A word of advice, first. Your Author, Dear Reader, is unreliable. This account of my time in Nooooo Yawwwwwwk is not to be taken as a verbatim record of what happened - because nothing happened. I went to New York, I attended school for ten hours a day, I fought my way back to the hotel through the subway every evening, and was generally asleep by nine at night helped along by 'herbal sleep aids' and alcohol. In fact, indulging in such minor pleasures may have been the wickedest things I did all week.
I went to no clubs or bars. I did no tourist-type things. I did nothing that can be described as in any way adventurous, outre, or outlandish. Yet I came away from the experience entirely satisfied on the only two counts that mattered: with the school, and with New York itself. You could say I experienced almost nothing of New York and in a way that's true: all I know of it is the short trip by subway from Queensboro Plaza to 34th. Street, a stretch along Fifth Avenue, little bits of 32nd., 33rd., and 34th. Streets, and an area inside the Manhattan Mall close to Macy's - which I didn't visit. You could equally well say that I know nothing at all of the Empire State Building, because I didn't climb higher than the 7th. floor where the school was held. And that also would be true - in a way.
But... when I left the Building for the last time Saturday night I was almost in tears, I swear, so great was the impression that that magnificent, elegant, utterly American building had made on my mind. I didn't have to go to the Observation Deck, or climb to its top-most floors, to be impressed. The first seven were enough to leave me staggered and awed - and somehow saddened. The Empire State Building is the most wonderful testimony to the confidence, self-assurance, and yes, arrogance (arrogance is nothing to be ashamed of, being no more than self-confidence without the perceived obligation to smile) that America used to possess. But that's a topic for another blog.
So, no. In terms of actual experience I still know little or nothing about New York, despite my six days and nights there. And still, I came away exhausted, and full of wonder, and now I've had a little time to recover I want to go back - and will, some day - and I'm convinced I'll hate every minute I'm there when I do, just as I did this time. And when I leave for the second time I'll miss it, New York, as much as or more than I do now. Because despite my ignorance, my few scattered impressions derived from movies (or perhaps because of those things) the city spoke to me, made itself felt, wormed its way under my skin and into my soul like a kind of infection. And once you have that bug there's no cure - or so I think right now.
Every day I took a ride from Queensboro Plaza in Long Island City to 34th. Street-Herald Square. Around 6.10 in the evenings I made my way back on the same line (I took the 'N' train) to the hotel. In general both trips took no more than twenty minutes. There must be something in the air in the New York subway that compresses, condenses, intensifies, the stink of human beings. Riding those things is like taking a twice daily bath in other people's sweat. You get to wear New York on your clothes and on your skin. It clings to you like tobacco smoke; or something just as romantic and nostagilic but many, many times more toxic.
For sin and decadence I used to imagine that New York was right up there with Nineveh and Babylon of old. Now I don't have to imagine. Now I know - even though I had no time to witness or take part myself (not this time) - because New York exhales wickedness like perfume and wears it like jewelry, both elegantly understated.
You can see it in the way the Native women walk and dress. You can tell the Native Noooo Yawwwwkers from the tourists because the Natives don't smile (and a sincerely meant civil 'good morning' to one of them will be greeted with 'FAQ [New Yorker for 'fuck'] ARF' [off, to the rest of us]) and they proceed along Fifth Avenue with an umistakeable and inimitable ferocity that belongs only to them.
One morning, sat on one of the bizarre double-headed fire-hydrants that stick out of the Building at street level while drinking my vanilla-iced coffee and eating my breakfast hashbrowns from McD's, I observed an example of Nooo Yawwwk Royalty.
{NB: note to the dense. There's a difference between my usage of New York and 'Noo Yawwk' - one is sarcastic and mocking (and tinged, just a little, with envy), and the other is not}
A tall slim woman, dark hair and eyes, a purple shirt and dark skirt and spectacular purple cowboy boots, strolling along. Whether she felt it or not, she looked like she was ready to fuck (or kill) her way to the Throne of the Universe and had no doubts about getting there. There's a wilfullness, an egregiousness, that they all communicate somehow that I like.
