I originally wrote this twenty(ish) years ago, and got asked by someone who was on this trip with me to revisit it. It’s been heavily rewritten.
We arrived at Heathrow airport after a two hour coach journey but if I’m honest the journey seemed shorter because of the excitement and general hubbub of forty or so other art students I was travelling with, all in different states of non-sleep.
At this point I had travelled quite a bit, and part of that had been to America twice and spent quite some time in and around New York. I think I’m trying to explain and excuse the fake, world weary rock star attitude I was affecting as we were checking in. I step to the counter and am greeted by a check-in person whose dead eyed smile had more to do with muscle memory than actual joy. After one look into her eyes I give up my weary act knowing that to pull it off anywhere nearly as well my soul would have to be beaten by years of customer service. Steeling myself for the inevitable joke, or worse, suppressed giggle, that my passport picture inevitably brings, I try to be charming, cross my fingers and pray to the fickle Airport god for the most holy of holys, an upgrade. Or at least to be able to charm myself into a fire exit seat.
“There’s been a problem” her smile doesn’t even fucking flinch while she says this “your seats been cancelled”. I think at this point I sigh and achieve exactly what I was trying to fake a minute ago. She then promptly disappears to talk to a supervisor and/or, judging from the time she took, have a cup of tea and a massage.
At this point everyone else has checked in, even my friend Phil who, while not particularly looking like a terrorist or a smuggler, defiantly looks guilty of something, and my course tutor is looking at me like I have got a holdall full of grenades and a kilo of Moroccan smack hidden up my arse. I tell him to carry on and get in the queue for security, now playing the role of grown up with everything under control.
When the check-in clerk gets back she explains that my seat was cancelled because an overzealous co-worker, when checking in a different person with my name, saw there was two ‘Smiths’ on the flight and cancelled the second one thinking that there couldn’t possibly be more than one person with the same name in the world. The surname Smith is one of the most popular in the world. I’ve had funny looks when checking into hotels but never this. She goes on to say that her supervisor is going to see if they can fit me on the flight, and then sits there trying to engage me in small talk as if they’re doing me a favour.
My flight sucks, I’m middle seated half a plane away from my friends who are bubbling with excitement. I can hear them laughing over the drone of the engines.
Anyone that been on a long haul flight will be acquainted with the dry skin, bum sores and the unshakeable feeling of discomfort that you get when you’re finally allowed off the plane, this accompanied with the lack of sleep, eight cans of Stella, and the disorientation of flying over several time zones makes the immigration process seem daunting when actually its not, its just a long queue with a stern man at the end. In fact me and Phil are just musing that Purgatory must be a lot like the American immigration hall, not too hot, not too cold, you’re not hungry or thirsty, there’s art on the walls but it’s not that interesting to look at. You’re just blandly waiting for your time to leave.
When it does come to my turn, the stern man scans my fingers, nukes my eyes, swipes my passport. He pauses, looks at me, looks at the screen, looks at my passport again. He is definitely not suppressing a giggle. He then places his hand on the gun in the hip holster and says
“Come this way” He takes my passport and I follow him to a door I hadn’t even noticed before. I manage to catch my course tutors’ eye he is now looking at me like it’s a holdall full of Uranium and four kilos of angels dust I have up my arse, god alone knows why I bothered catching his eye, like American immigration would give a monkeys dick about what a course tutor from a limey art university has to say.
The back room is a biggish room with an impossibly high cops front desk and three rows of incredibly uncomfortable plastic chairs. I note that they screwed into the ground. I’ve made it a life rule to never assault an armed cop with crappy furniture, and it’s worked up until now. Im instructed to sit down, which after seven hours of sitting down I don’t really fancy but I do it anyway and spend the next half an hour being ignored while I’m trying to:
- Work out the name of that Kafka story and more importantly remember how it ends.
- Look innocent.
- Try not to imagine what having two latexed fingers slowly worked up my back passage by a bored looking male nurse would feel like.
I’m there for an hour before I remember I hadn’t actually done anything and Inquire what is going on reminding them that there is, hopefully, a coachload of art students waiting for me and if they don’t let me go soon they’re opening themselves up to some heavily satirical notebook sketches.
It turns out that someone with exactly the same name AND birth date is actually a wanted criminal in America, I politely point out that handing your passport with this information on to an armed police officer is not the action of a desperate criminal on the run. The officer looks at me with a straight face.
