Revelations

Walking through Midtown Manhattan on an unseasonably warm October Saturday afternoon, there is a moment where the sun is still up a few dozen miles in any direction, but it's already dusk inside the walls of the high-rise fortress, and the sky is a weary post-apocalyptic pink, and the glass and gold storefront windows cast vermillion reflections on the flushed faces of tourists with backpacks, and Eastern European teenagers with Macy's bags, and black-clad businesspeople shouting into their headsets...

"You went to New York this weekend?  What did you do there?"

"Well, it was only a day trip.  Just a lot of walking around."  

... and the sewers emanate a humid fog that reeks of feces, which gets caught in the oily yellow glow of the food carts that illuminate the treasures of the street vendors' wares -- gleaming bronze pretzels with diamond-chip salt flakes, obsidian leather purses, the cheap glass beads that Manhattan was bought with, copper shawarma nuggets studded with pockets of raw garnet...

"How nice!  Did you go to any museums?"  

... and gradually, gradually the sky darkens and we hit Central Park, and the only light is the paltry stream from the street-lamps and the brighter feverish neon glint on people's skin that obscures their features, sharpening only their waxy, vampiric pallor and the hungry hollows of their cheeks, and it is in these moments that I know how the ruddy peasant of the pre-industrial world felt as she took her first timid steps onto this concrete Babylon and shuddered with horror and delight.

"No, unfortunately.  I wanted to go to MoMA to see the Kirchner exhibit.  But by the time we'd walked from Chinatown to Times Square..."

... and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names, having ten heads and seven horns, and the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned in precious ornaments and pearls and precious stones having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and unclean things of her immorality. Upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the earth, and I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints of the earth and the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, and when I saw her I wondered greatly.

Vanitas vanitatum

The other day, I found out that the infamous 16th century ascetic monk Ivan Vyshenskij -- the Girolamo Savonarola of Ukraine, who spewed bile at Renaissance learning, vainglorious Catholics, and other worldly vanities  -- lived in the town where I was born.  In his honor, here is a short poem:  

Chasing tongue with vodka,

cognac and Akon at a disco called Versailles....

Rubber tubing cramps as the nurse administers the glucose,

useless, and days later my stained clothes sprout moldy tumors --

Lutsk.

Something to declare

I've been in Ukraine for the past two and a half weeks and haven't had a single urge to sit down and write, probably because I've long ago figured out that I can only have one set of feelers fired up to twitch at the world, absorptive or regurgitative, and this trip was definitely about sucking it all in.  But now that I'm back in Boston and have stacks of cardboard boxes and academic red tape to tackle, the best distraction from beginning-of-the-semester stress is sitting down at a keyboard and methodically rehashing.  So, without further ado, and in reverse chronological order:

By the time Ryan and I touched down in Amsterdam, I think we were both ready to leave the Eastern Bloc.  About three-fourths of the way into the trip, I already found myself shamelessly hankering for a bar that served french fries instead of ten kinds of soggy salad swimming in mayonnaise, as well as a proper stand-up shower and cushy white toilet paper.  But most of all, I was excited about returning to a world where everyday service industry encounters wouldn't make me feel like I'd reached out my hand to gently pet a dog and received a gory flesh wound for my troubles.  After the unsmilingly grim Eastern Europeans, the Dutch were like blue-eyed, apple-cheeked cherubs, lilting away in their peculiarly cheerful Germanic English and punctuating every other phrase with an upbeat "yep."  Maybe that's why I was so blithely optimistic in the passport control line, assuring myself that there'd be no problem with leaving the airport to spend our night-long layover in a hotel.  I'd done it before with my family, and I figured this time could only be more clear-cut, seeing as I would be in the company of my American citizen husband.  Tired but chipper, Ryan and I scooted ourselves up to the counter and presented our passports to the smiling young Dutchman.  The smiling young Dutchman took our papers, thumbed through Ryan's American passport like a flip-book, and handed it back with the all-clear stamp.  Then he picked up my passport, and his smile faded a little.  He looked up at me with a slight frisson of pain clouding his aquamarine eyes.  "You cannot go out without a visa," he said.  Then he flagged down another smiling female coworker, who took us to a small room, let us wait for five minutes, then smilingly repeated the same short, sweet sentence.  Non-EU or non-North American passport, no dice.

I'd like to blame exhaustion and the stress of traveling for the waterworks of hot, childish tears that tumbled out of me as I dug around futilely in my purse for my discharged cell phone and the number of the hotel I'd reserved, so that I could call and cancel in time to get our money back.  Ryan, trying his best to comfort me, took control and called from a pay phone, then laughed and joked as we wandered the airport in search of somewhere to crash.  Tucked away on the upper tier of our terminal was a so-called "comfort seat" section, full of backward-reclined chairs populated by a veritable internat of stranded undesirables.  Two Southeast Asian women were curled up in impossible-to-sleep positions under complimentary Northwest Airlines blankets, eyes shut tight and limbs immobile.  A gaggle of Georgians ignored the sleepers and talked boisterously, made friends with an itinerant Singaporean, then set up a laptop to stream a YouTube video of some loud, whacky Eastern European variety show.  A Muslim woman and her husband took turns nursing their sick child, one wheeling him around in a stroller around the "comfort chairs," while the other got onto a small rug laid out toward Mecca and silently prayed to Allah.  This was where we spent the night, bathed in the glow of the overhead florescent lights and a steady stream of never-ending muzak.  

