Round and Round It Goes

New York: My East Coast Love

I met New York for the first time recently, after years of hearing so much about her, seeing her on the television, reading about her past. It was a quickie, a fly-through and grab all you can get in three days, but it was more than enough time for me to fall in love with her.

She’s not a forever kind of city, not for a country girl like me, anyway. Unlike my home territory of the American Southwest, the land of mañana, New York moves at a lightning pace. The defining word for the city and her inhabitants is intense. From Wall Street to Times Square, from NYU to Greenwich, everyone you meet is either driven to make their mark or driven to sell you something. In comparison, Los Angeles is a stoned beach bum, an underachiever investment banker with a script in his trunk, a self-described producer looking for a free lunch and a photo op. New York is brooding, thoughtful, the guy who stares at you a little too long and a little too hard. Personal space is restricted to the earphones in your iPod, not a whole car on the freeway. The mind is what is sought-after there, with bookstores far more common than tanning salons. When I left the city I had none of the low body image I acquire after visiting Venice Beach; rather, it was my mind that was reeling, flashing with thoughts and inspirations, considerations and ruminations.



Before I got there, before I even got on the plane in Long Beach, I received an indicator of how my trip was going to go. A preface, a foreshadowing. I met a man on the shuttle in from long-term parking, a nattily-dressed older gentleman who hopped on the bus asking “Are you happy or are you married?” and chortling at the driver’s response. He was on his way to visit his son, who would soon be on David Letterman promoting his book Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner. The author runs these insanely long distances – we’re talking 100-150 miles – in exotic locales such as the Antarctic and Death Valley, all for the sake of children who need organ transplants. The pride in his progeny literally oozed from this man, and by the time we stepped off the bus to board our separate flights, I felt like I’d gone to school with his kid. It was an auspicious start to my weekend.

Upon arrival, I was immediately plunged into the hopping, jumping, hard-drinking side of Manhattan. Dragging my bags and huddling inside my wool coat – I’d had to dig deep to find suitable winter clothing in my Los Angeles denuded closet – I met up with friends at a Lower East Side dive that I never caught the name of. It was a Detroit-based pub, the walls covered with bumper stickers, hubcaps, and other auto paraphernalia. A bored go-go dancer gyrated on a shelf in front of a huge window, her dollar-stuffed gold-sequined bikini in stark contrast to the fat flakes of driving snow falling outside.

I drank that night with an MTV crowd, including a native Long Islander who left no doubt as to his hometown. He bought me a drink, loudly told lewd stories from a distance much to close to my face, his rum-laced breath clashing with the screwdriver in my hand. I also met a big bear of a man who upon finding out I’m from New Mexico, stated “That’s awesome! I want to move to Albuquerque. Or Roswell.” Apparently the sky-high rent in New York can addle a man’s brain to a degree I never would have considered. I made little headway in convincing the poor sap that the mild insanity he was currently enjoying was nothing compared to the all-out bedlam he would come down with after only a week in Southeastern New Mexico. I love my home state, but there are some parts of it better left to the wind, dirt, and dairy cows.

I got my first rush of attraction later on that night, after enough of my new friends had drunk themselves beyond the bounds of conversation, as I discovered what may be my favorite thing about New York: at any time, on any block, there’s always some hole-in-the-wall deli, taco stand, or pizza place open. At 3 a.m., my friend E and I popped into a “Chicken Sandwiche” shop just around the corner from her apartment, where you where you could not only get a chicken or steak “sandwiche”, you could also get “begels”, “bayerages”, or “blak coffee”. The spelling of the food had no bearing on its tastiness, and I briefly considered the possibility of smooshing the entire restaurant into my carry-on bags for my own personal use back in LA. For the past three years, I have searched high and low for a 24-hour corner shop within five miles of my apartment in Mar Vista, and all I’ve come up with is the convenience store where they sell three bags of generic gummy bears for a dollar. No chicken sandwiches for me.



