Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been: It Is So Easy, And Everyone Loves You
Ed. Note: There are many subtle issues and interactions that come with living in a city, and some of them are easier to deal with than others. Luckily, our writer Lauren Rodrigue is pretty adept at describing them. This is the first installment of her weekly column on city livin’ from the woman’s perspective.
There is an overwhelming, almost paralyzing wash of satisfaction that flows through the body and the mind of a young woman who, while walking down the sidewalk, gets a wink or a nod or a greeting from a man. One of those who hang out outside the deli, or the bus drivers, the construction workers, the married Times-readers pushed up against you on the train, the neighborhood fathers who sit out on the stoops every night.
Even though the man is usually a restaurant cook dragging a trash bag out of a bulkhead , emerging as if out of nowhere from underground and addressing her from her ankles upward, and even though she, the young woman, is wearing what she calls her ‘conceptual coat’ – a floppy, woolen thing that gives her the effect of a sleeping, loosely wound bat – and even though her hair is knotted at the top of her head like a schoolmarm, they both still find common ground in her unequivocal womanness.
He licks his eyes up her, from the ankles, like I said, and up her shins, over her knees, up thighward and into her skirt, and lingers, lingers, then up more, dragging across the stomach, then tinkering with the ribs, the chest – the chest, the chest – then a slow slip into the little depression created by the clavicle, then up the neck along the side, then cresting the jaw, and landing on the lips, his eyes, her lips, which she’s painted red on the subway, for no reason other than to attract a wink from men like him.
It’s a popular topic to address, the “difficulty of living in New York,” the tired metaphor of people being chewed up and spit out, or whatever consumptive metaphor might be in fashion these days. Consider the even more banal tales of The Primal, Warrior-like New York City Woman, the Oversexed, Over-stressed Monster, The Carb-Counting, Mascara-Wand-on-the-Express-Train-Weilding, We-Will-Either-Fuck-for-a-Night-or-Get-Married-in-Six-Months-Because-I-Have-a-Fucking-Career-to-Think-About Bitch who looks lovely, feels cold to the touch and eats birth control for lunch.
That is not my experience so far in New York City. In fact moving here has almost made me feel more classically feminine than I ever have – this morning a man on the opposite side of the subway platform waved at me – at me – as my train sped off! One night last week as I was swinging along on the sidewalk, drunkenly swathed in faux-fur and smiling at nothing, a man told me I was pretty, and asked whether I was Scottish. For no reason! Scottish! In this place, where there are men everywhere, so many men!, there are, by matters of sheer statistics, so many more men who think you’re lovely. And because all the electricity in Manhattan and in some parts of Queens is powered by the pure, unadulterated CRAZY that courses through the veins of everyone who lives here, there is so much crazy, that the mildly crazy – like a wink, a greeting, a Scottish suggestion – doesn’t seem so crazy at all.
In fact it translates so much the opposite – to gorgeous, gentle, halcyon, Dickensian flirtation. Daily infatuations, avenue by avenue, tiny novels scribed into your short term memory, ten-second bursts of self-adoration, the shortest love you’ve ever had (but so many in a day)… You end up daydreaming these Evita sort of fantasies, in which you’re standing out on your fire escape wearing nothing but a clever arrangement of marabou feathers, and it’s morning, and the sun is curling down your block, and the men are walking by, and they’re all saying good morning, and you’re saying it right back, a czarina for no reason.
Sometimes you find yourself at a bar in Williamsburg, and things begin in a more worldly way, in which a random guy, with a sort of feminine face, kind of pinchy at the center with a modest excuse for a 5-o’clock shadow, horrifically blonde and soft looking, perches next to you on a bench outside, lights your cigarette, tells you things about himself. You can’t start listening; you can’t stop looking at his tartan scarf. It looks like acrylic. It’s an acrylic tartan scarf, and he’s telling you he studies holograms – he’s a holographer – he’s going back to school for holography, he’s lived in Chicago, he thinks you’re Jewish, because of your nose, which he cleverly reminds you is large; it’s an acrylic tartan scarf. He wants to take you on a date.
You end up just nodding, laughing when you feel like you should, looking past him, feeling drunker. Over his shoulder, you’re looking for the restaurant cooks, the men who hang out outside the deli, the bus drivers, the construction workers, the married Times-readers pushed up against you on the train, the neighborhood fathers who sit out on the stoops every night.
You love being a girl. It is so easy, and everyone loves you.
just perfect. lauren continues to be my friend crush, because her writing is unparalleled.
- January 22 2012 | 142 Notes - Read More →
