Dirty Looks

I had made a mistake. I had miscalculated. But that was not the important thing. Well, yes it was, that was why I was in this predicament. But it wasn't the main concern. Not what was keeping me awake at night. No, what was keeping me awake at night was that I was sleeping outside and Chinatown smells like a warm dumpster in the summertime, that all the fish markets dump their melted fishy icewater into the streets and the bacteria films over the streets. It mixes with the coctail puke of young socialites lost on their ways home from Tribeca, it mixes with the empty-bellied wine puke of the homeless veterans. It mixes with everything else New York City discards, everything is overproduces and hides in the sewer systems. But there I was, still, trying to get some rest in that scum, with no success. That damn bus, I kept thinking, That damn Goddamn fucking-ass bus. I was 17, so likely those were my exact thoughts. The “bus” was not a bus but a van. A van I had found and climbed into at 7am the day before, after leaving a note for my parents: “Went to New York, don't worry, haha! Be home soon.” What an ass.

The problem was that I had already paid the driver of the van to take me home, figuring it would assure a ride back to Boston. Instead, when I eventually found my way back to Chinatown, the van's company said they did not sell enough tickets to make it worth their while to take me home just yet. But they would let me know. And no they couldn't give me a refund, and then suddenly they did not speak any English, their window shut, and I was left on that stinky curb with a skateboard, six dollars, and who could say how many hours to kill.

At least I had gotten my interview. And a few free magazines and comic books. And had met my hero, John Holmstrom. I could call him, but it would be weird. He was an older man, I was a younger girl. I was skeptical and naïve, he was...well I didn't know what he was, I had just met him hours before, and he told me all about the punk scene in New York City in the mid '70s and how easy it was to start a magazine. None of that information told me anything about how he would act when a 17-year-old girl calls him from a payphone saying, “I need a place to stay.” There was also Legs McNeil. Legs had told me I could stay with him any time I needed. But that meant I could never call him for a place to stay. So it was either the over-sized factory windowsill, the phone number of some guy given to me by a homeless man named Gerome who cried to me about his mother and how ashamed he was of himself, or wandering the streets. I never trust a man who cries on the first date, and the windowsill smelled the way I imagine human fear must smell to wild animals. So I chose to wander. See the sights. This was my Big Trip to the Big Apple. All by myself.

I made it to Union Square, about 17 blocks, and saw some boys skateboarding so I followed them, chased them, begged them with the sound of my wheels to take me someplace exciting. They led me to a park full of kids I did not know, obviously, and all they had to offer me were dirty looks. So I read my comic books. It was the middle of July and the world was open to me. Which was a good thing, because the rest of the city had it's doors closed to me, with no money in my pockets and no ID saying I was over 21. New York is not a place for strangers with no tour guide, and it is not a place for strangers with no money. It is, however, a place for heightened senses and 24-hour markets.

I skated up to Time Square, Upper East Side, Spanish Harlem. I got more dirty looks and turned around. I had no place to be, especially a place that clearly did not want me around. Back around Washington Square Park I got hungry. I had just skateboarded about two hundred blocks, total. Had wandered through the overstimulating lights, through the gaggles of prostitutes, through the kids from New Jersey trying to seem tough and through the kids from the Lower East Side I tried to seem tough to. I needed sustenance, I needed something warm. I found $2 falafel and 25-cent quarts of iced tea. It was 4am. Even though it was the middle of summer, the pre-dawn chill still sneaks into your skin and is unshakeable. I ate the warm calories and drank the cold calories and sighed for ten more blocks.

It's about this time of night when people don't let you use their bathrooms anymore. You squat in their alleyways instead. I climbed scaffolding in the darker corners of the city and pulled the string on that sandbag of weight I'd been holding in my bladder for two hours, cursing the bistros who were closed and the hotels who shoed you away. I cursed myself for being such a naïve 17-year-old and for being a girl in a dog's world. Mainly, though, I cursed the hotels that shoed me away as I looked down on them, and forgot about the rest as soon as I released my bladder enough to warm my body temperature again. Climbed down, threw my hood over my head, kept moving.

And then daylight broke over me like an egg, oozy, reactivates all the rot in the city, all the people, shoved my eyes back into my head and I smiled because I could go home now. This was the easiest goodbye, like leaving a party I'd crashed. No hands to shake or number to exchange. Just get on the bus and pretend like nothing happened. Goodbye New York, perhaps our paths will cross when I have more money.

Back in Chinatown, a bought a coffee and sat by the van's parking spot to make sure I would not miss my ride. I wrote furiously in my notebook. Gerome found me again. “Still waiting for a ride? That ship ain't coming, baby.” He handed me a flower he'd found in the street, one that had not been stepped on or sucked in by the concrete desperate for some beauty. It was a mark of life and salvation in a city that's eaten itself. He talked to some people at the counters where I was sitting. He traded my ticket with a bus company a block away. I got us each bagels with my last two dollars. I was gone in an hour.

No one on the bus wanted to sit next to me. I thought not too much of it, I was a wacky white punk girl and they were Chinese commuters. In a bathroom at a rest area in Connecticut, I looked in the mirror and saw my own dirty look staring me down. Blackened face, sullen eyes, and a mouth that had forgotten how to smile. I rinsed, scrubbed, shook my face and stared hard back at myself and laughed. Oh you little girl, I thought, You just might live forever.