Saturday was tourist day, though I quickly made up my mind that I don’t really have the patience to be a real tourist. The movies, the TV shows, the travel articles, none of them really tell you the true experience of being a tourist in a place as world-renowned and popular as New York: the lines. The ferry line for the Statue of Liberty was easily two to three hours long, just so you could go to Liberty Island to look up the lovely lady’s skirt – and not get any loving in return, as she’s currently undergoing restoration, and can’t receive any guests. We waved at her from Battery Park and headed into SoHo for the main event: shopping.

The going joke is that the Native Americans sold the island of Manhattan to the colonists in the early 17th century for a handful of beads and some fire water. I highly doubt if that tale resembles the facts at all, but the spirit of free trade is still alive and kicking. The entire island, filled with museums, office high-rises, historic buildings, and flashing Broadway show-houses, is actually just a network of pedestrian paths filled with vendors, all of whom have the same trite photographs of the city and boxes full of faux-designer handbags that they hawk at you like Mexican children selling Chiclets. It reminded me of walking the streets of St. Petersberg and Moscow just after the USSR crumbled. People would sell their souls to you for $20.

We trekked uptown past the Trinity Church and on into SoHo, where we stopped in at a large Asian market full of paper lamps, bamboo notebooks, and cheap houseshoes. We meandered around the tiny “Evolution”, where they sell fossils, petrified wood, and amber-trapped insects. It was strange to see shelves full of skulls replicas, skulls that I could name, skulls that I had worked with during my brief stint as an Evolutionary Biologist. I felt like I was meeting old friends.

I even caved and made a purchase from a street vendor, a beautiful green necklace that led to a quest for a perfect outfit to go with it. Twelve hours in New York, and I was already infected with the desire to hand my credit card to whomever could offer me the prettiest accessories.



But before the shopping was done, we had to head to one store that you will never find in any true capacity in Los Angeles: a bookstore. The Strand Bookstore is a skinny structure filled top to bottom with used books, wholesale books, remainders, review copies, rare books, and books they sell according to color and measurements for those who just want a pretty shelf. There was hardly room to walk between the towering shelves, the tables overflowing with sale items, the randomly-placed carts stacked with everything from the history of King Henry XIII to a full Curious George collection. It was a far cry from the bookstores I’ve become accustomed to on the West Coast, where the severe lack of books is never commented upon. Instead, “book” stores in LA are coffee shops with fake shelves of old tattered books as décor. In Santa Monica, The Library is a pub. In my heart, I felt I could easily justify my infidelity to my current city of residence with this mere fact alone. New York reads. And that’s got to be the sexiest thing about it.

The not-so-sexy thing about New York is that it also steals. Pilfers, breaks and enters. Before E and I could get ready for a party Saturday night, we stopped off at her brother’s car, where she was keeping most of her stuff in anticipation of moving back to LA. As I walked up to the passenger side, I tread carefully, thinking that the clothes strewn about the parking lot indicated a homeless person had been camping in the spot next to the car. When I found the passenger side window shattered, however, we knew the car had been burglarized, and the junk littering the parking lot was E’s stuff, what the burglars had left of it anyway.



They stole her jewelry, her electronics, her CDs, her shoes, her designer clothing, even her suitcases. The rest they’d left soaking up dirty puddles on the asphalt.

E frantically called her folks and her brother, growing more upset every time she explained the situation. By the time she finally got hold of her brother, she was in tears. I know the feeling, as I’ve been both the victim of car and home burglars (okay, the word “burglar” is comical and is cracking me up, but I can’t think of a better word. Sue me). It isn’t necessarily the loss of material belongings that cuts to the quick. Far more than that, it’s the feeling of violation. That some stranger has entered into your private space, gone through your underwear, your favorite CDs, your paperwork, your life. That someone had enough disrespect for you to destroy your property, mangle your photographs, and leave the rest as trash. You wind up scared and full of rage all at once, but are left completely impotent, unable to do a damn thing about it except blame anyone who might have left a door unlocked, a window uncurtained, a box in pain sight. Which doesn’t make a bit of difference, anyway.

