My first day in New York was kind of maddening. I’m not even going to go into it. The second day was better. I went to the Breuer Building, which used to be the home of the Whitney Museum before they moved downtown. After that, the Met rented it out for a while, but they could never really make it work. Currently it’s the temporary resting place for work from the Frick, which is being remodeled. I’ve been to the Frick a few times, it’s never been my favorite museum but it certainly houses some impressive stuff. This time I was going to see the building as much as the art. I have lots of good memories of visiting the Whitney, going back to my first visit when I was in high school. I spent a long time lounging around on a bench in one of the stairwells with a bunch of the cool kids, who for some reason decided to take pity on me and let me hang out with them. Since then I’d seen some incredible shows, including retrospectives of Richard Diebenkorn and Mark Rothko. The last time I’d been there was before the pandemic, when the Met was having shows there. I’d seen an Edvard Munch retrospective that had blown me away.
Removing the paintings from the plush mansion and plopping them into the brutalist spaces of the Breuer really allowed them to shine. Work I’d never paid much attention to –especially the Fragonards, of which there were many- suddenly seemed fresh and exciting to me. The Vermeers were out on loan for a once-in-a-lifetime retrospective in Amsterdam, and all the Spanish masterpieces were likewise spending time back in their homeland. But the rest were all there- the Turners, the Van Dycks, the Holbeins, the Pieros. And unlike the Met, which had been crammed to capacity when I’d visited the day before, the fake Frick was nearly empty aside from a number of Russian tourists who spent the time screaming across the galleries at each other and standing in my way no matter where I moved.
The paintings were all wonderful but the pieces which moved me the most were two etchings. The first was Durer’s Melencholia I, a picture I’d never been much interested in, despite its skillful execution. This time I found myself drawn into the dark twists of fabric of the miserable angel, and intrigued by the mysterious tools and objects strewn at his feet. The other etching was by Van Dyck, an artist I’ve never felt much affection for, though he is of course a consummate craftsman. I don’t remember noticing his etchings at all, but they had two there; one a sensitive self-portrait, and the other a portrait of Hans Holbein the Younger. I felt myself deeply moved by this portrait for reasons I couldn’t explain. Despite the fact that Van Dyck didn’t etch the plate himself –some anonymous assistant did that, based on his drawing –I felt a warmth and tenderness emanating from this little study, both that of the artist depicted and the artist who created the depiction. And I was there to receive it, the three of us all merging together in a way that made me feel, for the first time in a long while, something other than lonely.
I spent a long time in the Breuer, deeply immersed and sharply focused, and though I still had hours before my bus came, I didn’t think I could handle any more art, so I headed down to SoHo to see if the Housing Works bookstore was still there. It was, and I spent a while looking at books and sitting in the café, reliving old times. I’d been going there since the late nineties, and it had always been one of my favorite spots in the city. A tiny woman with a black bob was running around shelving books and running register, while there were other employees there she seemed to be the only one doing any work, I caught her eye a few times and she smiled, besides being adorable she looked hauntingly familiar, it seemed impossible that I knew her, maybe I’d seen her working there before, though I hadn’t been since before the pandemic. When she rang me up she was friendly but distant; I had noticed a nervousness about her, she seemed to never stop moving, she carried herself with a sort of fidgety grace. For hours afterwards I couldn’t get her out of my head; it’s been a long time since a stranger has made such an impression on me.
I took the six train up to Fourteenth Avenue and had some coffee and poked around the few remaining bookstores for a while. I still had a few hours before I needed to start heading toward the bus so decided to sit in Union Square and draw for a while. The park was packed and like the rest of the city seemed to be overflowing with gorgeous, scantily-clad women. My sister- and everyone else I know, for that matter- had complained that it was impossible to afford to live in New York, and while I could see how this might be the case, the fact remains that people do, I mean, a lot of people, and they can’t all be millionaires. I don’t know how they do it, honestly. I remember in the past my friends there all had two jobs and tiny apartments with roommates in order to get by, but now even that doesn’t seem like enough.
After a while a pretty young trans woman with pink hair sat down on the bench next to me and kept stealing glances my way, watching me draw. Or at least I thought they were, or maybe I just wanted them to. They took out a book and started reading, and at first I was pleased, I mean who reads books anymore, but then I saw that it was just that book by that smug nihilist A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, even the title is smug, and I thought about making a snarky comment about it, because while they might be insulted and think I was a creep, they might also be intrigued and want to know why I think he’s an overrated windbag, and maybe they were secretly thinking a similar thing as they read, wondering to themselves why this book was so lauded. But I didn’t, I just kept drawing, and though it was only 6:30 or so, I noticed the tan paper of my sketchbook seemed to be darker than it had been, and I looked up and behind me, above the trees, loomed a mass of black clouds.
The day had been warm and summery and they hadn’t been calling for rain, I’d made a point of checking so I would know how to dress, but now I took out my new phone –and oh God, it pains me to admit it but I can’t avoid it any longer, two days earlier I had finally caved in and gotten a smartphone, or rather I’d taken the smartphone my pal LaValle had mailed me earlier in the year and got it activated, though I didn’t want to tell anyone because I’d been so outspoken against these contraptions and now here I was, pulling one out of my pocket and checking the goddamned weather on it, anyways my phone informed me that a thunderstorm was about to hit in seven minutes, and everyone around me was also checking their phones and looking nervously at the sky, though the woman with the pink hair just kept reading, I thought of making some comment about the weather to her but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, instead I packed up my sketchbook and grabbed my bag of books I’d bought at Housing Works, and it was a paper bag and I thought oh shit, if it starts to downpour my new books are going to get drenched, and I stood up and started walking through the park, heading north, toward where the bus was set to pick me up in an hour and a half.
