My First Real Saturday in New York : Exhaustively
When Saturday began, at Midnight, I was trying to make a good snare sound. I was sitting on the couch in our crummy sublet with Luke and Tom, who had come to visit from Boston. Tom was working on getting the snare sound too, but eventually he got sleepy and started playing music on his iPad and I went back to writing code with Luke. Later, Tom played some songs from video games, so Luke and I got distracted and played Mario games for several hours. Eventually, Luke and Tom fell asleep on the couch, one on my left, one on my right. I stayed up and looked at some code, tried to play Zelda: A Link to the Past, and fell asleep at 8 AM as Tom woke up to leave. He had to catch the Mega Bus in Manhattan, and we had planned which subways he would take to get there.
Luke woke me up at 3. He was hungry, so we decided to go to a pizzeria named John’s in Manhattan. When we got to the subway station for the L train, we were stopped by two men who were shouting “No L train on the weekend!” at a shuffling crowd. I thought about how those two men might feel when they see a trainload of people hurrying towards them, unprepared for their imminent disappointment. We left the subway station, and had pizza at a place called Carmine’s II instead. While we ate, a man at the table next to us who was eating with his female partner and their baby shouted into a phone, saying words that sounded like he was trying not to sound like a drug dealer. Afterwards, Luke said that he really liked simple pizza. Our pizzas had not been very simple.
Mike J. texted us to say that the owner of the sublet planned to stop by later on, so we walked back to clean up a little. Mike was there when we arrived. We had a conversation about taking other people’s feelings into account when making decisions, and then walked back out into Brooklyn. Mike J. went to visit Sarah, his girlfriend, and Luke and I went to a coffee shop to write code. We both focused well, and I finished an important performance improvement. The barista played the entirety of Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, which might be my favorite album.
At 9 PM, the coffee shop closed, and Luke and I went to Barcade. It was a place full of beer and arcade machines and good-looking men and women, and we exclaimed to each other about how incredible it was while we played. $0.50 bought us 5 minutes on a game about competitive lumberjacks, and the same amount got us about 10 seconds in Contra. I asked my phone how to get to Andy’s house, where I planned to go, but it would only tell me to take the L train.
At 10 PM, I left Luke with Carter at Barcade, and took the J train into Manhattan. The train was full of sad-looking people of many different colors, and one man wearing leather armor on his face and arms. I thought he looked like Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I secretly took two pictures of him. He looked at me while I took them. I was a little frightened, but then he turned away and we did not have a confrontation.
When I got to Manhattan, I walked down Bowery and was excited by the sounds of a rock band from inside the Bowery Ballroom. Not too far from there, I walked past a YMCA and saw a sign advertising a contra dance. I walked a few more steps, then almost fell over as I turned around to read the sign again. It was 10:40, and the dance ended at 11, so I walked inside. An older woman in a skirt passed me on the stairs and pointed me towards the gymnasium, saying that there was nobody there to take my money. I was happy, because I had no cash with me. I shed my coat, backpack and shoes as I walked into the dance.
I stood and watched a dance end, and then asked a woman nearby if she would like to dance. It was her first time at a contra dance, I found out. Our partners were two teenage girls, and as we did the walkthrough, the girl who was following asked me “Where have you been all my contra!?”. Her name tag said MAIA, and I told her that I was from San Francisco. That was the last contra dance, and afterwards I waltzed off-tempo with a girl from Virginia who had never danced before. The waltz was very short, and afterwards I left quickly because I was late in meeting Andy. I felt intensely wonderful, full of the joy of serendipity and of movement and touch.
People were walking around the Lower East Village excitedly, and talking outside bars and clubs. I got to Andy’s house, and we talked about and played video games. We played a fighting game, and a racing game. He showed me a video from a game, and we listened to music from games. I showed him a way that I could use my phone to control video games on my computer. We had fun, and talked about meeting again for ramen, and then I left.
Outside, it was 2 AM and people were drunk. They were going into and out of well-lit restaurants, and yelling outside of clubs. I listened to music inspired by video games in my earbuds as I walked back to the J train station. This time, the J train was mostly full of amused-looking white people. When I got back to brooklyn, I went to the bar that Luke had said he was at. It was empty except for one man and the bartender, who were talking to each other. I went to a bar across the street which was full of happy people and loud music. Inside, a good-looking young man danced with a good-looking woman. He was balding, and he finished his dance by sliding on his knees towards her. I opened a tab with my credit card, and drank a beer. I played Missile Command, and Luke called. I tried to answer, but my phone had bad service, so I lost at Missile Command and the call dropped too. I called Luke back, and his friends, but nobody picked up their phones. I played Galaga, drank another beer, closed my tab and left. It was 3:30 AM.
Luke had left a drunken voice mail saying that he was at Carter’s, but he only gave me the numbers part of the address: “668”. After that he got distracted because while he was speaking, Carter’s phone had started ringing with a call from me. Unfortunately, that call had dropped, so I had no idea where they were. I walked towards the sublet, wondering absent-mindedly if I should try and find them anyway. I switched my ear-buds out for my big headphones, and listened to rap music.
I was about halfway to the sublet when I heard men shouting. Across the street, an enormous white man was threatening a smaller white man, followed by a procession of other white men who were all very angry at some combination of each other. The smaller man had his back against brick wall, and had his hands up like a boxer. He was moving in quick bursts along the wall, and each time he moved along the wall, the huge man would move in an arc out into the street, trying to contain the other against the wall and the crowd. I thought of a bead of water being pushed around on a hot skillet. The race was about even, but then for some reason the smaller man darted back in towards the crowd instead of continuing along the empty sidewalk. The large man yelled “Let’s do this nigga!” and then a third man tackled the boxing man into the wall and some garbage cans. I turned away as the whole crowd collapsed into a tumbling pile. A white minivan stopped in the middle of the street and turned around. Several blocks later, a police car raced by me towards the men. I felt disappointed and somewhat disassociated.
Blocks away from the sublet, I realized that I was starving, so I went to God Bless Deli, which has an enormous red glowing sign. A woman whose face was blanched with a thick layer of makeup was there with her boyfriend, and I got a grilled chicken sandwich and an energy drink. When I payed, I noticed that I didn’t have my credit card, and realized that I’d left it at the bar. My phone said that it was a 24-minute walk back, and even though I knew the bar was closed, I walked back to see what would happen. While I walked, I ate my sandwich and drank the energy drink and thought about how much I wanted to go to sleep in the park.
When I got to the bar, it was closed, but there were still several bartenders there, and some other men. I tried to match them up with the people who had been in the bar with me earlier by their flannel shirts, but if they were the same people, then they all looked slightly more disheveled than they previously had. The female bartender gave me my card and called me “baby” several times while she did it, and I felt happy and lucky that things had worked out. I walked outside, put my phone into Airplane mode, and walked home. I saw a taxi-driver inch his cab forward at a red light. He and I were the only people at the intersection, but he was following the rules.
