Anonymous

This week we spent a short time—a few hours, really—in New York.  We were on the way back from a quick visit with my daughter and thought far enough ahead to get Broadway tickets and passes to a taping of Jimmy Fallon.  Aside from those two activities we had about four hours over two days to wander the streets of New York aimlessly.

People-watching has always been one of my favorite activities.  Even as a kid, when we frequently would go to the Miami airport to pick up my father from his business trips (remember those days when you could march all the way to the gate without a ticket or a body cavity search?) I would stare in wonder at the strangers.  I loved seeing people of all walks of life: reunited lovers and families clinging to each other with hugs and tears, happy vacationers sporting wide smiles, business travelers arriving in the sweltering Florida heat immediately drenched as they tried in vain to strip their winter woolens. You could tell those who were arriving from those who were departing by the grade of their tan.  Long before the damaging effects of sun were well understood, the airport was glutted with Snowbirds and Midwesterners sporting the painful, burned-in outline of their sunglasses, often punctuated by a dash of Noxema on a brutally scorched nose.

New York is a similarly rewarding venue for people-watchers.  I love to sit in Rockefeller Center, where you encounter a rich mixture of tourists and business people.  The trick is to try to distinguish one from another.  The business people have a sense of purpose, walking in straight lines—often diagonal to the streets and sidewalks—directly to their destinations.  There is a look to the indigenous fauna—proper suit, well-fitting overcoat, sensible shoes, a hat or umbrella as dictated by the weather report and seen only when necessary, all in shades of black and grey.  They are equipped and street-worthy.  Tourists, by sharp contrast, have a mismatched look to them—inappropriate footwear, coats of bright colors that don’t cover their clothes completely, random gloves and scarves.  Their eyes look in rapture at every building, hotdog stand, and knock-off vendor; their gazes take in the full measure of the magnificent skyscrapers.  A true New Yorker rarely looks up at the buildings, their senses inoculated against the wondrous architectural museum in which they live.

Another fun aspect of New York is the adventure of random eating.  It seems that anything eaten in New York tastes better than anywhere else.  Certainly with so many available choices in close proximity, an establishment with mediocre offerings would suffer a thousand deaths.  Just being in New York, then, raises the bar.  It is fun to duck into a small bakery or coffee shop for a cup of coffee, ignoring the Starbuck’s logos that are posted every fifty yards or so, to experience real home-brewed flavor.  This week we ducked into a French-themed chocolate store for a cup of delicious hot bittersweet chocolate.  Served with homemade fresh whipped cream in warmed cups, it was a delight to the senses and an elixir to the soul.

That is, until we were bombarded with the next artifact of New York: too-much-information-lady.  Here we were, enjoying our hot chocolates and each other’s company, when this woman noticed our Mass General Hospital fleece jackets.  She wanted to welcome us to New York on behalf of all New Yorkers, assuring us that everyone was really friendly and that we should not be intimidated—especially by the rudeness of the waitress who, in her opinion, was probably “from Brooklyn or something—as she could never afford to live here on what she makes.”

The woman continued to fill us in on other important matters, such as how she felt compelled to leave her first husband, the plastic surgeon, after only five months of marriage because she could not live in Westchester “with the Stepford Wives.”  She had once stayed overnight in Boston—her only such visit—while dating a brain surgeon who took her to Vermont for a weekend.  She thought Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, was such an obvious choice for vice presidential running mate on the Republican ticket because he “used to be Mormon and would get all those minority votes, too.”  Apparently, our politeness was mistaken for interest, as she then began to describe, in excruciating detail, the surgery she was having on Tuesday for infertility issues too intimate to describe here (and within earshot of her four year old son, who was her hot chocolate companion.)

We have always enjoyed the anonymity of New York—the way you feel almost invisible as you walk down the street among the throngs.  This woman, herself a native, exploited the anonymity of New York as well.  There was nothing she would not divulge to us, a pair of strangers she would likely never see again in her life.  She was roaming about town buying expensive gifts for a bunch of close friends, yet so lacking in meaningful companionship she needed faceless strangers to unburden her deep-rooted fears.  We bid her farewell and good luck, and then headed up Fifth Avenue as we continued to discuss this most interesting trait of the big city.  Just as we stepped onto the curb of the next block we ran right into a couple we know well from our days in San Francisco.  We had not seen them in years, yet here we found each other among the millions of people lining the streets of America’s densest city!  Had we not been diverted by TMI-lady we would have missed them.

Together, the four of us ducked into another café, spending the next couple of hours catching up on our jobs, our children, and our lives.  As entertaining as it was to play anonymous tourist, we much prefered settling into the easy conversation.  The bitter cold of the day melted away as we basked in our fondness for our friends and the warmth of their company, glad to be anonymous no longer.

Tomorrow's blog:  Making Music is About the Moment