New York City: Bemelmans

Time travel costs money. Who would expect any less, right? But to do it right and proper, you’ve got to go all out: You want to dress the part, eat the part, walk and talk look the part—whether you’re headed to 1920s Paris or Caesar’s Rome. If there’s sparring, you’d better have a shield, if there’s adventure, you’d better have a raccoon hat and some thick leather pants. If there’s cocktails and dancing—and for me, ideally there would be cocktails and dancing—you’d better know how to drink, and you’d better know how to dance.

If I want to time travel, I go to Bemelmans Bar. I bring a wad of cash thick enough for a coat check, two $30 cocktails, and two very generous tips: one for the bartender in the red jacket with the black bow tie; one for the man at the piano, who always smiles and nods at you when he teases out the first few notes of the song you’ve requested.

The first time I went, it was with my brand-new husband in celebration of our wedding. “We’ve got to go to Bemelmans,” he insisted, straightening his wedding-day tie—the one he bought from New Zealand on a rush order, the replica of Bogie’s tie in the final scene of Casablanca. The one which cost more to ship than my dress cost to buy. The perfect time-traveling tie.

We sat side-by-side in one of the deep banquettes, holding hands tightly under the table, using our free hands to eat too many of the snacks replenished by attentive tuxedoed waiters. Chewing salty roasted almonds, feeling like visitors from a future time, we sank into the leather upholstery and looked around us at a scene straight out of 1942. We requested our song, the one we’d just had a friend sing at our ceremony: “That’s All.” The pianist queued it up and played marvelously, nodding at us with a warm smile. Hands squeezed tighter under the table. More roasted almonds. A $35 glass of red wine. A Pisco Sour. Eliot Spitzer, then governor of New York and on top of the world, walked in and sat near us with some friends, laughing and joking and drinking tonic water. We outstayed him. We outstayed almost everyone.

It was a brilliant evening. It cost more than the whole of our wedding and reception combined. We didn’t care. This was time travel.

Photo by Flickr user arvindgrover

New York City: Rainy Day BBQ

“That’s going to be the name of our band,” Topher said, nudging his sunglasses up on his nose with the back of a hand holding a Corona. He was standing at the grill flipping burgers, wearing a “No Divorce for Straights” shirt with the sleeves cut off, the late afternoon summer sun warming his shoulders. “Rainy Day BBQ. I love it. We’ll be like a hard-core twee band.”

I was standing beside him, taking long swallows from my own Corona, fished out of the bottom of a cooler now full of half-melted ice from the bodega downstairs. It was my summer of rooftops, of watching the sun set while a cloud of pot smoke floated around me. It was the summer of recovery after the worst heartbreak of my life. It was the kind of summer people dream of—the heat forcing us outside and up, our youth tumbling us into bed with one another, the perfect combination of friends and lovers and hamburgers and New York City for one miraculous but brief collection of weeks.

Topher threw a single portobello cap onto the grill, brushing it with balsamic vinegar and listening to the drips hiss against the burning coals. The mushroom was for David, the vegan of our menagerie. David of the fingernail polish, with whom I would talk about poetry and pigeons. Aden was standing at a far ledge of the roof, smoking a cigarette with his friend Nicco and laughing with wide-open mouths. The two of them looked perfect against that orange-blue sky. Shannon and Jacqui and Damien were sitting in lawn chairs, their heads lolling back in a gentle doze as they waited, pleasantly hungry, for the grilling to be done.

Topher gracefully pinched the mushroom between a set of long metal tongs, flipping it and taking another drink from his beer. “We would totally have a tap dancer as the percussionist.”

Photo by Flickr user Unlisted Sightings

New York City: Beso

It was more than just a drinking problem; it was a drinking-and-writing-letters problem, and I had it. Bad. Not that there’s anything wrong with either drinking or writing letters, necessarily, but I personally found that combining the two could potentially lead to some awkward long-distance relationships, unnecessary confessions, and a lot of really dreadfully embarrassing misspellings.