We partied hard that night, and spent the next morning carrying out due process. The 90th precinct in Brooklyn is not at all the Hill Street Blues hustle and bustle of ringing phones, surly detectives, and hollering prostitutes. Rather, it was a quiet little building, where a large female desk sergeant ignored us for a good five minutes while she chatted happily with a beat cop. When she finally got around to asking us what we wanted, she took our answer and hollered to no one in particular “Car burglary!” as though she were a truck stop waitress placing a request with the short-order cook.

After another twenty minutes, E was called into the back to place her report, while I was left in the waiting area with nothing but a couple of Brooklyn weeklies and my imagination. I occupied myself by reading wanted notices for a man who had raped two women in broad daylight two blocks from where I was staying, articles about two local ladies who, in separate incidents, had killed toddlers in their charge, and a thank you poster from local schoolchildren who certainly weren’t being taught to write in English.

Then I spent ten minutes devising a personal strategy should a coked-out gunman decide to take the entire station hostage. Would I dash for the stairs? Would I try to make it outside? What about my friends, in the depths of the building – should I stay, just to avoid abandoning them? What are the odds on a gunman hitting a moving target? How should I run – ducking? Sideways? It was a lot to think about. Thank goodness E came out before I could really get myself all worked up.



Semantics over with, we finally made our way to Times Square for a burrito and theater tickets. Because E had to work, I purchased a lone ticket to Rent. To kill time before the doors opened, we walked to the Empire State Building, and examined every single deserted entrance in complete confusion before we realized we had made a beeline not for the Empire State Building, but for the Chrysler Building. What can I say, the Chrysler’s Art Deco façade is prettier than the Empire. I would try again the next day, only to find that, yet again, the curse of tourist strikes at the Empire State Building as well as it does the Statue of Liberty: the line was hours long, and I don’t have that kind of stamina.

At the theater, I had an initial moment of my ongoing public entertainment luck when a 300 pound Frenchwoman seated herself in the tiny seat next to me. She seemed to understand the burden she placed on her fellow man, however, for she scrunched herself up as much as possible, and never bothered me at all. I was also startled to read in the program that the Pulitzer-prize winning author of the play had died suddenly at age 36. We’ll never find out if he was a one-hit wonder, if he had better drama to give us. It’s like he was here to make his mark and then be snuffed out. Almost makes me want to hold off on making my big thought-provoking work until I’ve lived a good, long, full life.

Rent itself was something of a disappointment. The story was weak, the songs were so-so, and it was polished to a perfect, clockwork shine. There were no flaws at all, save when Roger managed to flick his scarf into his own face during a solo, and the perfect shining veneer made the whole play seem somehow less interesting. Drew Lachey played the lead – much derided because he is a member of 98º and brother to Nick, who stars in MTV’s Newlyweds with Jessica Simpson. I actually found him to be the most engaging actor, especially compared to the man who was supposed to be the emotional anchor of the show, Tom Collins. That actor, though his voice was strong, obviously couldn’t begin to be comfortable playing a gay man, hugging his partner while keeping his crotch backed away at all times.

And periodically, of course, I would illogically crack up as I had flashbacks to Trey Parker & Matt Stone’s Team America: World Police flick, with its mock-up of Rent (Lease), where the main song was “Everybody’s Got AIDS!” It was funny because it was true.

Before the night was over, I fell into another heart-pounding aspect of New York: getting utterly lost on the subways in the wee hours of the morning. Trying to meet back up with E with a dying cell phone and a handful of MTA passes, I wound up zooming back and forth on the N/Q/R/W line for a good ½ hour, looking for non-existent stops and getting on wrong trains. I suppose it’s not much different from trying to navigate Los Angeles’s tangled web of freeways, but at least in LA you can get off the highway and ask for directions. I doubted the ability of my fellow bag-ladies to help me out with this one.



I had Monday, my last day, all to myself. I headed to Central Park, munching on a bagel while I wandered as far as the Bethesda Fountain. This was by far my favorite hour of the trip. To me, the most beautiful thing about New York is Central Park, standing in the winter-bared woods, surrounded by footpaths, sheep meadows and creeks, and looking up through the skeletal branches to find the skyrises peering down at me. They were almost forlorn, like sickly children on the edges of a rough-and-rowdy playground, able to observe the picnics and the merri-go-rounds, the fountains and the dogs playing fetch, but never allowed to participate. I had a strangely motherly urge to open my arms to them, welcoming them in, wiping the tears and snot from their glass faces.



