at maximum frequency. Because once you�ve adjusted to an overstimulated lifestyle, like once you�ve lived life in New York, then you can never go back.

I say something of the sort to David over the meal, and he knows what I mean, but he�s sick of living in poverty and just wants to be able to let himself be happy for a change. I can dig that. So maybe this is just my little view of the games I have to play to get the most of my experience, and it isn�t relevant to everybody. But I bet a lot of the people around here know they live in the best place in the world, and they can�t be happy even here, and that just makes them even more miserable.

***

But David can be happy here because he�s learned to enjoy life with nothing, with no expectations, no destination, just doing the next thing that comes to mind and deciding to enjoy it. That�s the way I like it, just wandering about, learning to enjoy the journey without worrying much about the destination, because there�s no guarantee you�ll enjoy the destination, but if you enjoy the journey you�ll never be disappointed.

So we wake up in the morning and Jake comes over. He�s doing an East Coast tour of his own. We steam up an artichoke and peel the meat from its leaves with our teeth. We cut up a kiwi and eat that. We pick up the half-inflated basketball that David bought from a thrift store and start bouncing it. We drive into Manhattan and bounce it all the way into Central Park, passing it between us on the sidewalks all the way. We play a game of three on three with some guys taking shots in the park. They are all better than us non-athletic schoolboys, except maybe for Jake, who gets a good share of drives in.

We don�t say much � there�s no need. We wander around the sports fields. We find a pair of sunglasses and a cigarette box with three cigarettes on a park bench. We decide that fortune is smiling on us and take them. We walk back into the streets dribbling our ball, and consider passing it to random people, to shake them out of their habits. A well-dressed bellhop asks for the ball and dribbles it between his legs. Another man holds his arms out in a circle and tells us to shoot. We�re too afraid we�ll hit him in the face and give him a bloody nose. Another man, without a word, hands David a baseball cap. Now we can put on our sunglasses and hat and bounce our basketball and have a grand old time, and enjoy these crazy people we pass in the street. Pass enough people on the street and some of them are bound to know how to enjoy themselves.

Some of my most enjoyable moments in New York are spent meandering, either with friends or alone. One morning after breakfast Jason, Emily and I wander back to Central Park again. We wind our way through the meditation gardens (at least that�s what Jason calls it), around the fishing pond. We see turtles hanging out in the middle of the pond and families casting their reels at its edges. I challenge Jason to a race up a rock face and we all scamper up, finding ourselves atop a grassy patch overlooking the north end of the park. We plop ourselves down and lay back, enjoying a lazy spring afternoon.

Jason tells me that Central Park was created long before the surrounding neighborhoods were fully developed, in a more formal time when men were not permitted to remove their shirts in the park. The winding pathways were created, he says, because the prevailing theories at the time were that winding paths are good for the moral fiber of the residents, good for the spirit. The straight and narrow path becomes, by default, the pathway to hell, or at least low morals.

This seems like a quaint but questionable theory, but I start to wonder if there is truth in it. The winding road seems endangered today � even in Manhattan, the earliest streets downtown were built jumbled and confusing, while the later ones up by the park are straight and efficient. Some (especially those who live downtown) say that uptown is a little more uppity, a little more dull and whitebread, while downtown is more interesting, more relaxed, and the people have more fun. I don�t know � I haven�t lived there long enough to know.

Winding streets everywhere are pretty much a thing of the past. The neighborhood where I grew up in Boston�s suburbs was full of them, but that place was established in about 1640. The newer suburbs, for example some of the new Chicago suburbs that I used to write about, have straight streets. You get on the highway, you turn once onto a busy street, you turn once more into the subdivision where everybody lives. You want groceries? You get out of your subdivision and get back on the busy street and the chain grocery store is right there. You want to travel across the country? You get out of your subdivision, turn once onto the busy street, turn once more onto the highway, and keep driving until you get to where you need to go. And always driving, of course, because that�s the easiest way.

