June 06, 2002
new new york
For a rare change, there's nothing to do at work. That is, either I have nothing to do, or my work hasn't caught up to me yet. The fact that I've been switching cubes every two days seems to be having an effect; every time people get used to me in one cube, I move to another and then they all get disoriented again. Bow down to me. I am the Disappearing Asian Monkey Mole. ("What happened to, oh, what's her name, the round-headed Asian girl." "Which one?")
Thus, flying low under the radar, I bring to you another belated installment of Faulty Vision, where humor is just another excuse to dance around in someone else's underwear.
In case you haven't guessed it, I'm a little tired, due in part to the fact that I had an exhausting four days in New York. I promised to write journal entries while I was there, and to a certain extent I did. That is to say, I jotted notes. Want to see them?
New York.Brooklyn. Dark. Lightening. Boom!
Scary doctor. ### is biting her nails again.
Bagels!
...hate these shoes...
..sneakers are my friends. I hate everybody.Oh. PMS.
Bagels!
People keep calling me "dear"?
Aww. Wet delivery man. Big tip!!I'm cute.
Queens ugly.
I arrived late on Wednesday night, the day before the firebell tolled on Ground Zero: clean-up finished, or at least moved somewhere else. Too tired to do much in the way of sightseeing, and too smart to wander around Brooklyn on my own at eleven o'clock at night, I struck up conversation with the front desk clerk and revelled in his accent. The fact that I kept grinning at him was, I think, beginning to perturb him. There was a positive look of relief on his face when I finally wobbled my way up to my room.
Something about New York made me chatty with every random stranger I met, whether that be over the phone or across a desk. The fact that most men I spoke to persisted in callig me "hon" or "dear" did a lot to dispel the scariness of being in a strange big city all by my fragile feminine flower lonesome. Starving as I was, I plodded back down to the front desk and interrogated the clerk and the doorman about eating facilities nearby.
"At this hour?" the clerk said dubiously.
I was instantly disappointed; wasn't New York supposed to be the City that Never Sleeps?
"You're thinking about the weekends," the valet said kindly. "This is Wednesday."
It was hit-or-miss that I would make it to the hotel at all; treated to a barrage of stories about the dangers of getting into limos by both the person in front and the person in back of me in the taxi line, I prepared myself for my ride by carefully hiding a quarter inside the palm of my hand. What I was thinking I would do with the quarter is anybody's guess. I was, after all, looped out of my mind with tiredness and sheer nervousness.
"Give me all of your money or I will ravish your plump and oddly appealing feminine body!"
"Take that!"
"Aaargh! You have a quarter! I am foiled!"
Contrary to all my expectations, the taxi driver was a very timid man struggling with the basics of the English language. He was, if possible, more alarmed by his passenger than his passenger was by her driver.
"You talk too fast," he said plaintively after I'd explained my destination to him for the fourth time. He'd set out before asking me where I was headed, out of some dubious cabby logic: if I'm moving, I'm getting closer. "You want ... where?"
In the movie Shanghai Noon, there's a scene where Jackie Chan attempts to ask directions to Carson City from a group of American Indians. His hosts nod obligingly, and one of them leans across him to say to another, "And now he's talking louder, like that'll make a difference."
"Fourth Avenue, Brooklyn," I said loudly and slowly. "Comfort Inn. 8315..."
"What?"
Elmo began squeaking to me in the backseat, reminding me to put on my seatbelt. Just for safety's sake, I added a nickel to my quarter: one coin in each hand. Take that, Elmo.
We drove across the freeway, and the New York skyline was pressed in lights against the sky. I craned my head to see, but for all the talk about the missing World Trade Center towers nagging people with their absence, I didn't even notice. I couldn't even remember where they were supposed to be.
Dinner was purchased from a twenty-four hour diner/restaurant that promised on its menu to deliver to the Comfort Inn. The price on all the items was reasonable, which posed a bit of a problem when the hearty Brooklynite on the other end of the phone informed me that "the minimum for delivery's $15 bucks, hun."
'Hon.' Imagine if you will, Rocky Balboa pouring tea and handling the crumpets. "Would you like one lumps or two with that, hun?"
Out of sheer desperation, I finally ended up ordering enough food for four people: a roast beef sandwich I could eat the following day, some sort of dinner item I'm utterly incapable of remembering now, and dessert. I called the Guy to inform him of my dietary decisions -- he was thrilled, needless to say -- then plodded through the limited offerings of my hotel room cable system before answering the door for the delivery man.
"I need the receipt," I explained to him.
He nodded and pointed at it, then gestured to himself. He wanted the receipt. What for? I handed it to him. He made gestures: going away now.
I understood that.
"Not with my receipt you don't," I announced, and opened my hand for it.
He plopped it back into my hand and stared at me expectantly.
I gave him a larger tip. He beamed. Then he wanted the receipt again.
"But I need it," I whined. "I need to get reimbursed, and in order to get reimbursed, I need the receipt."
He nodded brightly and pointed at the receipt. Gimme.
Y'all, he couldn't speak English. Not one word. We stared at each other, mutually frustrated, grinning with the pure stupidity of the situation (that is, I presume it was the stupidity of the situation that he was grinning at). It was a scene out of an old, bad Tarzan flick. Me Tarzan, you Jane. -- Can you say 'expense report,' Tarzan?
We finally agreed through the universal language of desperation -- ("You don't happen to speak any Japanese, do you? French? Francais? German? Deutsch? Just Spanish? Er...Espagnol? Crrrrrap.") -- to go on a field trip downstairs to the lobby. If he couldn't speak English, then it stood to reason that the people downstairs would speak some Spanish. No, I know it didn't really stand to reason, but it was eleven-thirty and I wanted to eat my rapidly cooling whatever-it-was, dammit.
The guy at the front desk had changed, and he wasn't fun like the last guy. We stood in front of his high desk and stared at him while he dealt with some future reservation on the telephone. Our mournful gazes irritated him; when he was finished dealing with his telephone pest, he directed a glower at the pair of us. "Can I help you?" he said in that yummy Brooklyn accent. Almost against his will, he added, "hon?"
The deliveryman began talking to him in Spanish. I began talking to him in English.
"I don't understand what he's saying," said I.
"... ... ... ... ...," said he.
"...need a receipt for my expenses..." said I.
"... ... ... ...!" said he.
We stopped talking, stared at the front desk clerk again, and watched his arteries starting to swell with pure rage. The deliveryman and I drew closer together for protection.
Ah, New York. There you are at last.
Next installment: Meet My Breasts, Brooklyn!