There Are No Normal People in New York
At work, a graphic design intern showed up with a short-sleeved button up instead of his usual long sleeve. His entire right arm was covered with tattoos from various scenes of the Vietnam war — among them: the self-immolating Vietnamese monk and the Viet Cong man being shot in the head, both caught on camera, and now frozen in ink on his arm. At the bottom grinned the Guy Fawkes mask.
“Were your parents okay with that?” I asked. I sounded very conservative.
“They haven’t seen it,” he said, “I haven’t talked to them in ten years.”
“Oh.” I was holding two heavy boxes and on my way back from the receptionist’s desk to deliver them. I shifted them to one hip and looked at the intern, who didn’t seem to be in a rush. I raised an eyebrow and cocked my head. I didn’t ask why.
“It’s a long story,” he said, smiling. I nodded and began to say, “Yes I understand, we can talk about it another time,” but he waved his hand, “I’ll make it short.”
He didn’t, but I will.
His father was a drug addict who left when the intern was a young boy. His mother remarried another drug addict and turned into an alcoholic. She “borrowed” ten thousand dollars from the graphic design intern when he was seventeen (when I asked how he saved up ten g’s at the age of seventeen he simply gave a mischievous smile and said, “Oh I was good.”) Then his mother kicked him out. He graduated high school while living in his car.
“Wow,” I said. The computers were getting a little heavy, “Well, you turned out quite alright.”
I had asked him to design a few versions of our launch party invite in a pinch, and he’d come up with some creative concepts. None of which were used, but were far better than whatever I could have done with some basic Word skills. He was talented and eager, but I realized now, perhaps mildly unhinged as so many artists in the city were.
“Thanks” he said, “I think so too. But I have these tattoos to remind myself that suffering can often lead to a something bigger than myself.”
Later, I would learn that he had gotten them after he’d been a sniper who had done three tours in Iraq. He looked like he’d just graduated from college but was, in fact, a 30-year old former sniper/graphic design intern.
But now, I smiled back. My arms were really beginning to ache. These damn MacBook Pros were heavy.
“I have stories,” he said, and before he could go on, I lifted the boxes from my hip.
“Oh my god I have to hear all of them, but I have to go drop these packages off.”
The intern made a little bow and swung all the Vietnamese martyrs towards the hall before me,”Of course of course, we’ll talk another time.”
A few hours later, I rushed down Broome St. towards happy hour with a new coworker. We had started on the same day and immediately gotten along, mostly because we were both unhappy with our jobs. She was a design intern who found herself doing more market research than she thought the job warranted, and I was an admin who didn’t want to be an admin.
We each ordered a glass of wine and started complaining about our jobs in earnest, more openly than we’d been able to do in the crowded incubator, where conference rooms and quiet spaces in general were in short supply. Slowly, we moved on to talking about which coworkers we liked (most people in marketing, even the weird intern with the depressing tattoos) and which we didn’t, who I won’t list here in case people from work start reading this. But if you do find this and you have to wonder, it’s probably you) and which ones we just weren’t sure about, e.g. that one rail-thin executive who seemed all at once warm and interested but also aloof and disinterested.
I brought up my interaction with the girl with short hair and an endless list of food allergies. I was once asked to order another lunch for her just because the day’s menu (we get free lunch catered every. single. day. from pretty nice restaurants all around NYC) just wasn’t appealing to her but I had somehow gotten the order wrong. She’d come up to me, holding the wrap (which was supposed to be a salad) in her hand and the most alarming scowl, alarming because it was just a wrap and not cancer.
“They totally fucked up,” she had said, on the verge of hyperventilating, “They totally one hundred percent fucked up. It’s not a salad. It’s a wrap.” She thrust it towards my face, “And they put cheese in it.”
She had a dairy allergy. She could have died. I made a mental note.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’ll order something else?”
Blustering, she seemed to want to pace about, brimming was her anger. Instead, she gripped the wrap and pursed her lips. She shook her head. “No, no, no. They fucked up. You should let them know.”
“Oh I will,” I said, (I didn’t).
“I thought she was a lesbian,” I said to my coworker now, feeling comfortable enough to pass judgements on others with her, “With her short hair.”
My coworker shrugged, “She could be queer. I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Really?”
She shrugged again, “I am.”
My wine glass stopped mid-air, then returned to the table.
“I’m bisexual,” she said.
I didn’t ask her to keep it short, but I’ll keep it short here.
She met her husband when she was 23 and married him at 26. She had always been curious about being with a woman but it was just a thought until last New Year’s Eve, when she, her husband and some close friends took Molly. During their roll, she said to him, “I really want to do this.”
‘This’ meaning a threesome with another girl, which (perhaps oddly to some dudes) her husband turned down. She later revised her curiosity: she wanted date other women. Her husband obliged her and to date (no pun intended), she’s dated several lesbians, some okay with the fact that she’s married, and some not. The important thing is she’s still happily married.
“I want to be with him. I know we have a good thing. I want to have kids with him and start a family. I just had to see what these feelings were all about.”
I was not surprised at her situation, because I’m aware these situations (which are more common than one would think) exist, but because I hadn’t thought that she, from what I had previously guessed, would be involved with something like that. She seemed so…straight-laced, for lack of a better word. I was also surprised she would share it with me on our first happy hour. At work we rarely spoke except to exchange polite hellos, but we were now sitting at a loud crowded bar on Broome St., talking about her very open marriage.
Another hour later we paid the bill and began to walk towards our respective subways. We hugged outside her stop. I giggled, thinking of what Tom would say as soon as I told him.
“So essentially you went on a date,” is what he did say.
At Canal St., I boarded the train with a fat mannish woman and a skinny feminine man. I sat between them and smiled at the tired-looking Asian girl across from me, who, like me, seemed to be heading home from a long day of work and perhaps a glass of wine or two. She looked away, then down at her phone.
Better than Gone Girl.
I reached into my tote bag and pulled out my latest read, Thomas Harris’s Silence of the Lambs, a big fat hardcover 1988 edition. Published when I was 2. I had enjoyed the movie very much and Tom happened to have the novel, which he didn’t want to keep despite not having read it. Hannibal Lecter and Buffalo Bill were “so mean.”
I had shrugged, extracting it from the “toss” pile.
“Everyone’s mean in different ways.”
I read a few chapters, got off at 50th street. Crossed 9th ave and stood for a minute on the busy sidewalk looking for my keys. A strong flowery scent blew by me and a glossy shimmer of light sashayed past my peripheral vision. A drag queen, sauntering by. The queen of all drag queens, clad head to toe in sequins with a fur collar and a big, 80's beauty pageant hairdo.
I walked him/her walk for a minute, then opened the door, walked upstairs. Said hello to Tom, who was sitting on the sofa reading his own, rediscovered old book.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I said, “There are no normal people in New York.”