Whether the weather that week was typical or not I don't know. It was humid enough that clouds hung at the tops of even the short-arse buildings around the Building and hot enough that the women on Fifth Avenue wore only the skimpiest clothing - which made it a good week to be there. And this Noo Yawwk Queen (queen as in attitude not sexual orientation) bestrode Fifth with an absolutely Imperious self-confidence (or, at the very least, the appearance of such confidence). Whenever I think of New York now, or at least until something more apt and compelling comes along, I'll think of her. Easy on the eyes, grim-faced and unsmiling, a body to die for and an attitude that you must either love or hate whole-heartedly. There's no room nor patience for the undecided and the vacillating in New York.
Perhaps that's the root of the 'love' in the 'love-hate' thing that's overtaken me in regard to the city. I hoped to be impressed but instead I fell in love - and hate.
Do you know the gypsy's curse? 'May you find the cunt that fits you best'. It usually refers to a woman, but as I've discovered it can also refer to a city. Until you've actually felt what the curse describes you've no idea how compelling, how obsessively destructive it can be. I've been cursed once in that way. Dazzled and delighted, horrified, repelled, even terrified by the slavery of mind and heart it entails. I've known that once, in relation to a woman. And now, bizarrely, I know it in relation to a city.
In general places as places don't mean much to me in themselves. Usually place only has a hold on me as the location of some memorable event. There's always been one place that's an exception to that rule. The city of Hull, in the north east of England. I knew Hull for twenty years and lived there for seven of them. It's the only place I've ever felt completely at home from the first moment of my first visit. Not even New York can replace Hull in my affections. But now there are two places that, in their very different ways, are exceptions to that rule: now there's New York as well.
Much of the impression New York as a place had on me is directly related to my impressions of the Empire State Building. Long, long before I'd heard of the World Trade Center I had heard about and seen images of the Empire State Building. I used as a child to watch American gangster movies set in the thirties, and of course I watched Fay Wray get it on with Kong, and to me the Building (as I now call it in my head) is always going to be touched by the glamour (in the old sense of Magickal enchantment) of smoky clubs and torch singers and gangsters in wonderfully tailored, elegant suits. Men could actually dress well then, and women could dress to accentuate the difference and do it with grace and style. Sexy didn't equal 'ho-slut', back then.
I'd only ever seen aerial shots of it before, of course. Never anything from the ground looking up. It wasn't till I got off at 34th. Street that first morning and started looking around that I realised I had no idea what I was looking for. Looking up didn't help. Less than a hundred feet up the buildings were surrounded by thick mist and everything was foreshortened anyway. I walked down 34th. to Fifth Avenue without knowing that was what I was doing and simply because it was easier to walk in a straight line from the subway staircase than choose another direction in which to go. I had no idea where I was and any other 'choice' would have been completely random. I soon passed two side exits to the Building, came to the the intersection of 34th. and Fifth, looked to my right and saw the awning stretched to the edge of the sidewalk and emblazoned with the words 'EMPIRE STATE BUILDING'.
I arrived that first morning more than an hour before start of class. I HATE, hate, arriving late - for anything. I'd rather arrive a couple of hours early and find somewhere to waste the time than be even a couple of minutes late (so imagine the difficulty I've had, adjusting to Virginians' sense of time...). So I went across the road (watching for the first time Nooo Yawwwkers' endemic habit of jay-walking) to the McD's there and ordered my very first vanilla-iced coffee. It was icily cold and wonderfully delicious. I had one every day thereafter, with two hash-browns (I love McD's hash-browns) as my invariable breakfast. I ate them sitting on one of the two double-headed fire-hydrants that dot the sides of the Building at street level. There's another at Starbucks across at 33rd. Street: but there the miserable sons of bitches have put a triangle of red metal, with two inch teeth the length of the three sides, on top of the hydrant. Got to keep the filthy riffraff on the move, can't let them sit in front of Starbuck's window and frighten the customers, oh no... Bastards.
