New York Cares
He is a simple man, hanging his complexities up in his closet, alongside his fresh-pressed buttoned shirts that he wears to teach at the local middle school in Queens; the traumatic memories of his past hang quietly, calmly waiting for a moment to make an appearance once his mind has moved away from their terror. He hangs a dog calendar on his wall, next to the mementos from his past that he is comfortable seeing each day — a concert poster, a picture of the Budapest cityscape — and grabs his guitar to tickle its strings, allowing his mind to rest in the solace that he so longed for. I spoke to him for an hour on the phone, making funny faces on FaceTime and hoping I could crack through his exterior — get to know the trauma he experienced; see the world through his dark, ocean eyes. That was last night and today I sit on the subway, listening to a middle-aged Chinese woman in a “Jesus saves hat” yell into her African American partners ear about whether or not to buy a washing machine now, or to wait until Black Friday. A book of “Spanish in five steps” sits on her lap, while her broken, loud English makes a cacophonous imprint on the otherwise quiet subway. Her partner looks like his name could be Steve or John; maybe Marshall; the bill of his matching black “Jesus Saves Hat” settled a small distance from his black rimmed glasses; a look of combined annoyance and unrelenting patience painted on his face.
And does Jesus really save, or is it De Blasio? Was it not De Blasio who spoke the gospel of clean streets and heavily enforced gentrification? His prophets raised the rent on cultural institutions, kicking anything that wasn’t rich or white washed to Brooklyn, and got his street team to clean up Gotham at night, removing syringes en mass, preemptively waging war against another Black Plague. Is it Jesus who keeps the trauma-plagued man from uttering incantations into the still of the night in his Queens bedroom; or was it America who saved him, claiming, no matter where you’ve been, and what you’ve seen, you can always come home, as long as you have $2000 a month for a shoebox apartment big enough to fit your work shirts and your dreams. Is the subway our own personal salvation? A moment to silently meditate among those who also choose New York to be both their heaven and hell, or is our savior the local Chinese restaurant owner who, despite the raising rents across the city, has yet to charge more than $6 for a pint of sweet and sour chicken and rice.
Walking up the stairs at west 4th street, I caught a glimpse of a homeless man, dressed in tattered layers, his cracked, crusty black feet propped up on everything that he owns. He sat still, as if waiting for a miracle, and I wondered if his traumas can also be absolved by de blasio, or whether the city had stopped saving him a long time ago.
