I leave the alcove studio apartment I share with my mother at or very close to 8:20 a.m. most mornings. I take the elevator down from the twelfth floor to the shiny lobby and there encounter Melanie, the girl at the desk. She is kind of notoriously surly until you somehow pass some mental-Melanie test and you're golden. So the first three months I lived there, I was greeted every morning with a glare and silence. Now, I say "Good morning!" and she replies with a perky, "Have a nice day!" "You, too," I call back as I'm halfway out the door. It's a very strange transformation, but not at all unwelcome. In a city that is filled with unfriendliness, I would much prefer such a morning to a surly glare.
I only have to go around the corner to get the subway at East 96th Street. There, if you go before 9 a.m., there is a hunched Asian man of indeterminate years (he could quite honestly be anywhere in between fifty and seventy) handing out AM NY. He has one of this quintessentially Asian mustaches, the ones that are short above the lip and then hang limply down around the mouth, and he rarely smiles. He calls out, "Am NY! Am NY!" and attempts to foist a copy of the paper on every single person getting off the bus, going down into the subway or coming up out of the subway. The first few weeks I lived here, he offered one to me every day and every day I would shake my head with a small smile and a definite hand gesture and say, "No thank you." This daily ritual has been enough to win me over as his friend. Now, he knows me in a pleasant way that no one else in this big city has yet to rival. He sees me and grins but doesn't hand me a paper. I say "Good morning!" and he nods back with that smile on his face. The limp ends of his mustache sway a little at the unexpected smile.
Nothing happens on the train, as usual. I've heard and read so much that the train is a great place to meet people because you're stuck with roughly the same commuters five days a week on the platform and then in a tiny subway car. But the only people I ever recognize are this strangely heterosexual-looking gay couple whose only sign of their own gayness is a pair of matching, glittering rhinestone charm bracelets that they wear like wedding bands. They commute together every day down to Union Square. They get off there, like me, but I have no idea where they go. That’s kind of the thing about New York. You see people every day but don’t learn anything new. I like to think they walk each other to work, kiss circumspectly and then meet up for the commute home before ordering various kinds of exotic take-out every night because they both hate to cook.
As I trudge to and from work every day., there are these two utterly unclean old men who hang out on the stoop of a brownstone across from Webster Hall. I have no idea if they live there or are homeless, but they hang out there and sometimes one of them sings. As I was walking to work one day, I made eye contact with the African-American one and smiled (something no one in New York does, by the way). He eagerly leaned forward and grinned, "Hello!" he chirped. "Good morning," I replied civilly and continued on. These are the kind of people I meet on this street. Not international superstars. Not even people my own age. Just dirty old men.
This snapshot seems to be making an argument opposite to my usual point about New York City, that the people here are unfriendly and don't care if you live or die as long as you get out of their way. But the people in this little piece are the exception. I've been shoved by some overzealous, hurried city-person more times than I can count and the few times I've attempted to form a human bond with another pedestrian by making eye contact and saying "Hello," I've been ignored. I didn't even get past the eye contact. The people here are like this dog my high school French teacher used to impersonate: their eyes are anywhere but locked with yours. They'd rather look at a pile of garbage ("Oh how interesting!" you can almost hear them forcing themselves to say in their heads) than make eye contact let alone say "Hello." It can wear you down and I think remembering the few times someone did bother to greet you or shared a smile with you can help with the otherwise self-absorbed culture of this place.
No comments:
Post a Comment