So I sat on the hydrant nearest the Fifth Avenue entrance, ate my hash-browns and drank half my iced coffee... and then went inside. I had no idea what the inside was like at all. So to walk through the main doors and into the entrance lobby, and be confronted by the towering mural of the Building and the miniscule (by comparison) information desk and its attendant clerk, was something of a shock. I was immediately struck by how like the nave of a cathedral the lobby is, and how the mural is the focus of attention in just the same way that the altar would be in a cathedral. And by how wonderful the mural is simply as a piece of art. How marvellous to work in the Building, and see that at the start of each working day. If seeing such a marvellous thing every day didn't inspire me to work my hardest then nothing could. It speaks so clearly of self-confidence, aspiration, and determination. Just looking at it is invigorating.
It took me two days to work out with any certainty which of the countless banks of elevators, and which elevators within that bank, would take me to the seventh floor because the place is a maze. Once you leave the lobby and get up into the different floors of the Building there are countless green doors that have markings on them that appear completely random and meaningless. Some doors have the names of companies on them but not all by any means. A few are completely blank. What system of order is used to identify suites I have no idea but there's no transparency to it and finding a room is a case of learning a route by rote - which is what I did.
How to explain the cool, serene elegance of the Building - that goes hand in hand with the dynamism that's inherent in its design and structure? I don't think I can; those are simply its qualities as a building created in 1936, as America stood on the threshold of its economic and military pre-eminence in the world. And how and why it created such an impression in me that I was on the edge of tears as I left it Saturday night - that also I can't tell you, but it's true. I felt, and feel, that in encountering the Building I'd really met for the first time something distinctly and uniquely American. The images I'd seen on TV were so uninformative, simple arial portaits, that they had no content for me that could compete with the reality; and there are no icons of the Empire State Building in the UK, no portraits of it, and therefore nothing to taint the reality with the feeble, distorted copy of America provided by British culture. So the reality of the confidence and determination of America in the 30s - as expressed in the Building - leapt upon me and took me totally by surprize.
I laughed aloud the first time I saw the mural at the end of the Lobby - because I was so smitten by it, so impressed, so pleased by it.
In a much more negative way I was equally impressed by the subway system - and if I'm honest I was a little intimidated by it. I'd lived in London for nine years and had made use of the Tube (as the subway is called) often: I thought 'how much more difficult can it be?', especially after seeing the maps which are colored in the same way as their counterparts in London. But the windows in the trains themselves are like weapons-slits at the eye height of someone sitting; the station names are hidden away or lettered in teeny-tiny 'naming' size type reserved here for street addresses; and the directions as to lines and trains in the stations themselves are completely gnomic and confusing to the stranger.
Added to all of which is a problem peculiar to myself: I have absolutely no sense of direction whatsoever and learn my way to and from places by rote repetition. Which means that when I first travel a new route I'm nervous and even more easily confused, directionally speaking, than I usually am. I never managed to find the same exit from the 34th. Street station twice in the six days I was there. I learned to orient myself by the sign on the Side of Macy's: I knew if I had it at my back I was walking toward Fifth Avenue and had only to turn right at the intersection of the two to get where I wanted to be.
Going back to the station was easier: I simply took the 34th. Street exit from the Building, turned left, and walked in a straight line. Once at the station entrance I had to go down the stairs, turn left, and negotiate the turnstiles. And then my problems started. I had to go down one of two sets of staircases: either uptown or downtown. 50/50 chance, right? I almost always got it wrong - and even when I didn't I convinced myself I had. I had to go down the other, just to be sure... And this was after two days tutoring in the mysteries of the Nooo Yawwwwwwk subway by Fernando, a classmate who lived two stops beyond Queensboro Plaza. Unfortunately he only attended for the first two days of school (the 'essentials' component) and neglected in his tutoring to tell me that at weekends the 'N' train ran from the opposite platform...
