New York New York

November 6, 2014

Ninth floor of the Paramount. This time I have a view of the complicated geometry of Manhattan. Slept through the flight, the reason turning out to be I have a cold, and most illnesses of any kind lead me to sleep. No complaints. I have practically no memories of the journey hither.

I wanted to buy a watch at the Swatch place (where I bought my last watch) and so that was my first destination. What has to be noted is that Times Square and environs brimmed with the handsomest men I had ever seen gathered together like that, throngs and dozens. I sat down at an outdoor table with my new watch and–watched. As the afternoon progressed, I did something I haven’t done in a long while; I went to O’Luney’s bar and slammed down vodkas until I was just short of staggering drunk, and then I wandered around Times Square happy and sodden and a friend to all. It was lovely. Saw Hank Azaria walking out of the American Airlines Theater on 42nd. He’s smaller than you’d think, but quite beautiful. Sobered up enough to get to the Lyric, where I had the best seat in the house to see Bruce and Jack’s On the Town. They will bring bags of candy and drinks to your very seat. When it was over, I turned to my companion-for-two hours in the next seat and said, before I knew I was going to, “Wasn’t that horrifying?” Though on any technical level it couldn’t be faulted, though the music is Bernstein and “perfect” in any way I could detect, it was, otherwise, a blaring caricature of what someone must have thought, at one time, was the red blooded American male in the red blooded American city, all manufactured naivete and chemical energy with the volume at full. I know it was meant to be “entertaining,” but it didn’t entertain so much as bludgeon one with every cliche in the vicinity of having a good time, defying one to stagger away at the end imperfectly entertained. The ushers stood around with cattle prods to shock you into jollity if it looked like you weren’t having the Time of Your Life. The end, where it all starts over, was actually profound enough to raise it a few levels in my estimation, but not above “exhausting.”  On top of it, I had arrived drunk with every intention of having a good old fashioned good time. Like coming to a restaurant for a meal, and not being allowed out until you’ve consumed the entire dessert try. It’s like– oh, it’s early in the gray morning. Let’s start again.