Belated Chronicle

Wednesday, Aug. 29., 5:30 a.m.
Harvard MBTA Station - I'm alone with my small duffel, bus tickets, and an old woman carrying many plastic CVS bags. Thankfully (for the sake of packing) and unfortunately (for the sake of my make-believe vanity), I am going to New York now and not during Fashion Week, so my ugly little duffel holds only extra socks, an extra pair of underwear, toiletries, a towel, and a sleeping bag--no Diane von Furstenburg, no absurd heels this time; there will be no parties for the crashing.

South Station, 6 a.m.

State Street

South Station Bus Terminal, above the escalator

Central Park, 11:00 a.m.
I arrive in the city around 11 a.m. It's hot and the last hour was spent listening to another passenger behind me make painfully ignorant comments about Harlem as we made the inch by inch journey (This point in the bus ride is always the least comfortable; everyone is awake and aware of arrival, but everyone still has to stay on the bus for another hour while the bus squeezes its way to the Port Authority). I am waiting for a friend to call. I toy with the idea going to the American Natural History Museum, as I have just seen the Squid and the Whale a few days prior. I muck around Central Park and marvel at the pages of erotic hotlines in the Village Voice instead.

Reminds me of the opening sequence of "The Critic."


Realizing that my companion won't be arriving any time soon, I go to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. It is free because they are renovating.

A solar-powered cooking contraption.


Flowers.

He was so excited about the ice cream. Cameo by my sneakers. My companion has called, I am in the final stretch of the wait in front of the Guggenheim.


Finally inside, my friend having arrived and both of us having paid the astronomical entrance fee.

The money shot. Couldn't resist.

I thought his shirt and blank expression complemented the museum nicely.
Next we head to Astoria for the last screening of the outdoor foreign film festival in Socrates Sculpture Park. Put on by the Museum of the Moving Image.
We watch "Crossing the Bridge," a documentary about music in Istanbul. We eat Turkish food. We don't stay for the second feature about bossa nova.

Rather than paying for $40 for a bed at the Hostel International with the wild, backpacking Europeans, I take my generous companion's offer to put me up at his house on Long Island. After munching plantain chips at Empanada Mama in Hell's Kitchen and bemoaning our underage status, we head out on the LIRR.

Oyster Bay, 1:30 a.m.
I stay in the "Library with Bed." I have pulled a volume of chronicles of Siberian travels. I decide that I want my children to have a library with bed. The next morning I meet his parents and they talk to me about art history and their artist friends.

The next morning, early, I return to the city alone-- I tunnel through the humidity in the subway and resurface in China Town. I hope the absurdity of the mannequin's breasts is evident in this photo.

A few blocks and a witnessing of an arrest later, I find myself in Little Italy, where the stalls of ChinaTown morph suddenly into cafes with faux marble tabletops and gaudy red, green, and white signage. I take a coffee and pastry break.

Fire escape; Italian pride.

Finally, I come to my long-awaited (say 2 years?) destination: 11 Mercer Street. And here, my make-believe vanity is lost forever. As I've mentioned, I decided consciously not to bring another outfit for my 2-day jaunt in New York City, let alone a fashionable frock and flats which may have at least shielded me with superficial, designer dignity before I ruined my future in the social circles of Manhattan forever.

No, instead, I enter the Visionaire gallery in a Banana Republic tee slightly damp with sweat, jeans of a wrong, mismatched wash, and half-broken sneakers from Taiwan whose "label" is scratched out with Sharpie marker. I muster up all my courage to ring the buzzer, and in that fateful motion, I think, lose it all. I hem and haw to the girl sitting at the desk buying Beyonce tracks from the iTunes store, and muck around the spare, one-room gallery. The walls of the "exhibition" are merely white, temporary partitions, and there is doorway which coyly suggests the existence of deeper chambers. In my sweaty delirium, having just emerged from the gaudiness of Little Italy and the smuttiness of China Town, I think it would be a good idea to explore.

The second I slide back the partition door I can feel the conversation and my dignity run out of the room. Do I turn around and go quickly? Do I act with confidence and browse like I belong? The young man and the chic woman siting at a table folding invitations look up at me. I nod and smile in acknowledgment and uneasily look around. I am positively choking on the awkwardness of the situation when finally the woman puts me out of my misery with a patronizing look, "Um. I think she's looking for you." I turn around and the iTunes girl is frantically, "Oh, goddammit"ly coming after me and making every gesture short of pulling me out by the elbow to shoo me out. I leave the gallery shortly thereafter.

I catch my breath and pretend to feel human and wonder why China Town borders SoHo (who could possibly ever be appropriately dressed for both? oh, right.) Escape to the New York Public Library. If there's anything I've done more of at Harvard than lose my fashion sense it's read. I go to the History of Art and Architecture reading room and read about McKim, Mead, and White and New York Row Housing. It's mildly calming and air conditioned. I debate trying to make it to the Statue of Liberty or Coney Island but my nerves are failing me. I pack up for Port Authority.

State Street. 10 p.m.