Saturday night I watched four trains go by, any of which would have got me back to the hotel, before overcoming my by now considerable distaste fo Dat Ol' Noooo Yawwwwk attitude enough to ask someone why there were no trains from this platform. I was told that 'they change platforms Saturday and Sunday...' I Was Not A Happy Bunny as I realized I'd been sat in 100+ degree heat for two hours for no good reason... That was also the night that I discovered that, at least in New York, you can order in liquor from a liquor store... something unheard of in Britain. So I ordered in a fifth of Jack Daniels, took a sleeping pill, and drank nine tenths of the Jack while writing in my 'New York Journal' (which is what this rambling account is mostly based on) and went to sleep. Saturday was meant to be my big night out lol - but my feet were swollen, they were bleeding from the pores (something they do when stressed); I was soaked in my own and other people's sweat, stinking in my own nostrils, and I had no further inclination for doing battle with the subway system. I locked the door, turned the air up as far as it would go, got really rather drunk while scribbling in the journal and watching Cartoon Network, and was shortly sleeping the sleep of the exhausted and the desperate to go home.
In the sense that I saw them and they made an impression on me I encountered many memorable people in New York. One of them I met on my last night there, before that hellish subway trip, while standing at a street vendor's stall buying souvenirs and gifts for Sabrina and her parents. While stood there deciding on the last gift I wanted to buy I heard a voice at my shoulder. I didn't know the voice but I knew the accent immediately: London, somewhere south of the river Thames (south of the River means the poorer areas of London - Streatham, Clapham, Norwood, Peckham and Brixton - all places in which I lived during my nine years there).
If that sounds unlikely you need to understand that in England particularly prejudice is largely based on accent, rather than on skin color or race - and to a native the base accent (as opposed to regional dialect which is something only a native of a particular area will recognise) is instantly discernible. For instance, no 'Cockney' (those born within the sound of the bells of Bow Bells Church) speaks with an accent that's south of the River. And had the person to whom the voice belonged been a Cockney I wouldn't have spoken to her - I've hated Cockneys for as long as I can remember. Why? Because they're Cockneys of course, which is more than reason enough.
I looked around and sure enough there was a large black girl (there are no 'niggers' in the UK, there are no 'Afro-British' or other such nonsensical creatures; there are Asians, Arabs, Blacks and Whites and all of them are British first - with the exception of a few Muslim fanatics who think of themselves as Muslim before anything else), which is what I'd pretty much expected, seeing that there are many ethnic types concentrated south of the Thames, especially Jamaicans and other West Indian groups. She was obviously Jamaican in origin, she had that rich undercutting bur to her voice that they have, which made me like their accent so much as a kid at school.I looked at her and said 'Wot part of London you from then?' She was a little taken aback and said 'South Norwood' (only she said Sarf). I grinned and told her I'd lived there, years earlier. 'Wot bit did you live in then?' So I told her I'd lived in Wynton Gardens, up by the Palace's football ground (that would be Crystal Palace, a local team). Her eyes became as big as saucers: she lived on Tennyson Road, on to which Wynton Gardens cul-de-sac opened. I laughed and told her to say 'ello to Sarf Norwood - which actually means 'south north wood' lol - for me when she got back.
Another memorable individual was the guy dressed in a blanket and nothing else, hauling a shopping cart piled high with all kinds of unhealthy looking bags, barefoot, unshaven, with wild salt and pepper hair that hadn't been cut in years - and a hand written placard around his neck beseeching the Mayor of New York to pay the police and firemen a decent wage because 'they shouldnt ought to have to work two jobs'. He stood on the corner of 33rd. and Fifth Avenue, bent double and gasping for breath. I felt sorry for the poor bastard and walked over to him and gave him a dollar - I don't think I've ever seen a sight quite so pathetic in my life. As soon as I put the dollar in his hand he was instantly transformed. His face became suffused with a kind of maniac joy and he screamed 'THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU' over and over again at the top of his voice, while hopping from one foot to the other at lightning speed in a demented kind of jig. I was happy I hadn't given him anything more: he might have expired on the spot. He recovered himself, grabbed the ends of the ragged and filthy cloth he'd woven through the front of the shopping cart, and began staggering and weaving his way along Fifth Avenue once more. I watched till I couldn't see him...