It�s efficient, like a machine, and like any mechanistic activity it quiets the mind and siphons away your curiosity, helping you to ignore any life outside your directed path. Efficiency tends to do this � it gets you more and better of the things you are told you want and you wind up missing all the things you didn�t realize you want. The efficiency allows you to skip over the hassles, the delays, the people, the interactions. They get you done with what you need to be doing faster, so you can do more of the same thing and get more money and buy more stuff. In the time is money equation, time, the most precious commodity of all, is what always ends up sacrificed. Any spare time won thanks to the straight roads of efficiency is just squandered by people who spend it doing more of the same.

Perhaps most people don�t know quite what to do with themselves, because they�re not used to doing what they want and listening to themselves. That�s where I was just a month ago � living someone else�s dream and watching my youth slip away. But then something woke me up and started me looking around, and I realize that I don�t need to be shooting toward some sparkling career, that all I need is to look around me and appreciate what I see, stop and enjoy every twist in the path and let the world take me where it may.

I am thinking all this partly because I�ve wandered off my directed path again and, perhaps, I need to justify it. Upon returning from my walk to the park with Jason and Emily, I have taken the R train rather than the N train to get to David�s apartment in Queens. I must walk north a few miles in some undiscovered neighborhoods � even David hasn�t been here before. I pass kids playing baseball and quaint little flowered homes with the dad outside washing his car. I notice a blue six-sided die on the sidewalk and pick it up � perhaps I can make it a symbol of the random possibilities of life, throw it to help me decide what path to take next, because a random decision can be as good as a directed one.

I am aiming for a cemetery that will lead me right to David�s, but I overshoot it and end up walking along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, watching the cars zip to where they need to go, along those marvelous modern highways that help us save some time so we can do some more work. The highways throw me off because there are actually two highways that converge here and I end up going another half-mile out of my way.

But I tell myself to appreciate this long meandering walk, because even if it has taken me out along this boring, dirty expressway, at least I have also spent the time to consider what I have seen here in New York, and to appreciate my role as a wanderer. And it gives me a chance to think about my friends, and wonder if there�s anything that they themselves are doing wrong according to my little self-generated ideas, if I train my critical eye on them. And I realize that, no, all this is moot, because the only thing really important is to find happiness, and David has found happiness in having room to breathe and enjoy, and Jason and Emily have found happiness in each other, and each of them is trying to share happiness in his or her own way.

And I will go back to Chicago the next day, driving those straight efficient roads that allows me to leave New York at noon, drive and drive and drive, stopping for gas three times but never even getting off at a single exit, and be deposited at my doorstep without ever quite believing that I was in all those places that the signs and maps indicated, because I had to keep pushing forward to save time, because I wanted to get back home and get back to work, but mostly because I knew my most important meandering had to be done in my own backyard.

***

Having spent lots of money in New York, I make my first adventure back in Uptown a trip to the bank. I am the only person in line. At one desk are two girls chatting away about something. I go up to them, but stand back in case they don�t want my business. One of them says, �May we help you, sir?� but all nonchalant, like she could take me or leave me. I step up and pull out my checks.

Then I realize that I forgot something. �Ahh� I actually have to get a deposit slip,� I say, and they tell me, �We have deposit slips right here.� I realize that, of course they have deposit slips back there, they must have all kinds of things hidden back there out of my view, hidden on that little half-wall to keep a sense of mystery behind the teller, makes sure you know the bank�s holding all the cards. But she gets her own view of the world; she gets to see things I can�t see, unless she shows her hand. But today she is showing her hand because the two of them are talking as if I�m not there, and I get to see the humanity in them, and feel like they�re people.

I can feel that they�re people mostly because they�ve got such great chemistry as two random people working together. The one girl is teaching the other how to do her job � one is the precocious learner, the other the wizened veteran, but both look about 23.

I try to compute the total from my checks on my deposit slip, taking into account that I�ll need to take out 40 dollars, including a roll of quarters for the washing machine, only my attention is drawn to these people and I can hardly concentrate. Their girlfriends come over from across the bank to chat; apparently they had tales to exchange from the previous night to divulge.

