More and more I'm realizing what a bubble I live in when I'm walking around New York. It's almost a law for me at this point: I walk out of a building and I enter a little bubble that doesn't pop until I arrive at my next destination. How do I know? Well, let's put it this way: I cross streets without looking for traffic, I walk by people I know and don't notice, I won't hear my phone ring, I look at people in the eyes because they just wander there but I won't remember what the person looks like, what they're wearing and I won't notice what they were doing or saying...and then of course, there is the incident that happened today:
I'm walking back from campus on the same side of the same street that I always walk on every morning, every evening, same street, to and from school. I'm passing the construction site that I always pass, the same workmen I always cruise by, the same loud noises and debris all over the sidewalk. Except today was different. Today, as I'm walking home, I happen to walk very close past one of the construction workers, who says (and I quote): "Nice to see you beautiful. YOU'RE EARLY TODAY"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And, it was true, I was early today. I walked by the construction site at 2:30 as opposed to the usual 5:30. And apparently, they noticed. Apparently, from what I gathered from that comment, they notice when I walk by
everyday...because I DO walk by
everyday...and I never even noticed them watching me.
Here's the problem with this. It's not that I got cat-called, it's not that construction workers are acting like the stereotypical construction workers and making me their victim. The problem is that after 2 and half years in this city, I finally realized that I can act like a pretty decent New Yorker...dare I even say, I've become a New Yorker? ....I laughed all the way home...
Once upon a time, I left New York City. I don’t remember why I left, what force I felt pulling me, why I knew that South America was the place to go. But I left—I walked out into Lonely Planet’s colorful world, and found that the people in the pictures are real.
*****
There is a girl in Buenos Aires who doesn’t have shoes. And she stands out in the street, with her dirty porceline face and her calloused toes on the shopping strip of Latin America’s most stylish city and pleads with English speaking tourists in Spanish. She doesn’t want food or water, but she’ll take moneras and begs for zapatos and rips your heart out with her little fingers. I gave her money, we offered her pan, she wanted shoes. Her eyes questioned our decency as humans, her hidden mother’s eyes bored into our back and made the hair stand on end.
You wonder if the little girl who kicks the heavy glass doors to try to enter the bar even has a mother. Where must she be as her daughter then uses all her might to make the door crack open, as she can see the men inside touch the little girl’s hair, her face and shoulders, her hips. She leaves to walk into the dark streets with an empty ice cream cone, somehow still a spring to her step. I wonder what she will be when she is older. How little 60 centavos is. It’s two dimes. Maybe I was generous.