(Not to mention those messy little splotches where the condensation from one’s margarita drips onto one’s stationery, requiring one to circle the splotch and indicate, with a pointed arrow, “Margarita spill!” As if that excused anything. As if that didn’t just make everything worse.)

As these things typically go, I can honestly say I don’t remember terribly much about the letters I wrote while drinking mostly free margaritas at the first restaurant-bar at which I’d ever become a regular, but I will never forget the place, though it’s long since been absorbed and dissolved into the fractured collective memory of a thousand pieces of a changing neighborhood, of a Brooklyn I barely recognize since I moved there 12 years ago.

Beso. It means “kiss” in Spanish, and that’s pretty telling, since I think that’s what I did most in the letters: Admit a crush, admit a longing, wax nostalgic, cry and feel maudlin and get greasy stains on the envelope. I also tasted life in that restaurant, realized what it was like to make a connection with a bartender and a waiter the way thousands of people had made connections with me, their barista. The person who saw them at their most vulnerable time; the person who accepted and welcomed them even before their coffee.

Efraim accepted me even after my third margarita. Rarely did he even charge for the privilege.

 

Photo by me; margarita by Efraim

New York City: Riding the Subway into the Sky

His puffy red coat pressed close against my ratty corduroy jacket; I could almost believe I heard a sigh coming from his sleeves, as I crowded into the tiny space beside him. It was an early morning on the D train, running express over the bridge to Manhattan; I’d won the daily joust for a seat and was watching others spar for a clear space to stand, for room enough to check their phones as soon as the train went above ground because G-d forbid we miss anything even for a moment. I clutched my backpack on my lap and unzipped it, taking out a mint-green paperback, dog-eared and broken-spined.

The boy beside me glanced.

As the fireman said:
Don’t book a room over the fifth floor
in any hotel in New York.
They have ladders that will reach further
but no one will climb them.

New York is full of these intimate non-intimate moments, these pressings up close against a stranger—maybe closer than you’ve been to a friend in years, maybe closer than you’ve been to a lover. In winter, the barriers of fabric keep us safe from actual skin-on-skin contact, but we take up so much more space: There is no boundary left between me and you, we’re just a single being inside the belly of a moving train, knowing each other’s business for a few minutes without even trying.

I flipped open my book. I put my finger underneath the line I was reading. I dragged it across the page. I read very slowly.

The boy beside me glanced.

As the New York Times said:
The elevator always seeks out
the floor of the fire
and automatically opens
and won’t shut.
These are the warnings
that you must forget
if you’re climbing out of yourself.
If you’re going to smash into the sky.

Photo by Flickr user ny156uk

New York City: Spiked

“This band better be good,” I said to my girlfriend, even though it had been my idea to go to Tribeca in the rain, to see a band she’d never heard of, to drink stale beer at a cramped bar in front of a tiny stage. The wind whipped around us as we pushed against the wall of icy rain pelting us from all directions. The vacuum of Tribeca swept us along, gusts so strong it almost felt like the wind were a strong hand wrapping around our legs, or pushing us with a hard palm pressed firmly against our backs. Backs which were woefully underdressed for this kind of weather, by the way—soaked through and frozen to the bone, miserable already.

I hated going to rock shows, even though it was my job as a music journalist, and even though we got in for free. Even though I was young and supposed to have fun and feel alive and embody that New York lifestyle. I wanted to be home watching medical dramas and eating cheddar popcorn, not being young or having fun or feeling alive. I hated New York City.

My girlfriend was radiant, practically floating on the rain puddling up in the uneven spots in the sidewalk, the storm drains clogged with crap. She loved live shows, crowds, feeling young and alive; she lived for the energy of a sweaty room full of music. She hated cheddar popcorn.

“I’m really excited,” she said, taking my arm in hers.

We turned down a dark street and walked into the club.

 

Photo by Flickr user Kevin Labianco