Park workers were starting to clean up the tables and chairs that were scattered around for people to eat at, and one of the workers had left their cart sitting unattended, and there was a huge pile of plastic garbage bags hanging on it, and I took one and wrapped my books in it and felt instantly better, and just then there was a flash and a crack of thunder right overhead, and everyone was walking fast in every direction, a guy selling cacti was quickly throwing his plants into the back of a truck, and all I could think was that all these women running around in their skimpy summer dresses with their legs and their cleavage were suddenly going to be drenched, and I wasn’t sure I could handle that so I just kept walking, up past the Flatiron Building, which was covered in scaffolding and black netting. The Empire State Building was directly ahead of me, silvery against the black clouds, and there were all these brand new glass towers rising up all around, then the lighting flashed again, a thick white bolt, and I stood under the awning of a restaurant with newspaper over the windows and watched as the lightning flashed again and again, reflecting off the mirrored buildings, though already the thunder seemed to be weakening, and though the rain was darkening the sidewalk it quickly slackened to a drizzle, and I continued on to find something to eat. I stopped at the first pizza joint I came to, a tiny place with only two tables run by a man who only spoke Spanish, the pizza was no worse or better than any other I’d had, everyone who came in also spoke Spanish, I wanted to sit a while but it was kind of a dreary scene so I stopped at the Rizzoli store, also dreary but in a different way, and slowly made my way to where the bus had left me off the day before.
The rain had completely stopped so I did some drawing as I leaned against a building, inching further and further away from a urine smell that I couldn’t figure out the source of. The bus arrived fifteen minutes early and left everyone out, then the bus driver looked around and said, Where is everybody, I’m supposed to have fifty-three people on this trip, and one of the women who had been on the bus came over and said she and her mother were supposed to meet their ride but no one was there for them, apparently the bus had changed stops and not told anyone, the only reason I knew was that the driver the day before had said Now be sure to catch the bus RIGHT HERE tomorrow, apparently the old stop was a few blocks away and the bus drivers had been getting tickets for stopping there so the company had changed the stop but apparently not told any of the ticket holders, in fact I pulled out my receipt and sure enough it had the old pick-up spot on it, it said Madison Avenue between 33rd and 34th Streets, in front of Tinas Cuban Cuisine and Tooth Docs Dentistry.
Then another woman came by to meet her friend and said she’d just been down at the Madison Avenue stop and there were like fifty people waiting there. The driver, whose name was Theresa, was apoplectic and couldn’t figure out what to do. I asked if she couldn’t just drive down to the other stop and she started yelling about how she’d get a ticket and how could the company not have emailed everyone the change, she asked me did I get an email and I said no, and showed her my receipt, and she started yelling some more but told me to get on the bus, and I handed her my paper with the QR code for her to scan (I had printed it out before I had my new phone set up) and she said her scanner was acting up, that I should just tell her my first name, and I did and she crossed me off the list on her iPad and told me to wait on the bus while she figured out what to do. I told her I didn’t mind running the few blocks to tell the other people the situation but she ignore me so I sat in the very front and she got in and called her dispatcher, who didn’t answer, then she called someone else and while she was on the phone with him the dispatcher called back, and she yelled at her for a while on speakerphone and the dispatcher said she should just drive on down there and pick them up. But what if I get a ticket? yelled Theresa and the dispatcher sighed and said she would handle any ticket, though she probably wouldn’t get one, it’s not like the cops would be down there waiting for her when she pulled up.
So she started the bus but because it was Friday night and it was midtown and there were vehicles and pedestrians everywhere it took us about ten minutes to go four blocks, and when we arrived sure enough there was a mass of people waiting there with their luggage. I suggested to Theresa that she not tell them about the mix up, that she should just say she got caught in traffic, after all there had just been a terrific thunderstorm. Everyone piled on and right away a little old lady sat next to me, though I’d been hoping to have room to stretch out, but she was tiny and ancient and her face was black and very shiny. I asked if she minded if I kept the light on and said No, why would I mind, like she thought I was crazy for even asking. Once the bus was loaded we lurched into motion but the streets were crammed with Ubers double parking and blocking the road and mopeds weaving in and out of traffic, and huge crowds of people kept jaywalking as we tried to get through the intersections. Theresa refused to slow down for the jaywalkers, some of whom were pushing baby carriages, she just laid on the horn and plowed ahead, causing people to scatter, I was terrified, I thought we really might hit someone, Theresa kept apologizing, saying I’m a really patient driver, honest, I just become another person when I get in the city. I’ll be better once we get through the tunnel. And for the most part she was, though every once in a while she drifted onto the shoulder and her GPS system would blurt out DISTRACTED in its computer voice, it seemed weird that Theresa was using verbal directions but she did the entire trip. Eventually I turned off the light and just sat there with my eyes closed, wishing I were home, even if I wasn’t really sure where that was anymore.
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