The New York Experience

This week, I’ll be reflecting on my trip NYC.

Or at least I would. The whole idea of a trip report is to recount what you did, what you liked, what you didn’t like. But given the hustle and bustle of the city that is The Big Apple, it’s kind of hard to accurately remember what we did and in which order.

What sticks out in my mind the most is the fact we didn’t take as many pictures as we would normally take. It’s almost being counter intuitive given the fact that both of us are Asian, and it’s a true stereotype that we document almost everything while we are on vacation. Within reason and budget, of course. What few pictures we took were of the areas of the city we liked to look at.

We spent only one day on the great island of skyscrapers, but we were able to see everything we set out to see and only got lost twice. My faux foreign accent kept slipping in and out whenever I would talk to a street vendor or a museum docent. Something that happened a lot when I was in Spain and Italy last year.

We started with a long subway ride to the north side of Central Park. Keeping to the Fifth Avenue side, we made our way south towards the shopping district. We did take a detour into The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art when we saw a banner advertising a show involving Superhero fashion.

We only paid a dollar each to get in, since the museum was so huge and we were only going to see one exhibit. The exhibit itself was interesting. Couture designers were commissioned to design outfits based on the costumes of comic cultures most iconic characters, villain and hero alike. Of the ones that stood out to me where the various sport suits that are currently in use that were based on The Flash, the formal dresses inspired by Spider-Man’s Black Suit and Michelle Pfeiffer’s portrayal of Catwoman, and the strangely-yet-sexual outfits based on the idea of The Hulk representing the virile body. The oddest design goes to a Batman-inspired couture that features large sleeves designed to look like the side of a Gotham City high rise. I couldn’t figure out how anyone would be able to wear that, as the mannequin displaying the outfit had no arms attached. I later found the catalogue for the exhibit and saw a picture of the opening day’s catwalk event, and that just made the outfit look even more odd.

Satisfying my mom’s skepticism that we could get into some museums for well under the price posted, we started back on our walk towards the south end of Central Park and Fifth Avenue. Once there, Mom did some window shopping and naturally didn’t buy anything. It was fun watching her squirm at the three-digit price tags for outfits she liked. We made our way to MOMA, but decided to not bother with it due to high volume of local High School field trippers and tourists. Plus, they wanted $20 from each of us, which my mom wasn’t willing to pay after paying only a dollar to get into The Met.

Walking a little bit further down, we made our way to St. Patrick’s. As luck or divine will would have it, we came in just as they were starting their afternoon observance. The whole mass took only half an hour, but I still felt like this was no accident. We were clearly tourists, and the ushers didn’t wave us out like they did everyone else in the building. The only good thing about the experience was the sinful nature of my lustful wandering eye. Sitting in the pew next to us was a really lean but large young stud who was also playing tourist with his mom. They left the mass when the collection baskets went around, but while they were there, he was my Forbidden Fruit in NYC’s Garden of Eden.

We then crossed Fifth to check out Rockefeller Center. We got lost trying to find the iconic gold statue, unaware that it was underneath us when we saw that there was a store dedicated to NBC shows and their various commercial products. We eventually found it, and my mother was quite disappointed with the results. This would be her first of second disappointments in New York. I told her that the reason it looked so big is because of the way it’s photographed. I even showed her what I meant with the few pictures she took of the statue. She looked at me confused and looking like she was cheated. I jokingly said to her that she now knows how I felt when we went to the Sistine Chapel.

After some light shopping in the mall below the iconic plaza in order to escape a sudden-but-short rain storm, I decided we were better off walking to Time Square. The maps I was using (one subway map, one street map) made it look farther than it really was. Jason e-mailed several days before we left stating that Manhattan is actually a pretty small world, and this trip out to the heart of theatre district proved just that.

The entire area of Time Square was just over-stimulating. My mom compared it to the Vegas strip with the lights and traffic just happening all over the place. We took our obligatory snap shots and then figured that was all there was to see in the area. The next stop would be Ground Zero, so we took a subway downtown.

When we got there, we were greeted with chain-link fences that were covered with green/gray tarps. Construction crews barked at tourists who leaned against the fence to get a better view. My mother asked a NYPD if this was it. She was expecting a memorial by now or something. Her comment of ‘This is it?’ was echoed as I listened in to the people around us. Some seven years later, the impact of the attacks doesn’t seem to have the same kind affect on people as it should have when you’re actually in the area. This was the second disappointment for my mother.

As we sat and rested by the Jeff Koons sculpture near Ground Zero, I explained to her why there is no memorial. The whole complex story about how some families want this while other families feel that would be a better memorial and others believing that no memorial should be built at all and the hole in the ground should be it just confused my mother even more. It’s been like that for the last five years with this project, so I wasn’t too surprised that there was essentially nothing there. In the end, she got so upset at the lack of something to see in the area that she went shopping in the department store directly across the street from Ground Zero. She didn’t buy anything.

We started to grow hungry and hopped a train to Chinatown. Once there, I got lost trying to find the street where all the restaurants are. Once I figured out I was going the opposite direction, we found a small dive to have dinner.

I, once again, was distracted by a pair of gay men who were clearly on a date. Both from the club scene judging from their dress, and both just painfully hot. The younger of the two was in a black tank top that hugged his muscle structure like a second skin suit. I couldn’t help but stare. The conversation with my mother kept fading in and out of my mind as lustful thoughts screamed. Some fantasies about a crush I have at Watkins that I know I’d never act on, some about if I would get caught cruising this guy’s date, and others so raunchy I feel ashamed thinking those things in the company of my mother.

It was at that moment that I had an epiphany. There’s no way in hell I can date anyone. I’m too much in lust with the beautiful people in the world and too socially reserved to act on any emotional attachment to people. I’m completely undatable because I’ve made myself like that. And like I said to the bartender from Tribes that I befriended at school, it’s because of my past experiences expressing my attraction to people that has made me this way. So at least now I have a damn good reason why I don’t date. Expressing my attraction to someone makes me feel socially awkward.

We didn’t finish our dinner, and took the leftovers back to our flat in Brooklyn. Much to both mine and my mother’s surprise, we ended up burning off what we ate for dinner walking to the obligatory tourist T-shirt stores and to the subway station that would bring us back to Flatbush. By the time we got out of the station, we were hungry again. That’s what happens when you eat Chinese food.

After buying some drinks from the corner store and settling in to our Sesame Street building where our flat was, we came to the realization that we walked farther in New York than we ever did in Nashville. And neither one of us was tired. Hungry, yes, but not tired. I felt like I had conquered the city while feeling like I found my home. Mom just liked the fact that she was able to experience a bigger city than she’s ever been to, and made it a point to save up some extra cash so that the next time she goes to NYC she can shop. With my sister in tow.

The following day, we went to the Brooklyn Museum for the main reason we were even in town, but got to see a few extras with it. Besides the Murakami retrospective, my mother and I go to see The Dinner Party in person, as well as a small collection of Japanese woodblock prints. It was the first time that I felt like my mother and I actually connected, if only for a moment. She teased me for being an obsessive fan boy over the show, and I didn't once got on her nerves about all her little quirks in how she talks. We need more moments like these.

Next week, I’ll post my thoughts about the reason we went to NYC in the first place: The Murakami Retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.