Neighbors

The door to the bank I entered on Park Avenue was propped open with a cardboard box. Glancing inside to my right I saw that a homeless man had set up shop. He stood in the middle of assorted bags and belongings. His shirt was off and he was giving himself a sponge bath. Part of me wanted to run but the closest ATM was three blocks away and I was already late for my appointment on 55th street. I took my chances, got cash, and in under four minutes was out of there without so much as a glance from the homeless man.

I turned left on 55th street and saw a perfectly normal-looking man standing next to the driver’s seat of his Toyota Corolla. The door was open. He was leaning against it and urinating onto the street, all the while staring ahead. Once he was done he calmly got back in his car and drove away.

For readers not hailing from New York City, 55th and Park is an upscale part of town. Downright ritzy.

But this is New York City, where the residents are as much a part of the adventure as anything else.

The day’s fun did not end with the characters on 55th and Park. There was the transgender waiter at the restaurant where friends and I ate dinner in the uber-hip Meatpacking District. Every time he departed the table there was a fresh round of speculation over which stage of transition he was in.

There was the music producer seated next to me in the coffee shop giving a young, fresh-faced woman a spiel about how he was going to make her a star.

“The great thing about learning to read music is that then you can start stealing from other people,” he said, “Because everything in music is stolen from someone else … From Bach to before they even began recording music [which of course they were doing in the time of Bach] to hip hop to the Beatles [chronologically speaking, that is] … Everyone rips off everyone.”

She listened attentively. I had visions of the scene from Fame when Irene Cara takes her shirt off for the guy taking her headshots.

I wanted to kidnap her and save her from this mad impresario. But I also knew that she probably would not suffer Irene Cara’s fate. I knew that whatever happened to her in the making of this demo would likely teach her a lot about music, money and, ultimately, herself. Chances are it would toughen her up a bit and add some lines to her eyes.

In other words, it’ll make her a New Yorker.