Instead of all the Western European comforts I'd been dreaming of, I ended up eating potato chips for dinner, brushing my teeth in an airport bathroom sink, and getting no more than an hour or two of stiff, aching sleep.  When two of the Georgians came into the bathroom as I was washing up and asked if I minded that they smoke, I wanted to tell them I didn't mind if they set the whole damn airport ablaze.  I began to understand the grim visages of my compatriots in Ukraine, the way they shifted their gaze downward and refused pleasantries.  Even if they'd never been out of the country, I'm sure they're well aware of the label placed upon them by the rest of Europe: poor, backward, helpless, and ready to flood the borders at the drop of a hat.  Unlike spoiled little me with my flashy green card and effortless Americanness, they're made to feel that kind of subtle humiliation every single day.  Doesn't matter if you're a checkout girl in a Kiev supermarket or a PhD student at Harvard.  It's a simple Pavlovian response: if you're treated like a dog, your canines start to itch for some soft, coddled flesh.

Yesterday, I had the quasi-surreal experience of helping move my brother-in-law into his freshman dorm. The kid's a good one -- thoughtful, kind, and a hell of a lot more independent and mature than I'd expect the second-youngest in a family of five to be. But he's been living with my husband semi-permanently and me intermittently for the past six months, making it all too easy for us to forget that he's still just an eighteen-year-old boy reared in a provincial Texas town and his mother's doting arms. All things considered, he acclimated himself quite spectacularly to the boring post-grad married environment of Ryan and I: got himself a job and a PlayStation 3 and spent many a quiet night with us, drinking lots of beer and watching trashy scary movies. That's why I was so surprised to hear him say he was nervous about the whole college thing. I couldn't imagine this suave, svelte six-something stud being nervous in an environment full of awkward, sheltered teens fresh out of high school. But I quickly realized that hanging out with us was not exactly the same as forging a path through the complex social circles of American Higher Learning Institution. There will most likely be much alcohol-fueled devilry, not a small amount of futile eleventh-hour cramming, and girl drama like nobody's business. And as hopelessly permissive as we were with the kid, it's still a world of difference for him to really live on his own and really be expected to make his own decisions full-time. So different that I'll split infinitives about it. It'll be good for him; he needs some young blood. Because if there's one thing that moving somebody else into a freshman dorm can accomplish, it's making you feel hopelessly old.

But apart from the not-so-subtle age difference between me and the pimply-faced youngsters gearing up to start their journey through the American academic conveyor belt, what's even more surreal about yesterday's experience is this whole "brother-sister" relationship I've come to acquire with three random boys over the span of two years. Having spent my whole life dividing young eligible males into the subclasses of "...I can have sex with," "alcoholic second-cousins I see once in three years," and "pink Polo shirt wearers," it feels odd to develop a strong but sexless emotional bond with an attractive male. My brothers-in-law are all great guys, and it's a refreshing change of pace to want to dig around in their brains and hearts, not their pants, to find out what makes them tick. Perhaps this gives hope to the proverbial male-female "friend" myth? ....Or, perhaps, simply reestablishes the female only-child as the quintessential man-eating succubus.

Edit: And, in the grand tradition of the American sibling relationship, I've just been asked to make a beer run for the bro and his new little college friends. This is too cute; I might just shed a tear at the checkout line.

A Moveable Feast

Habitually, I monitor the trajectory of my life through meals, because days when dinner is potato chips and candy are markedly different from days when dinner is frozen lasagna; or midnight diner delivery; or half a loaf of Tuscan bread and a brick of Gruyere.

For example, yesterday started off with an ill-omened brunch at a Boston taco place. To be perfectly clear, Boston, aside from maybe some rut in Cowboy Spurs, North Dakota, is the worst possible US city for Mexican food. This is not some essentialist claim to "authenticity" for the cheese-logged concoctions of Texas or the lettuce-y salad bowls of California, but rather a sober statement of quantitative comparison. In Boston, "Mexican" means one of three things: a large burrito, a taco, or, if you're very lucky, a quesadilla. The end. In Texas, the menu of Mexican foodstuffs can stretch for pages and pages, ranging from traditional Tex-Mex to offbeat nouveau fusion to pure exercises in gluttony and death by cheese. Knowing all this, however, makes me no less desperate for some sort of meat in a cornmeal filling, and even though I'd actually be in Texas later in the day, I gave in and went to the cheap Taqueria down the street. Standing in line, I noticed a small sign that advertised lengua, and my hopes for a decent Boston Mexican experience began to grow. The guy behind the counter gave me a skeptical look when I blithely ordered my boiled beef tongue, and the cashiers whispered something to one another in Spanish, probably to the tune of "silly white people," but I got my tongue tacos and sailed out the door. Not surprisingly, Boston Mexican let me down once more, as the meat was pretty rubbery and bland. But it still had enough of that velvety tongue essence to do the trick. Tongue: the meat so good it tastes you back.

