When It Rains in Manhattan (9/21-9/25)

The rain assaulted the pavement on Broadway between 9th and 10th Street. I stared out from a smallish circular table pushed against the wall, sipped a hot latte with almond milk as tropical storm-sized droplets thudded into the window. There was a hasty cadence to it, like a marching band in a hurry.

Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Thud. Thud.

The band members were umbrella heads rushing horizontally, bereft of expression.

I turned my head, looking past a young Asian girl entrenched in her studies, her back arching to tilt her head as close to her Macbook screen without falling in it. I looked above the peppy barista with her frizzy hair and the kind of smile that invited you to buy a drink and ask her how her day has been and leave the maximum tip on the Square tablet and tell her all about the existential crisis that has led to your sitting in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village at 1030 pm during a tropical storm. Eventually. If she'd let you. The banner above her head displayed the name of the café, The Bean, with the menu options directly below, including the latte I sipped on. $6. What a racket, I thought, as I leaned my head back. At least the flavor was good.

The night before I had been attempting to sleep on a cheap air mattress on a hard wooden floor in a kitchen in Brooklyn. The kinks and knots flipped me on my back over and over again. I woke up every forty five minutes, choking on air, swallowing down the oxygen of a one and a half bedroom apartment shared between five people, a golden retriever, and a black and tan cat. My snoring caught in my ears, pulling my eyes open. I knew I'd been a pain. My back hurt. I had terrible dreams about shooting heroin with my Korean American Los Angeles import of a roommate from college. I fell out. I came to. Before the light began to peek through the wide, curtain-less windows above me, I wrote a chap book about love and loneliness and desperation to the sounds of an LG refrigerator whirring and gusts of wind rattling glass.

My time in Brooklyn was short. I ate Pho and drank Mexican sprite and walked through the Jewish and Hispanic neighborhoods until I hit Queens and became so scared of a place that was totally unfamiliar that I stopped. I speed walked to Maria Hernandez Park to take a piss in a stale and dingy public restroom as a memorial service proceeded with pictures and flowers and commemorative items placed against the fence of a basketball court. Relieved on my walk back, I turned my head the opposite direction from the memorial and saw a homeless man pressed against another fence not far from where a group of children played. He was stiff, but not dead, aching for rest, crushed by the weight of another September. Brooklyn was too real. It wasn't Manhattan. Later, I bought a piece of art from a man named Bobby Hill at an artisan and flea market and fled the borough.

Sometime before I sipped my latte on Broadway and after I left the uneasy normalcy of Brooklyn, I walked across the street from my hotel to the 9/11 Memorial. Unbroken streams of rain slithered down the black marble walls to a large hole in the ground leading to a place too dark to see. I examined the names on the outer walls of the monument. The driving rain left me feeling unnerved so I moved along. I thought about how these people never had that luxury.

My days had been filled with fleeing from one place to the next. Hopping out of Ubers and taxis and waiting in lines and charging into museums and restaurants and comedy clubs and hastily eating Halal food from street vendors. The corridors and foyers and tables were packed. The food was food. The art was art. The comedy was comedy. There were bits and bites and pieces I'd remember, and others that were bland or I didn't understand. People crowded around the Picasso's and Dali's and laughed at jokes that were sexual and risque. None of it would change my life forever, save for enjoyable distractions in the moment.

What fascinated me was the absence of people on the streets. Eight million people in Manhattan and there I was, walking down the street, nearly unabated. It's not often you get New York to yourself, I thought as I leaned my umbrella and walked down 81st towards Central Park, watching people run into the Met while snapping their umbrellas shut. I guess exasperation is the expression of the umbrella heads, I think, as I continue down the street. I had no time to be exasperated. I sought an even deeper sense of solace in the park. I reached The Lake and quietly took in the skyline of the park. I snapped pictures of half buildings blanketed by the thick, unwavering clouds.

At the end of my walk, I took a picture at the John Lennon memorial, a circle encapsulating the word Imagine on the edges of Strawberry Fields. I held my hand in the shape of a peace sign and smiled. I embraced my inner tourist without a thousand eyes on me, without other tourists new to the park whispering to their husbands and wives, "look he's doing the peace and love thing, you don't have to be shy. Do it next." A tour guide passed quickly by, telling a small group of four resilient travelers that almost every day, there were large crowds and artists and musicians crowding this small space. But not today. The people are afraid of the rain more than they are of each other. Maybe this was the world Lennon imagined he could see. 

While I know I'll be back on sunny and bustling days, this is the New York that I'll never forget, a city that doesn’t sleep but sometimes gets quiet.