big apples

i just received great news from jason who works for the united nations in new york at the moment. he’s getting married with his long time boyfriend, ivo! not in new york but in san francisco where same sex marriage has been legalised, though. i’m absolutely happy for them. i always respect the liberal, open and wholesome side of the united states.
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as i got older, my palate changed, so did my interests. american culture such as disneyland turned me off; my eyes were fixed more firmly on the european continent. but when it comes to new york, it’s a different story. a long time before carrie bradshaw came to life, natalie of ‘me, natalie’ written by a. martin zweiback, holly from ‘breakfast at tiffany’s written by truman capote and eleanor of ‘slaves of new york’ written by tama janowitz were my kind of heroines: independent women who live in manhattan. my first solo american trip had to be to new york. it was eventually realised in the august of 1990. i flew across the atlantic for the first time.
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the first place i visited in new york was a local super market as i was a bit peckish after the long flight. the first thing surprised me was the size of apples. it was actually big! many things like apples and bagels in new york were much bigger than tokyo or london. i also realised things tended to shift a bit like tokyo in terms of tempo, not like london where i lived at the time. and, unexpectedly, it was muggy and humid just like tokyo, which made me less eager about exploration on foot. so i went by bus since the subway had an ill reputation for safety at the time. i love bussing it, anyway, anywhere, anytime.

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while i walked between art museums, i bussed up and down to move around the haricot vert-shaped island, manhattan. no matter how and no matter where i went, police sirens followed me. that’s a new york thing, isn’t it? on one afternoon, i headed south as i planned to view the statue of liberty from a ferry. when i got on a bus, i asked the driver whether or not it was the right one for taking the staten island ferry. ‘what? where? oh, steitn island? oh yeah’ he answered, correcting my pronunciation of ‘staten’ in the strong ‘t’ sound, which was sort of my adopted british accent. like him, new yorkers sounded pretty candid. i began to cotton on to their ‘naked’ kindness.

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on another afternoon, i headed north to visit harlem by bus. as soon as i got off the bus i got nervous about becoming presumably the only yellow woman entering harlem. in the late 90’s, harlem was not a place for a girl on holiday to experience gospel music yet. i asked a young man in smart outfit where i could take a bus bound for midtown. ‘are you alone, miss? that’s no good’ he said, ‘this is kinda rough neighbourhood, you know.’ escorting me to the right bus stop. ‘here we are… wait a second, i guess…better be with you till you’re off’, he continued, ‘that’d be the right thing to do for an uptown boy like me’ – it was one of conversations i had with strangers, but never escapes from my mind even after 18 years. if you asked me, ‘but what’s great about travelling solo?’ i’d answer you, ‘chance encounters like that.’ i do cherish them.

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“global financial crisis” is the headline for almost all the newspapers around the world this week, as one of the big american money towers has collapsed and another been pillared. in this global-scale financial turmoil, who can read the future now? meanwhile, there is one more headline that has caught my eye this week. it’s been seen in european and american newspapers, which presents such a contrast to the darkest news of the world finacial markets.

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new york has become a safer and cleaner city than london and harlem is a tourists’ destination now. i revisited manhattan in march this year. it was early spring and i had a holiday companion, my closest girlfriend masaco, so my impression of the big apple was quite different. besides, we had jason, whom masaco and i used to hang around together with in tokyo. he put us up in his upper east side apartment so that we could enjoy being instant new yorkers. what’s more, my old pal gary flew to see me all the way from laguna beach during my stay. i truly loved the reunions and togetherness with friends in new york.

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on the other hand, while sipping coffee in the city bakery or being wide awake in jason’s guest room in the middle of the night, every time i heard the sound of police sirens echoing round the town, it brought back those innocent conversations with those strangers in the scorching heat of manhattan’s august. i'd be briefly reliving my previous solo trip when i was much younger. then i wondered what had changed and what had stayed the same since then…

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there was one thing i knew for sure: the police sirens would remain unchanged in the big apple.
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