Unfortunately, I had to rush a bit so I could finally hook up with my cousin, who lives in NY and who I hadn’t seen in probably ten years. I had halfway become convinced that we would just exchange “I’m not going to make it, what about tomorrow” phone calls with her all weekend, and never meet. I was glad it worked out, though, because I discovered that of all my family on both sides, M is probably the one most on my wavelength. She has her BA in photography, though now she’s doing a lot more painting. She came to NY as soon as she could, desperate to get away from an Arizona she hated. She’s living in a converted warehouse in sort of a commune of artists, with an art-nazi roommate who dictates the use of the community studio space. Like me, she’s not ecstatic about the schmoozing part of getting her work noticed, but she also accepts it has to be done. She also knows there’s nothing she’d rather do. She’d rather live in the scary neighborhood of Crown Heights (Brooklyn) with an anal-retentive roommate and work three jobs in Manhattan than live in Albuquerque and work a crappy 9-5. I vote with her.

When we were done, I headed back to Times Square to grab some 7/$10 T-shirts for everyone I know, finally nabbed some B&J’s ice cream, and got completely bamboozled by the Morgan Freeman wax statue outside Madame Toussaud’s. I walked by, thinking, “Well, at least I can tell everyone I saw someone famous” before realizing where I was and what I was looking at. Then I hopped on a bus at the Port Authority back to JFK airport, and headed back to the sun, sand, and empty-headedness of Los Angeles.

So to you, New York, I say “Where are you going to be in six months?” It’s easy to understand now, why so many people want to live in a place so crowded, cramped, and expensive. The city is alive, a dynamic lover, that exciting friend who leads you into trouble but also makes your life worthwhile. I fell in love with the palette of people to watch, with the subway, with the falafel and pizza and the chicken sandwiche. It may have to be a long-distance relationship for us, and unless I can import some mountains and miles of empty space it will never be a forever-kind of marriage, but I hope New York will always welcome me whenever I want to come to her.

posted by Lyle Skains @ 10:50 AM 3 comments

Would I Do It Again? Yes, Please.

When I received the email from my outdoors group listserve, I responded without really thinking about it. It was like I was answering a survey about things I was mildly interested in. I somewhat strongly agreed that I was interesting in skydiving sometime in the vague future.

When J, the outing leader, emailed me back saying “Great! We’re going on Sunday,” as in this Sunday, as in six days from my expression of mild interest, I panicked a bit. I had no plans for this Sunday. Next Sunday I was out of town, and the following Sunday was far enough away to develop alternative plans. But this Sunday…well, now I was stuck.

I was heartened by the fact that as an outing leader, J was something of a disappointment. He was a little scatterbrained. In the course of a two-day period, he lost my cell number three times. He emailed the group to “Make reservations NOW if you want to go,” and then never called to sign up the group. Friday rolled around, and the suitably understanding girl at the skydiving company informed me that yes, J had called, but he hadn’t made any reservations for the group. He had merely asked umpteen questions about how many people had died or been maimed jumping out of airplanes in this particular drop zone, questions whose answers I did not want to hear. (The number is zero, of course. It’s a remarkably safe sport for first-timers, really.)

So I made my decision. I relied on my tried-and-true method of determining the best course of action: “Fuck it.” This phrase usually gets me through whatever it is I’m worried about doing. “Fuck it,” I said, and gave the girl my credit card number. I figured, even if no one else from the group signed up, I’d go it alone. I don’t need a herd for courage. I am a badass mofo.

As it turned out, eight people signed up and showed up. I carpooled with J, an engaging man with the personality of a kindergartner; his large, ponytailed and mustachioed friend J; and a roly poly K who was very adamant about his political views. C, a rather quiet engineer, and his new verbally incontinent roommate N showed up at about the same time my group did. Two girls showed up much later, one absolutely freaking out, but as they didn’t jump with us, I’m going to ignore their presence entirely. Because I can.

