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About a year ago, Oliver cashed in some frequent flier miles for magazine subscriptions. He was really proud of himself. "Alli," he said. "I got us three great subscriptions - The Economist, New York Magazine, and Time Out New York."
"Time Out New York?" I replied. "That's great! We'll be so tuned in to what's going on..."
"Yes," he replied. "Out Magazine."
"Wait wait wait... did you say Out or Time Out New York?"
"They're the same thing, right?"
"No, they're not." (Disappointed head shake) "One is a guide to New York City, and the other is a fashion and culture magazine for gay men."
"Oh."
Would life be as fun if Oliver spoke and understood English flawlessly?
So it wasn't planned, but it turned out well. Out was a good magazine, and the unexpected subscription gave me the chance to see inside a demographic that I'm not always so tuned in to. Then June came along, and we moved. Two months passed and we still had not gotten around to transferring our subscriptions. Had they run out? Eh, we'd think about that later.
"Later" came tonight, when Oliver got an email from our old landlord, Bill. Bill is a nice guy, if a little shady. He's now living in the apartment we rented from him last year, and he wrote Oliver to let him know that we have some magazines waiting for us.
Oh yeah. About those. Um...
I was sitting on a park bench the other day, eating my lunch. Nothing exciting, just peanut butter and jelly. It was good jelly though - my mom's rhubarb apricot.
I was sort of gazing off into space at one point, thinking about something like "ooh, I'm in the mood for a maple yogurt" or "why are my legs so white? It's the middle of the summer," when a flapping noise and a brush of feathers against my skin jolted me back to reality. Good lord, I had just been attacked by a sparrow.
Maybe "attacked" is a strong word. Maybe it was more like a breaking and entering, or a purse snatching. Facts are facts though - the bird blitzed past me and grabbed a piece of sandwich out of my hand. Guerilla style too, not a shy, hesitant, "oh, are you offering that to me? Maybe I'll have a little bite..."
In the lunch hours since, I've noticed little gangs of sparrows gathering around me whenever I eat. Dang.
Tonight after work I went to Chinatown. I wandered around, admiring paper dragons, Michael Jackson t-shirts and roast ducks in window displays. I stopped in a random little restaurant, and - as is always the case when I go to Chinatown - found really great food for next to nothing. Congee with pork and preserved eggs. (How do these restaurants pay their rents? Sometimes I worry for them.)
I eventually found myself in a little park.
It was like being back in Beijing. The trees and the pavement, the faintly dingy feel of the place. Elderly Chinese people sat together, chatting in Mandarin and playing card games. I half expected people to begin a mass Tai Chi exercise or break out in unison into a dance set to Mandopop. Neither of these things happened, of course.
The old women dressed the way I remember old women dressing in China. At the same time though, they interacted in a way that reminded me of my Grandma and her friends - maybe it was the fact that they were playing cards. I was in Beijing, I was in North Dakota.
And then I was home.
I'm at the halfway point of my summer internship, and I switched departments this past week. I now work in Midtown Manhattan - about 10 blocks south of the place I worked last summer. Ah, last summer. The world's most boring job, made bearable only by the great people I worked with.
Stepping outside yesterday for lunch, I decided to make the trek 12 blocks north to the cart Adam had introduced me to last year on one of our 15-minute lunch breaks. In a Midtown full of overpriced lunch places selling mediocre food ($9 for a sandwich? Are you serious?), the carts are a godsend. Little portable restaurants, many of them have "dibs" on a certain corner and develop a real following. "My" cart, on the corner of 45th and 6th, always has a line at least a half dozen people long. The owner used to work at The Russian Tea Room, and makes amazing Middle Eastern-style food.
As I stepped into the line yesterday I felt as if I was back in a familiar place. New York is still something of a mystery to me, and I often feel the whole "stranger in a strange land" thing. Jersey, Brooklyn, Manhattan... I don't actually belong to any of these places. They've all let me in for a peek, but the golden gates to the fields of acceptance have yet to be flung open. My school/work/housing situation has also been one of regular change. Graduate school has been a time of transition for me, where I try out different situations and work towards that final goal of (semi) permanence. I love it - it has allowed me to collect a number of really interesting experiences. At the same time though, it can be unsettling.
Standing in line at the cart then, felt good. I used to come here all the time. I know this tiny patch of sidewalk. I can claim it as my own.
"Have you been here before?" a woman with a heavy New York accent asked me. She showed me a blurb she had clipped out of a magazine. "Time Out New York says this cart is really good."
"Yes, it's definitely good, " I replied. "Make sure to get extra white sauce. That stuff is the best."
The summer of 2006 was not the greatest for me. Oliver and I were doing the pre-marriage / pre-green card distance thing, living hundreds of miles apart in separate countries. I was living in Chicago, where I knew almost no one and worked for a man who, to this day, is still the most horrible person I have ever met. It was the kind of work environment where you get to work in the morning and sit in your car for an extra five minutes, trying to will yourself to get up and go into the office.
I visited Oliver up in Toronto that 4th of July weekend. I was just coming off an especially horrid week at work, and when it came time to board the plane back to the States I actually cried. (People see my wedding pictures and ask why I was so thin: 6 months of stress and misery, my friends. Stress and misery.)
I got it together eventually. I dried my tears and turned my despair into anger as the flight progressed. F@$#ing long weekend, coming to an end. F@$#ing holiday. F@$#ing country. F@$#ing everything.
I turn now to my journal entry from that night:
"My flight landed in Chicago a little before 10pm, and this being the 4th of July I saw tiny bursts of fireworks peppering the landscape. Right underneath me, far off into the horizon; everywhere. Celebration! Happiness! Freedom! How much harder could these symbols hit you in the face? The city was alive and vibrant in a way that isn't usually visible from 5,000 feet. I stared blankly out the window, angry with my country and city for making me so aware of the place I was returning to. A part of me also felt this longing to connect with the celebration, this great big, crackling reminder that there is so much to celebrate... but I just couldn't."
I thought back to previous 4ths last night as I watched the fireworks: Running around the Wendy's parking lot with my brother, sipping our frosties and waiting for the big show to start. Hangin' with my high school crew down by the lake, tuned in to the local radio station that played patriotic songs while the fireworks went off. Holding a port-a-potty door closed for a friend on the Mall in DC while the fireworks reached their climax. Mostly though, I thought about 2006, and how I had nashed my teeth as the plane descended. All I had wanted then was for Oliver and I to be together like normal people. And now we are.
When the festivities were over last night, we took the subway home. I tried to convince him that he was drunk because his eyes were bloodshot (he wasn't. Just tired). He talked about how much fun it would be to get a cat. We got back to the apartment and finished the last bits of the carrot apple salad. We watched 15 minutes of Cosmos before falling asleep.