“Yeah, AND the guy we’re looking for is black”.
I slip on my shades and walk out to forty or so people on a coach looking at me with a mixture of open contempt, pity and hushed awe. I got to be the world weary rock star after all.
***
America is exactly as you imagine it and, at the same time, completely different to what you thought it would be like. It’s bigger for a start, from the ground you are dwarfed and even though every instinct is telling you otherwise you still can’t help but walk round staring upwards. There are some many cool things to do, to see, but they are, in general, incredibly far apart and the bit in between are just streets, car parks, lobbies, and souvenir stores selling exactly the same tat*.
But I got to see the real scale of New York at the top of the Empire State Building. You see I had spent a lot of time in New York but mostly with Americans, the sort of American who wouldn’t been seen dead to do the typical touristy things.
On the way up we was guided through what must have been 3 different gift shops, hocking expensive but tacky baubles and other assorted shit, I get the feeling that if the Empire State building had been somewhere else (and lets face it, it would have never been built somewhere else) you would probably have to ask the cleaners nicely to unlock a door and walk up 1,860 steps to have a look round.
Those of you that know me will know how I overuse the word “awesome” I blame Bill and Ted, so when I say the view from the 86th observatory was awesome, please know that I don’t mean nice-cup-of-tea awesome or didn’t-miss-the-bus awesome I mean awesome in the original sense of the word, knee trembling, lack of words knowledge there was a higher power bigger and more terrible than you ever imagined Awesome. Awesome with a capital fucking ‘A’. it was dark by the time we were there, the city lights spilled onto a sea of black, the lights pulsed like the city was breathing, every single light a life, a story.
***
The second night we are roaming Beeker street, a street full of bars, when I say “we” I mean seven of us, five of whom are under the age limit to drink in America. To begin with we’re eager to take in the atmosphere, every other building is a bar and most have a man on the door who’s job it is to attract people into them by shouting things like “live music” “no cover” “good food no drink minimum” of course through the filter of my dark and silly brain these shouts are turned into “drugs and food” “see steam powered robot razor fight a monkey” “live girls, see a woman suck off a horse, and then fight it” Phil catches on and soon were both shouting.
“Live porn, good food”
“Live food good porn”
“Live good, porn food”
The first bouncer knocks us all back, maybe it’s because we’re giggling like a lunatics or perhaps it’s the fact that Phil looks like a seven year old, but I know we may be in trouble because that place was real skeezy looking and if we’re to be carded there we may be carded everywhere. We try a few more places, and decide that the next place to take us, whatever it looks like, we should go in.
While there I watched the opening of the Winter Olympics, has anyone ever sat down and actually watched one of these things? I tried not to but the TV was pointed at my face and it probably would have been twice as much effort not to watch it but I’m glad I did. I have to say it was easiest the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen (and I’ve seen some wacky things, *sigh* if these eyes could talk) that’s not just lazy hyperbole. It was just plain Monty Python silly, like it was beamed directly from the brain of a very mentally disturbed man.
Me and Phil reasoned that the only way they could come up with such a thing is by gathering the gayest choreographer, the most extravagant costume designer and a deranged special effects specialist, locking them in a room with six bottles of absinthe laced with DMT and a kilo of cocaine and not letting them sleep or even out the room until they had come up with a five hour loon-fest.
The way we figure it three days later some poor work experience boy had to go into this room, which by now would probably look like a werewolves nest, and sift through the blood, scribblings and shit daubed on the walls to try and make some sort of sense, looking around and stifling a sob he sees “man-gimp bats” on a napkin and staples it a cigarette packet with “on wires”, looking around he makes a note of “man hammering on a giant anvil” scrawled on the walls and then “with fire” which is written underneath it in what very much looks like blood. Sitting down he sees someone has carved “man on skates” into the desk, to which someone has added with the same red gooey stuff that is on the walls “with head on fire”. He slowly reaches over to a small Dictaphone, hits play and hears what sounds like a woman’s voice airily talking about ballroom dancers dressed like Dalmatians gliding over ice with plaster replicas of assorted cows, very much like she was describing a dream as it happened. Then finally comprehending the enormity of his given task, he would no longer be able to contain the tears.
***
Eight of us had managed to find the ice skating ring in Central Park. It’s dark, snowing, and every bit as magical as it sounds. The beauty of the situation actually took my breath away, a phrase I thought was a metaphor until now, well, that and the exercise. After only half an hour everyone is asked to leave because the snow apparently is getting too bad, so we go to dinner.