�I had to share my bed; he didn�t want to sleep in his own bed,� the veteran says in response to a question about her hair, and I wonder (besides the obvious questions that come with such a comment) what it matters to her hair if she has to share her bed, and I suddenly realize that girls sometimes do sleep alone, that strange girls are people just like bank tellers are people. They just have their own views and their own habits, but they have ideas just like you do. They can do things by themselves or with you, and they may see you and enjoy your company but some of them may never bump into you at all. Or when they bump into you they don�t realize that you have ideas just like they have ideas.

I�m thinking all these things and I can�t concentrate on my deposit slip, which I have miscalculated. Over the seven I scribble an eight, really drill it in their nice and dark so there can be no mistake and proudly hand it to the veteran.

�You need to put your name and date on here, sir,� she says, and hands it back. I say, �Yes,� and take it back to sign and date. I ask her the date. It is April 25. The veteran tells the new girl that I will be depositing checks and getting cash back, which will require a new lesson. I say, �I�m making this hard on you, aren�t I?,� just to stir up a little conversation, and the veteran girl just says, �That�s okay.�

Then she tells new girl that she�s doing a very good job for only having been working for a few hours. I ask her if this is her first day, but she doesn�t respond � they�re already engrossed in the lesson. The new girl is being told that a lot of those things you learned in training you won�t have to do when you get up here, and you could have printed the total on the back of the receipt if you wanted, and half those trainers don�t know what they�re doing anyway, and the new girl smiles and says, �Girl�.�

The one girl asks me if I want that as two twenties, and I say, no, with a roll of quarters.

�You�re doing laundry today?� the younger one says.

I laugh and say yes, and she says, �I have to do laundry today, too,� and we both smile and laugh almost imperceptibly. For a moment that half-wall is gone, because it�s such a relief to know that the strange people on the other sides of these walls are people, too.

***

I walk over to the Dunkin� Donuts because I�m thirsty and stupid. Maybe I can scope out some humanity in this place, I think. I go up to the counter to see what they have. There�s a newspaper there, and I strain to read it in the small space between the wall and the tall black man. He looks back at me with a sneer and I step back, refusing to abandon my smile.

Then my turn comes up and I ask for a Coffee Coolatta. The man behind the counter, a Hispanic man, asks me what size, medium or large. And without thinking, I say, medium, but then think, wait a minute, there�s another size he�s not telling me about. I look up and see that, sure enough, there�s another size called �Small� that costs a good 50 cents less than the medium. I look down and say, �Small,� and he looks at me as if he doesn�t understand, and says �Mocha�Coolatta?� And I say, �Small,� and he says, �Coolatta,� and I say yes, and he goes off without ever acknowledging that I have told him I wanted a small twice, and he comes out and says, �Medium Coolatta. $2.49.�

I want to tell him that I wanted a small, but suddenly I just want the transaction to be over, so I give him the money and turn away. But I won�t leave yet � I wanted to sit down and write, so I sit down with my notebook and a crazy old black man looks over to me from across the room and says, �Hey,� as if to say, �You�re a little baby-faced white boy. I can get some money out of you.� I decide for some reason that I don�t want to sit here and write stories while a crazy man yells at me, I just want to leave.

So I walk out, thinking how stupid it is to have this medium-sized Coffee Coolatta in my hand that I�ll never finish and how that guy just played dumb to exploit my inherent fear at being on foreign turf, non-white-kid�s turf, where only the strong survive and I am weak and must pay the price for their position which my race brought on them. And though I�ve heard all the cliches and ragged speeches since I was this tall, I�ve never so fully felt that racism is a wall, obstructing our view from each other somehow, and you have to be fearlessly committed to knock down that wall. I�m thinking of the whole thing as I walk back home, trying to make myself strong and fearless, though it would take me a while to actually get physically strong. But I could get fearless, and in fact I should march right back down there and ask for a small Coolatta in exchange for this medium Coolatta which I have already sucked down halfway.

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