Mid July
July 16, 2012
The drive into the city along the Hudson. Do you see the little sailboat with spinnaker unfurled?
The past two weekends at home have been rather lovely. We've been almost giddy, Mr. Pom and I, acting like teenagers whose parents have gone away for the weekend. I think it is a combination of having no kids home (at least for another week) and suddenly having all this free time after a year of preparing for the wedding. Kind of reminds me of when my law school classes would be over and I would revel in reading something as simple as reading a magazine.
Several people wrote to me to say, "I don't have a porch! How can I enjoy these summer evenings?" Seriously, a porch is not necessary. I think a stoop is a classic way to spend a summer evening. A backyard, a sidewalk with a chair and a neighbor to chat with. Or just shut the lights, open the living room windows, light a bunch of candles.
Listen though, Mr. Pom and I are not always disembodied voices in a dark night. We get out there and party with the best of them. This Saturday we went to see Memphis, which received the 2010 Tony award for Best Musical. The Bride and Groom gave us the tickets as a thank you gift. I didn't know anything about it and we were just blown away. The singing, the dancing, the actors, all just fabulous!
The Shubert is a beautiful, old theater, filled with lovely touches like these bas relief sculptures and crystal beaded light fixtures.
When we came out of the theater, we saw a huge throng of people walking to Times Square. Intrigued, we fell into step, a little uneasy that we didn't know where we were headed.
Then I saw this guy, which brought back a deep wave of nostalgia for me about a trip out west when I was a teenager in the 70's, and I figured he was beckoning us to go with the flow. Mr. Pom could be heard muttering a little about the time, the heat, and the crowds, but then we reached Broadway.
Toto, we're not on the porch anymore.
I plunged into the crowd, dragging a muttering Mr. Pom behind me. At 11:00 at night in Times Square, instead of the late evening news (though you could watch it on a giant TV right there) this is what you will see:
Crowd control. Poor horsie.
Little Kitty must have been suffocating.
I managed to take the picture of TNC with his back to uswhen the crowd suddenly parted. Then when I was about 3 feet from him, he turned and I wanted to take a full frontal (as it were) but found myself unable to look him and his tidy whities in the eye. I put my head down and hurried past, but TNC, a man who makes his living working the crowd (don't ask me how) leaned over and said very quietly with a smile on his lips, "You always avoid my eye", at which point I felt myself furiously blushing, but managed to shoot back, "Don't worry, I got a good shot of your butt." He laughed and I laughed and we had a moment until Mr. Pom caught up and said, "What the hell was that?"
Who knew I would find love in Times Square at midnight, on the 14th of July? It was just like that sailor and his girl on V-J Day
But then I saw this guy - how's a girl to choose??
I say no more.
Mr. Pom and I walked a few blocks, listening to the polyglot of languages, watching the few real New Yorkers determinedly pushing through the crowds to cross the streets, and wondered at why it seemed so ....tame. We all know Times Square peep shows and hookers have been banished, cars are now banned, and we are grateful for all these tourists boosting the economy, but the chemistry was Universal Studios, not the Spanish Steps. No one was having a passeggiata; there just was a whole lot of crazy watching a whole lot of other crazy, without any real crazy going on.
We made a mental note that the next time at midnight that we need sunglasses, clothes, or a model of the Statue of Liberty at midnight, we should head to Times Square. We walked past Shake Shack but decided not to get in line with the other 200 people, and finding no where more interesting to go, ended up at Starbucks.
We drank our iced teas, watched some Eurotrash with very tight strapless elastic dresses with nothing on underneath, scurried past several surviving members of the Manson gang with Rasta braids and vacant looks, judgmentally observed way too many baby strollers for midnight, and then climbed back into the Mini and drove home.
The dogs were quite pleased to see us, we cranked up the air conditioning, put them in their crates, and fell into bed, hoping they would sleep in.
They didn't. And that's when we remembered why we aren't usually traipsing New York "late" on a Saturday night.
Good night, New York!