It has to be said that Joe, my teacher for the six days of the class, was the most memorable person I encountered there - if only because of the long term effect I expect that encounter to have on my future life. And that's true: I learned more from him in those six days than I did during the entire year of my training when I first began using AutoCAD 2000. He's one of only two men I've met during my life who actually merits the title 'teacher' for his ability to effectively communicate information and make it readily understandable. It took him less than five minutes to explain the functioning of the UCS (user coordinate system and vital to drawing in 3D) whereas I still hadn't understood its use properly at the end of my year at Portland College in the UK.
How much to say about the school, since it was the reason for my going to New York in the first place and formed so large a part of my experience there? The first thing to say is that it was worth every single cent of the $3200 paid to secure my place there. The second is that the company that ran it ('Netcom Information Technology') orgaganized everything to the last detail and that every detail worked flawlessly - flawlessly. If you own a company and you want your employees to learn some aspect of IT - talk to them, because they know what they're doing and they do it really, really well.
And the third thing to say concerns Joe, our tutor. I've already said that he's one of only two men I've met in my 46 years on this miserable mudball who actually merits the title of teacher - the other is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hull - who made it a pleasure to sit down and learn something new, and to relearn, correctly, things I thought I already knew. I can't really say more about him without going into the ins and outs of what he taught us - and I doubt very much that anyone reading this wants to know any more than you already do about UCSs and 'dynamic blocks' (though I think dynamic blocks are just fucking wonderful, I really do... but then I'm a CAD geek so...)
So instead I'll tell you about one last encounter I had, on my last night there, while waiting on that hateful subway platform in searing heat, thinking I was about to choke on my own stench and that of the bodies pressed around me...
I'd fought my way to a seat on one of the brown wooden benches that dot the platforms, and was sat next to a hulking mound of flesh that smelt worse than it looked - and it looked really, really bad, folds and valleys and crevasses of fish-belly-pale, unhealthy looking meat pushing through tattered rags of filthy cloth, topped by a sexless moon-face wide as a dinner plate. Impossible to tell whether this mountain of meat was dead or alive. It didn't move, it made no sound, and it had no detectable breath. It simply hulked there, eyes swallowed up in rolls of fat, and the most enormous hands I've ever seen immobile in its lap.
It was this unprepossessing... character... that I eventually asked information of. And I asked It (I say it because I still have no clue as to its sex) because it was the only other inhabitant of the platform who didn't appear ready to kill if and when troubled by the questions of ignorant foreigners who shouldn't have been there if they didn't know what they were doing...
I thought at first that it was deaf, or dead... because no sign of life was immediately forthcoming. But then an eyelid flickered (only one), opened, and revealed an eye of the clearest and most piercing blue I've ever seen. It was like a pool of clearest water in the middle of some abhorrent desert, that eye. And then from this immense mountain of filthy flesh and rags there proceeded an extraordinary voice, a sexless falsetto lisp, as piercing in its own way as the eye that regarded me. "Mithstah... they change the platformth Saturdayth and Sundayth..." And then the eye closed, the voice stopped, and to any type of discernment that I possess the creature went back to being dead...
My irritation at myself for having spent two hours watching train after train go by was tempered by my astonishment, that such a voice and such an eye should belong to this... heap of meat and rags, that I stared rather longer than I should have, The eye opened again, looked at me, and the voice said (that same weird falsetto lisp) "Do think I'm pretty?" At which point I made as rapid a retreat from the bench as circumstances then allowed...
Not long after another 'N' train appeared and I forced my way onto it. It was as hot as an oven inside, hatefully, murderously hot, and the 20 minutes it took to get to Queensboro Plaza felt like hours...
But I made it back, eventually. And eventually I returned to Richmond, to Sabrina, and to our two puppies, Franky and Caesar. All three seemed pleased to see me again.
If it's taken me a long time to write this (and it has) that's because I feel deeply ambivalent about the little I've seen of New York - and finding some way to put that experience and that ambivalence into words has proven much more difficult than I thought it would.
They named New York twice because one name can't do it justice. And they gave it the same name for a second time because there are no other words in the language which are appropriate to it. I think all any one can really say of New York is... that it's NEW YORK. If you haven't been there that won't tell you anything about the place. But if you have... it says everything.