My second meal experience of the day was no less of a cultural collision. I was in the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina and had an hour layover before my flight to Dallas. Walking through the terminal, I mentally checked off one terrible airport dinner option after another ("NASCAR Cafe? Ex. Manchu Wok? Ex. Chili's Too? ...seriously?") before finally hitting gold. I skirted past the crowd of soccer moms clamoring around some bagel place and slid into the lengthy, all-black line at Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits. Alright, so it's no Popeyes, but I'll take what I can get. As I was waiting, middle-aged white woman saddled up to me and, with a desperate look in her eyes, said, "I'll pay for your meal if you'll let me cut in front of you." Being the pushover that I am, I just laughed and waved her through. Turns out she was also a Southern transplant living in Boston, and, even more heroically, had come from a totally different terminal, paying off one of those beeping motorized buggy drivers just to get some real Southern food.

Unfortunately, Airport Bojangles was experiencing a severe chicken shortage, meaning I had to wait twenty minutes for my damn breast-and-wing dinner. I was coming off a months-long fried chicken fast, so I waited stoically, ticket in hand, gritting my teeth. The others in line were not so patient. The poor manager ran around trying to placate the hungry masses and ended up handing out dozens of free drinks. Finally, I leaned over and politely asked the kid working the soda fountain if I could please get a cup of water. "Don't be shy, get more than that, honey!" murmured an attractive young black woman waiting next to me, who'd handled the situation far more adroitly and already pumped the manager for free sides and biscuits. But it looks like I've officially been spoiled by Northern self-sufficiency and accountability. I waited in silence, got my chicken just as my plane started boarding, and had to eat in the cramped middle seat between two people shooting me looks of rancorous envy for my styrofoam container of grease. Their biscuits are but a pale Popeye shadow, but I might have to seditiously admit that the chicken is about on par.

And, finally, to round out the day: a late evening second dinner of chips, salsa, mojitos, and flan, capped off with what's quickly becoming my preferred trashy redneck beverage of choice: the indomitable Bud Lite Lime. You know you've done a day right when you start off with tongue and end in a twist top. Success.

Levels of addiction

As expected, last night was a prototypical exercise in childish sulking.  I trudged through the rain to the corner liquor-and-grocery, picked out my dinner of a) peanut butter M&Ms (delicious) and b) sweet potato chips (... nutritious?), then had to angle awkwardly around a couple of what I can only assume were young resident physicians, standing in the middle of the cramped booze section and talking loudly about how so-and-so was "totally septic!" -- they're way more charming on Scrubs.  Since I at least had the foresight to avoid a whole bottle of wine on the shaky foundation of aforementioned "dinner," it took me awhile to decide on which pint-sized single would make me look the least like a lonely alcoholic.  I finally picked out some crappy hard cider that tasted like apple-flavored Mad Dog, but for a night of commanding undead armies in a dark, empty apartment, there could probably be no better choice to drink straight out of the bottle.  Basically, I'm twelve, but with a liquor ID.

It's supposed to storm again today, to which I can only say: OMFG NO.  If I miss another flight, I may not be so innocent in my choice of sulking.  I wonder if you can get kicked out of an airport for purchasing a bottle of duty-free liquor and consuming it inside the terminal?  Only one way to find out.

Missed connections

There's something inconsolably pathetic about a cancelled evening flight.  On the long bus and subway trip back from the airport, I felt like the straps of my bags were the leashes of dogs eager to burst forth into the unknown, but instead I had to reign them in wearily and drag them, whimpering, back home.  The rain didn't exactly improve my mood; neither did the snot-gargler and crotch-grabber sitting next to me, who spent the twenty-minute airport shuttle ride contemplating something very fascinating inside my right ear.  And now I'm back in the apartment it took me three hours to clean and put in order this afternoon, packing everything away and destroying all traces of my two-week life there so that the movers could do their job more easily.  It's almost funny, really.  Toiletries trapped inside taped-up cardboard, towels and linens smashed together with dirty clothes in the hamper, all the leftover food in the cupboards thrown away.  Nothing but boxes and a bare mattress for the next sixteen-some hours.  

My life this month was supposed to be on its way to positively domestic.  Finally, I was going to do some of that nesting I'd read about, maybe get my act together and start playing the part of a "wife," whatever the hell that is.  And yet here I am, musing indifferently that the next time I'll be able to shower might be around nine or ten tomorrow night, if I'm lucky, and contemplating a run to the liquor store for a therapeutic evening of solitary beer and video games.  Pretty much like every other night this month, except with even less in the way of creature comforts.  Joy.

The thing about the karmic wheel: I tend to take it all, bank or bust, with the same level of complicity.  And once that bitch starts rolling downhill, I just let it draaaaaag me down.