The first thing we saw driving up to the site at Lake Elsinore, CA, was a gaggle of divers floating down out of the sky, dozens at a time. Their bright blue, pink, green, red, purple and yellow canopies filled the bright azul dome like a migration of butterflies, some drifting slowly to the flat green grass, some zooming in like hawks on the kill. It was exhilarating, and probably the first real realization that in just a few hours, we ourselves would be descending from that same sky.

In order to even strap on an instructor and a parachute, we had to literally sign our lives away. We signed away, they filmed us signing, and then we read what we had just signed for the camera. This was some major CYA going on here. We had to agree that our descendants couldn’t sue them in the year 2576. None of which would have made a difference, of course, had any of us fallen to our mushy deaths; our parents, children, friends and employers would still have sued the pants off the nice folks there at Lake Elsinore, signatures and videotapes or no.



We then progressed to the video room, where a woman informed us the first section of the film was a “downer,” but the second half would get us all pumped up. I have no idea what was on the second half of the film. Because the first half was a 10-minute legal disclaimer narrated by the highest ranking Unintentional Comedy lawyer ever. He was spit-shined and polished, his hair combed, his suit natty. He sat behind a large lawyerly desk, with a shelf full of legal tomes behind him.

And he had an enormous – though very well-groomed – Uncle Jesse/ZZ Top beard stretching from his chin to his navel. I haven’t a clue what he told us about the legality of voluntarily jumping out of a working airplane, but the man rocked.



From there we were directed to a covered area full of picnic tables and told to stay together so and instructor could give us the rundown. Within thirty seconds of these instructions, J had wandered off to gaze at a bumper sticker or something, N was off an running with a spoken list of everyone he had ever informed in his life that he wanted to skydive, and a couple of the guys meandered over to watch somebody else’s jump tape. It was like a fire drill with first graders.

Our initial instructor Js showed up and looked at me like I was a very bad den mother who couldn’t keep her charges straight, then launched right into his spiel. We all lined up to go through the “simulator,” a mock-up of the airline doorway. No one paid a word of attention, and no one got the movements right (right knee down, left foot on the door, thumbs in your pack straps, 1-2-3-go, arch back, check altimeter, pull rip cord at 5500 feet), but it turned out that was all right because once you get on the plane, you are merely a tinkertoy for your tandem instructor, and all these steps are just to keep your mind busy so you won’t freak out and force the plane down.

Then we waited. And waited. And waited. Our reservations had been for 10:30 a.m., but since it’s damn near impossible to get eight people all going in the same direction at the same time, we were slightly late. We didn’t get up in the air till 12:30 or so.

They suited us up in jumpsuits and harnesses, introduced us to our tandem instructors (I got the best guy ever – T. He forgot to give me head gear, but I gave him shit for it, and it was all good), let our videographers get some really goofy interview footage of us, ran us through the simulator again, and let us wait around some more, this time at the edge of the drop zone, marveling at the experienced divers flying in or rehearsing their in-air formations on the ground. I don’t know about the rest of the group, but I was starting to get a little giddy, not to mention weak from hunger, since I hadn’t eaten since 7 a.m.

Finally, they packed us into the tiny plane, which makes mass transit look like a luxury cruise. It was just a tin can with benches along either side, and we were all wearing each others’ deodorant by the time we got out. The climb to 12,500 feet took about ten minutes, ten minutes that I spent finally feeling like a complete fool for tempting Death in such an outrageous manner. I had previously boasted that so far this year (all two months of it) I have kept my emergency room visits down to one; on that plane, I regretted throwing my good fortune in the gods’ faces so extravagantly.

I was the last one off, which sounds like it would be nerve-wracking, but everything went so fast I didn’t even get a chance to see the rest of my group fall out of the plane. I was too concerned with the guy strapped tightly to my back, moving down the bench, and of course, all those instructions I’d received in the simulator. Was it right knee or left knee down? Which is my right knee again? Were we going 1-2-3 and then go, or 1-2-go on 3?



