A Visit With My Ex
Manhattan skyscrapers are giant bumps of braille with streets for the spaces in-between. Floor after floor of stories wait to be read. Foreigners come and go in spurts. Their class leaves a fancy gloss over each grimy block. Anywhere else telling someone to reproduce with them self would be fighting words. Here it is island slang for a verbal comma.
“Locals” are just long-term visitors. In a crematorium hungry for the young, the hopes of only an ash covered few survive. NYC is my former home, my sexy ex. What can I say about this city that others haven’t said before? I love you, but sometimes you’re kind of a bitch.
One of the largest gourmet exhibitions in the world, the Fancy Food Show, starts today. The salon has been running non-stop since 1951 and fills 5 city blocks. Luckily it is right next to the Manhattan midtown ferry terminal. Unluckily for me on Sundays the ferry doesn’t run before 9 am. I live across the Hudson River in tiny Hoboken. It is only a mile long, so I head south from 14thstreet to the downtown PATH train.
The number of screaming babies in strollers out and about at 7 am is shocking. Uptown Hoboken is infant central for Manhattan refugees under 5 years old. Their parents get one last, diluted taste of city life. Then these human tadpoles migrate westward to suburbia.
Brown buildings to my left and right are shrunken versions of their big city cousins. Every 30 feet one emaciated tree sticks out of the sidewalk; an arboreal holocaust survivor. The local dress code here is shorts, tank tops and exercise-wear. With my black suit and white shirt, it’s like I’m dressed for a gourmet funeral. Maybe I am.
I pass an old homeless man. A faded jacket and blue basketball shorts hang limply on his frame. Long, grey hair trembles as he screams in Italian at a store named “Beowoof.” Literary indignation or insanity, at first I’m not sure. But by Italian standards his hands are waving around way too little. I go with batshit crazy.
NYC is my former home, my sexy ex. What can I say about this city that others haven’t said before? I love you, but sometimes you’re kind of a bitch.
The sky above is bright blue with white streaks that escaped from a painting. I keep walking. A giant street cleaner weaves between parked cars like a crazy hockey Zamboni. The brushes scatter debris at nearby pedestrians. My spell check corrects this as I type to “pediatricians”. Given how many babies are here, maybe it’s right. I walk underground and take the PATH train to Manhattan.
Arriving in midtown, I start walking westward. Clouds above are whipping past skyscrapers, a television sky on fast forward. Wild plants have been throttled back to cracks in sidewalks and clogged sewers. New high rise construction is all around me but half done. Large buses filled with exhibitors pull up as I walk in the front of the show.
Fancy Food has three sections – the top, side and basement. A large billboard in the lobby proclaims “Before they enjoy it here you’ll discover it here.”
