small peak (sentience part one)
in which author regains the ability to articulate her thoughts and prayers after a year long stint both overseas (study abroad) and in subsequent hibernation (depressed).
In Europe, I was anonymous.
No one knew my name. No one recognized my face. No one had memorized my walk, my mannerisms, the aerodynamics of my hair as I flâneused about. No one could call out to me from across the street, or grab my arm as though my surprise presence necessitates forceful physical acknowledgement. I feared no one and nothing. I walked head first into crowds of pedestrians, a bull blindly charging through bodies, with 100% certainty that I would not run into old summer flings or the fleeting freshman year friendships or past co-workers who’d inevitably stop me for mid-crosswalk small talk that we both force ourselves to painfully smile and laugh through. Instead there were beer-bellied lads on their lad trips, Guinness wielding Arsenal fans, French tourists with maps and nylon backpacks, frazzled Englishwomen that rushed past me on their way to Waitrose quicker than you can say Bridget Jones. Like I said – I feared nothing.
New York City is the biggest city in America. This wasn’t a fact so much as it was a challenge before I moved here, a snow-capped Everest I was determined to scale. But the paradox of a mountain is that its peak is significantly smaller than its base; so now, with the summit in view, I’m running into all my fellow climbers at the most random precipices and bluffs. Take this past month. Unwilling to pay the $20 Uber fee, I decided to walk home from the Greenwich Village Mexican restaurant my sister and I had eaten dinner at after her dance recital. I was wearing a denim Diesel pencil skirt I bought on eBay freshman year for $10, my cropped fur-lined Baby Phat jacket, and knee-high brown boots. I’m of the opinion that what one wears should not authorize suggestive commentary from men. If a bomb were to hit New York that night, and I was the only one left alive, I would still emerge from the rubble wearing my Diesel pencil skirt, Baby Phat fur-lined jacket, and knee-high boots. I dress for one person and one person only: the woman-child who stares back at me in the mirror.
But of course, no amount of self-assuredness stops the commentary from men who find the urge to pipe up about my appearance, as though I were a star quarterback in a football game and my outfit was the game-winning play. On 11th and University, a guy wearing biker jeans and Jordans muttered to me, “Yo shawty you look mad fine right now,” as we passed each other under a narrow scaffolding tunnel. Another man sitting on the ground, back leaning against the darkened Madman Espresso storefront, squawked out, “hEY BEAUTIFUL!” from his seated position, flashing a toothy smile as I grimaced back at him.
Englishmen still maintained anonymity while “catcalling,” if you could even consider it that. Predatory hoots of lust were not customary for these male chavs – but staring was. My sixth sense would flare up while crossing through Russell Square to get to class; while ascending past descending strangers as we glided by each other on the Underground’s nearly vertical escalators; while waiting to order cider at the pub (no, the UK unfortunately did not transform me into a beer girl). I’d whip my head around, rotate it like an owl, and sure enough, a pair of eyes would be shooting laser beams right back into mine. Then, having been caught, they’d quickly avert their gaze, sheepish in their demeanor, and bow their heads back down towards the sidewalk. Anonymity maintained.
(On the other hand, maybe it was not so much me being a woman as it was me being Mexican. According to the 2011 census, there are only 8,869 Mexico-born English residents – half of which are international students – which can only mean there aren’t many more British-born Mexicans. So I very well could’ve been the only Mexican that these Londoners had seen all year, and considering I rarely saw another myself, I wouldn’t blame them for staring. I used to be embarrassed of my heritage, but something in the cultural zeitgeist shifted about four years ago; now all the white people treat me as some sort of Black Madonna whose bust they kneel before, whose feet they kiss. Eve Babitz is probably one of the earliest recorded white people to explicitly worship at the altar of Chicano culture: “No one with an ounce of human sympathy for style or even a passing appreciation for design could ever have preferred those never-to-be-sexy, washed-out girls to the explosive danger of the Pachucos.” Period.)
Perhaps this is not the case for every woman who has ever stepped foot in England, but at least for me, English pedestrians didn’t holler like American men do when I graced their presence. Neither had they offered roses, like the third man I passed on the street that night did. “For you,” he said, calming my apprehension down with two disarming doe-eyes. His voice sounded like velvet. Taken aback by this sincerity after the previous two yellers, I replied with an exasperated “THANK YOU,” as if I were drowning in a riptide and he had just tossed me a life raft.
I ran into him again on my street two days later coming back from Eloise’s potluck.
Then again a week later at Tompkins with Michaela and Farheen.
And again, a day later, on Ave B.
I was walking south, him north, I westside, him east. He crossed the street and we laughed in incredulity at our fourth run-in. This city is too small, I thought. We exchanged numbers, then set up a time to hang out, which we both knew was code for a first date.
There isn’t much to say about the date itself besides the fact that it went how all dates with artistic boys in Manhattan go: he’s a musician-stylist-artist, whose parents are (undisclosed) rich and famous artists, whose parents were also (undisclosed) rich and famous artists, and now he sits atop a pot of inherited gold that he somehow found a way to complain about. He was very insightful, I’ll admit. The conversation would flow gracefully, a car on a freshly paved highway, would seamlessly merge lanes between art and life and philosophy—but then would hit a pothole of childhood trauma and explode into a fiery mess. Fiery messes shouldn’t happen on first dates. Banter, laughter and playful teasing should; there was none of that with him. It felt like a therapy session: he, the battered and bruised patient, splayed out on a cracked leather couch—not unlike how he was positioned on the patchy Tompkins grass before me—and I, well, the therapist.
I made an excuse that I had to go to a friend’s birthday party and fled the scene, lying that I had a marvelous time. Not even 24 hours later, he texts me to hang out again. I did not respond. I came to the conclusion that he was too Robert Mapplethorpe, consumed by his art, fighting demons that are not my job to exorcize, and I don’t unfortunately have the divine patience of Patti Smith.
But again, the thing about Manhattan is that the higher you climb—the more ground you cover—the smaller your universe becomes. Naturally, he lives two blocks away from me and I have run into him post-ghosting on two separate occasions, each time using my friends as meager human shields. Stepping so much as one foot outside my apartment is now like attempting to cross a highway; I manically crane my neck left and right, scanning the scene before me for that tuft of black hair or that sore thumb of a guitar case. Most places in Manhattan already weren’t safe from the clutches of acquaintances, friends and lovers past—now nowhere is.
This was never an issue in Europe.
To be continued