It took me six days to see something truly weird in New York. I guess you could count the presumably homeless man taking a dump in the park across the street, but Terrence saw that happen; not me.
On the 4 headed to Grand Central, Terrence and I encountered a fairly odd individual. She was a very tanned white woman, perhaps in her mid- to late-thirties wearing a red and white patterned dress and red high heel Converse shoes. Her hair was in a high side ponytail, which was twisted and held in place just behind her right ear by a large jaw clip. Her bangs resembled a greasy attempt of an 80's swoop. She stood next to Terrence and me in the center of the subway car, and I noticed that she kept smelling her fingers, dabbing her upper lip with a tissue and scratching at something on the side of her head that didn't really seem to be there.
I typed the following text message on my phone, but as there is typically no service down in the tunnels (at least on my phone), I just showed it to him: "Doesn't she know that it's either a ponytail OR a hair clip?" He just shrugged. Later as we walked to the Times Square shuttle, I asked Terrence, "Did you notice that she kept smelling her fingers?" T shook his head, "She wasn't smelling her fingers. She was checking to make sure her nose wasn't bleeding."
Oh. Riiiiiight. Lil', ol' naive me in the middle of big New York City.
In addition to that brief encounter, we also explored more of Times Square and had a romantic $13 lunch for two at McDonalds, walked through about seven square blocks of Central Park (zig-zagging back and forth from the West Side to the East), checked out Lincoln Center and caught another movie at the AMC theater near Times Square. Afterward, we almost had a caricature drawn of us but then I remembered that I don't have a wall to hang it on yet. So we saved that for another time.
Just returned to the Bronx. Terrence leaves tomorrow and I have to get started on whatever life I am going to have up here.
3 comments:
Homeless street pooping in NY ??? I thought those only happen in Manila.
Hmm... US has social welfare right ?
Some homeless choose to be homeless in this country.
Thanks for sharing.. I want to see those red colored Converse high heel shoes. If you have a pic please share.
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