Subway map memorized and tucked in rucksack — check.
Top of Converse sneakers smudged, T-shirt unrelated to any local destination but still slightly ironic, jeans narrow — check.
Walk with purpose, eyes ahead, resist upward gawking at buildings — check.
Boys ask if they can smoke cigarettes to fit in — no check.
Eye roll intact, leave your everyone-else-is-doing-it at the door and we are off.
We are visiting New York City for a week. We are here to see friends and bask in the intensified energy of people, noise and retail. Spring Break may lure others to southern beaches, but for us the pilgrimage calls from the east: a journey through farms and rolling mountains and strip mall towns to reconnect with our urban roots. But the trip is problematic in that we do not necessarily want to visit New York; we want to be New York. Our disdain for the stereotypical tourist is as bad as a native’s, even as we sheepishly walk out of the subway at Rockefeller Center, an obvious mom with two teenage boys in the middle of a week day. We might as well be wearing madras Bermuda shorts and sandals with socks, yet still we glare defiantly as a smiling, wide-eyed family bobbles by, excitement quivering their heads back and forth as they point and chatter. Just try and compare us to them. We glance surreptitiously at the ice skaters, the NBC store, the flags, slinking towards Nintendo World like we own it.
It is easier to visit Disneyworld or Williamsburg or Las Vegas. They are made-up towns so everyone there is either a friendly stranger or someone whose livelihood depends on a lot of friendly strangers having a great time. The whole point of a pretend vacation haven is to enjoy constructed dazzle with no resemblance to daily routine. Manhattan, in contrast, is a real place with real people pursuing real things and anyone not doing something real is annoying, or worse, in the way. We know this and try to walk in step. Watching people on the streets is like watching the best dancers on a giant dance floor. We incorporate new moves into our own combinations, a swagger here, a head toss there. We are a little awkward, but we chose this hyper-drive veracity instead of a cushiony fairyland — intellectual stimulation even at the cost of perceived isolation.
I am sensitive to how we hold ourselves in the company of the city that hosts us. This sense began years ago when we lived in Japan, a place where being “the visiting other” was impenetrable; we could never hope to blend in. The supreme compliment was to be mistaken for European rather than American. Europeans were considered the most Japanese of the “gaijins” or foreigners, Americans the most opposite. As I ducked through various encounters, I became adept at saying, “Sumi masen,” a version of “excuse me” that means figuratively, “Forgive me, I do not exist in this place where you are, I am nothing.” Once I was asked to participate in a tea ceremony demonstration at a department store. While preparing for my part of the performance, the woman dressing me in my traditional kimono patted my slicked-back head and said, “You look so pretty, almost Japanese.” “Almost” being cute but never belonging. At best, I was aiming at being a passable Spaniard or Italian.
Back in the present, as we resign ourselves to ask a guard at Rockefeller Center for directions, we cannot hide our true identities without wandering the wrong way. I try to pinpoint what fuels this determination to be the perfect visitor, the consummate observer who navigates the environment without disrupting the surface. I realize that this compulsion runs deeper than New York or Japan. There was a single moment where I defined the line between visitor and tourist.
When I was in college, I would cut through the fine arts hall to see student art exhibits on display. One collection consisted of about eight oil paintings. The pieces were created with thick layers of color applied with geological intent, adding a third dimension of texture to the images. The media reached out of the frames like psychedelic lunar landscapes, offering a world that grabbed and immersed the audience. As I followed the line of work from top to bottom and across the gallery, I noticed that someone had poked their finger in some of the ridges of paint. Perhaps they had been curious as to whether or not crests had fully dried and because they had not, the surfaces sagged, soft beneath the harder top layer. This insertion, an interruption of the waves of paint and pattern, disturbed me. I thought, Who would presume to be a god, able and therefore entitled to judge and destroy a mere mortal plane? The vandalism was the obvious presence of someone not content with observing, needing instead to control or exert, though uninvited.
This is an odd story to remember while on a vacation, having fun with my kids in a city, high on warm weather and spring sun. It was an experience that affected my larger views on art and life and the university culture that housed the exhibit. Today, however, it came to mind specifically, each painting representating a tiny enclosed world invaded by behavior that spans the same continuum — bad tourism at one end and colonialism at the other extreme. There are people for whom travel is an opportunity to peer at animals in a zoo, convinced of their own superiority and the difference in others. Everything in their attitude reflects how strange the natives and how perfectly normal they themselves remain.
So our trip to New York City is about many things. Being with friends who know us to our bones, shopping for clothing not yet in fashion back home, eating lovely food, opening our arms and embracing every sensation in a concentrated red pill of rabbit hole delight. Accepting our role as observing visitors, we resist the urge to jab, to expect, pulling back just in time, at the edge of a comparative surface. Better to walk in respect and openness in this place, watching, moving with the crowds, reserving interpretation for worlds of our own creation.
Wait. Was there a NYC Greatwhatsit convention that Cedric and I were not alerted to? I’m a native New Yorker (the only one of all the TGW regulars?), so I can show you my oft-exercised eye-roll and, better yet, demonstrate the patented Grumble-Stare.
Whats so wrong about looking like a tourist? Why the need to fit-in? Is it so wrong if one doesn’t blend-in? And must the t-shirt be somewhat Ironic; would it be wrong to have a I (heart) NY shirt?
I think about these things in relation to the teenage kids living in my home. The clothes and hair have to be right; their manner of speech has to be not too smart. And the myspace profile and layout saying (I’m unique, but, I fit-in, so I don’t fit-out).
See, I can talk smack, and tell you how fantastic your post (especially the first five sentencess were at the same time.
Oh, and I must not fail to tell you how I loved this post, so I can fit-in @ TGW.
Loved it! (Otro vez)
Shit, did it again.
…talk smack, and tell you how fantiastic your post is.
Pandora, I just loved this post. Whenever I travel to the big city or some cool foreign destination (which sadly isn’t often these days), I have these same anxieties. One of my proudest moments in life was being asked directions by a couple of French truck drivers in Paris. My clothes had them fooled, but boy did they laugh when I said (in broken French), “I sorry. I cannot speak the French.”
Marleyfan, it seems that you’re a member of that rarest of rare breeds, the social equivalent of the Nietzschean Ubermensch. As the Superman lives beyond Good and Evil, so do you live beyond Cool and Uncool. Hipsters and teenagers may think you’re the biggest dork around, but they’re secretly jealous of your imperviousness to the scorn of others for wearing clothes that are out of date (but not yet retro) or demonstrating enthusiasm about “the wrong thing”.
It sounds like you’re a lot like Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. He’s way beyond cool because he’s just the same person wherever he goes – his living room, downtown Maycomb, or the corner of Prince and Mulberry.
“Beyond Cool and Uncool.” So true of our beloved PB, Tim.
One of my proudest moments living in Italy was when I wore a bright red pea coat into an English-language bookstore, paid with an American credit card, and was still addressed, from start to finish, in Italian. I felt like I could really “pass.” Oddly enough, though, I never felt that way in NYC. Every single day of my years there was like study abroad. Take comfort, Pandora–lots of people living in New York feel like tourists, too.
The thought of you whooping it up with the New York contingent makes me a little wistful, because I miss you & would love to be there too. Still, it’s great to hear that you’re getting a vacation. The Met! Gray’s Papaya and The Strand!
Been out of town for a few days…
Tim, too funny, had me chuckling.
.eibmorcrebA reaw ylno, I looc os m’I, siht wonK.
(nafyelraM)