I never got it all sorted out, because within ten seconds of the first guy out the door, my video guy was swinging out, and T was pelvic thrusting to the count. Then we were out the door. Flying. Positively flying.

That first shove out the door was heart-stopping. I had just abandoned an airplane at 12,500 feet in the air. That’s 2.37 miles above the surface of Earth, zooming toward it at 120 miles per hour with nothing to stop the headlong rush but some rope and a glorified sheet. It was undoubtedly, indubitably, undeniably the most excited, most exhilarated, most alive I have ever felt in my life. The view was the same you’d see from a passenger jet on approach, only no wings or landing gear to spoil the 360 degree panoramic. It was cold, around 40 degrees, but I never felt it. I was just free. I could do nothing but grin and gawk and hope that it never ended.



For a few seconds anyway. Then T physically picked my head up so I would look at my camera guy, floating a few feet in front of me. I mugged for him, grinning and yelling, though the wind whipping past us left nothing of my voice to be heard. At one point I stuck my tongue out at him, not having the foresight to realize that at 120 MPH, the wind would whip my tongue around like a flag in a tornado (when we first viewed my video, this sight completely grossed the instructors out. Jeez, like no one’s ever stuck their tongue out before).

After 45 seconds of freefall, T shoved my wrist in my face to let me know we were at 5500 feet. I reached back, yanked the orange golf ball on his hip, the chute opened, and the entire world silenced.

My camera guy sped on down to the ground, and the first thing out of my mouth upon learning I could hear myself again was:

“THAT FUCKING ROCKS!!!”



T laughed, saying “I love getting people like you,” and I kicked my feet around, totally high (no pun intended). We played around all the way down, going into spins (the only time my stomach ever threatened queasiness), one way and then back the other, dropping like rocks and then hauling in the canopy to slow it way down. I whooped a lot and laughed maniacally. I don’t think anyone had a hard time figuring out I was having fun.

We dropped in for a landing, perfectly executed and standing straight up. As we swooped down, I caught sight of my camera guy filming us, so I gave him two thumbs up and a big fat “Gig ‘em, Aggies!” which I’m sure no one understood but me. It was just the best thing I could think of to say.



T unhooked himself from me, mostly because I was jumping around like an ADD kid on crack and he’d never get his gear picked up if he was attached to the Tasmanian Devil. I rushed over to bear-hug my cameraman, then hugged T and posed for a pic.

I was hopped up the rest of the day, even though by that point I had to beg a ride off C and N to get back to my car so I could get to my soccer game in Santa Monica on time. I played on no food, but the adrenalin was still bouncing around my system, so I was all right (not all right enough to win, but all right enough not to collapse).

I called my mom to tell her what I’d done – everyone who’d ever done this said not to tell the folks before you go, and I was glad I hadn’t. She was worried even though she knew I was already on the ground and safe again. It didn’t ease her mind much for me to tell her I was in more danger every day driving around LA freeways than I was skydiving. Her first question was, “Well, you’re not going to do it again, are you?” To which I replied “Probably.” Why the hell wouldn’t I want to do that again? It was like riding a cross country course times ten, only you’re not exhausted and beaten at the end.

Dad’s response was a shudder (okay, we were on the phone, I don’t know if he shuddered, but play along with me, ‘kay?), and a flat statement of “Good. Now you’ve got that out of your system and you never have to do it again.” Yeah, Dad can’t even bear to stand next to an open second story window. The idea of an open window two miles up isn’t his idea of a good time.

Overall, I have to say that this was an experience that was worth it at double the money. If I didn’t already have a horse, travel expenses, and a soccer habit to drain my funds, you can bet I’d be hauling my butt out to a drop zone every weekend. Oh, and did I mention that every single guy who skydives is pant-meltingly hot? And there are way more guys than girls? That’s not a bad thing, especially when you compare it to horse shows, where ladies outnumber men 10-1 and the men who are there are ambiguously (or not so ambiguously) gay.

Did I love it? More than anything in recent memory. Would I do it again? Yes, please.

posted by Lyle Skains @ 9:10 AM 0 comments