“Yeah it’s snowing, but it will never stick” I sigh and continue like I am explaining to a six year old “look the ground is too wet and there is too much cloud cover for it to freeze”. They say that hindsight is twenty twenty. We are walking back from the best hamburger I have ever tasted, through Times Square.
Times Square may not be in the exact centre of New York, but very much feels like its beating heart. Even on a dry night, your entire vision is taken up with screens, more screens than gods own control room, lights, traffic stills flowing and your eyes can’t settle anywhere hungry for the next thing. It’s hard not to feel like a movie star when you’re standing in the middle of a scene you’ve seen in a hundred movies. The snow starts coming down hard, and it’s like being in a blizzard inside a television, trapped in the static between channels.
The snow gets worse still and we see nearly everyone Immediately put their hand up to hail a cab thinking that the locals know something we don’t we do the same and by the time we reach the hotel I’m beginning to change my mind about it not sticking, in ten minutes the snow only increased in volume; it was, literally, shitting down with snow. After finishing the beers we brought for the hotel rooms fridge with Nice Guy Dave and Mark (also a nice guy but nowhere near as nice as Nice Guy Dave). We settle down to bed.
The phone rings, I try to remember since when did I have a phone in my room? and slowly the world filters itself back into my head
“turn on the television” laughs a voice, it’s one of the girls in the other rooms.
“Why? It’s early” I manage to growl back, morning and me have never really got along, unless I never went to sleep the night before.
“Because we’re in Blizzard ’06, have you not seen outside?”
“I’ll phone you back” I step over Nice Guy Dave’s prone form to the window and sneak a look out the window. Remember when you were very very young and it had been snowing outside? When the world was be covered in snow and instantly you would know that school would be off and magic was real. Well it was like that. A foot of snow had fallen, cars were buried and not a soul was out on the streets. The city that never sleeps had been put to bed.
Like any normal person of the twenty first century my first reaction was to turn on the television and every channel is news, but it’s not the news we’re used to in England with a sombre but comforting middle aged person calmly explaining what’s going on, this was slick attractive people screaming “BLIZZARD 06” from behind a desk and mind bending graphics. We hadn’t even been awake for five minutes and already they had a name for it.
This is on the day of our flight home, so naturally all flights are cancelled and I get slightly concerned. The uber blond on television is now looking directly at the camera and is urging everyone not to panic, and although the advice is slightly hysterical (what was she expecting? Looting?) I decided to take it and carry on watching the news. Every so often the news goons would cut to a man wrapped up in inadequate but expensive Gore-tex, whose only job was to stand in the snow, point to it and say “snow” the news goon would say something like “our man in the field is Gregg Greggson, what’s it like out there Gregg?” cut to Gregg standing in white.
“Well Brad it’s snowing pretty bad out here in Nowheresville, this is what snow looks like for anyone that’s never seen it and is, for some reason, does not want to open a window or google the word ‘snow’. Back to you”
I get back on the phone and plan the day ahead, we end up going to breakfast and then to the MOMA, the streets are empty when we first leave the lobby, I feel like I’m five years old as I’m picking my feet in and out of the drifts, seeing New York empty of traffic and people is eerie and I am beginning to see why the newscasters may have overreacted, it feels like the end of the world or at least like I am on another one, all the landmarks and advertising billboards’ have disappeared.
On our way to breakfast** I stop on 34th street and make a snow angel. How many people can say they have made a snow angel on a Manhattan road?
Skip forward to a terminal at Newark airport, there are about 10 of us sprawled out over each other all in one corner in various states of wakefulness, reading or just staring. We are tired but happy. The boards are telling us the flight is delayed for five hours. But none of us care. When you’re in your twenties life just spits out special moments, an endless field of firsts, and sunsets, fast cars, and intensity. It’s easy to believe life will always be like that. “Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt” from Vonnegut comes to mind. I think only as you get older that the context of living can take these raw stones, polish them and set them into the jewellery of our life. So now twenty years later I remember being in a cuddle puddle on the floor of Newark airport, feeling as close to other humans as I ever will.
*I bought seven “I HEART NY” t-shirts and wore them for years after until they rotted to mostly holes
**first time having pancakes, bacon, and maple syrup. Been chasing that food high ever since.