New York

December 10, 2011


Slightly hung-over, ensconced ln my remarkably tiny room on a ventilator shaft in the Paramount. Except for bold mural-like attachments to the wall, it would look squalid, which is a lesson in the efficacy of canny decoration. I must have “give him the ventilator shaft” written beside my name on some big hotel book in the sky. Anyway, a lively evening in New York. Subwayed down to the Village. Getting off at the Christopher Street, Sheridan Square stop used to be such a thrill, with the promise of excitement and multiple partners for the night. I never knew what the Village itself looked liked, but just the faces on it, which I cruised with what seems now to me to be touching, if fully rewarded, eagerness. Stopped in a few of the old haunts–all of them changed and far less dangerous– ending up at Marie’s Crisis (the least changed) before walking to the Lucille Lortel for Wild Animals You Should Know, a new play by Thomas Higgins. It was neatly written, finely acted, and for a while pretended to be frothier than it actually was. Initial laughter drew us into a rather dark complexity of emotion. Good night of theater. Came back and stood on Times Square until my legs buckled under me. Cosmos at the hotel bar, and then I remember nothing. Notable faces: the red-blond angelic countenance in the Aeropostale, who tried to direct me to the right place to buy a G force watch for my nephew; the tall, gaunt man beside me at the bar at the Italian restaurant on Times Square, who ate more than anyone I have ever seen at one sitting, including two tiramisous; the check-in girl at the hotel, who told me of the play she wants to write about working in a restaurant. She gave me complimentary WiFi for the trouble of my listening.