On Saturdays I go to this gym on Fifth and pay these two Israeli guys to beat the living shit out of me. Then I take a long hot shower, towel off, and take more shots. Some days they’re so high on something they go extra hard, leaving me in pretty rough shape. Receiving these blows, I wonder whether to refer to this as sadism, or alternative Krav Maga, but I am fine with it not having a name; I just tell my friends I go to the gym. Then I re-download Hinge and match with my second-cousin.
On our date at the wine bar she asks me what about New York I am loving most. The trees, I say, especially in summertime. I love how they shimmer, then I gesture a shimmering motion. She looks surprised. I wonder if it is because of my shimmering motion, where I brought my hands above my face and made jazz hands, but then she tells me how in all her time living here she has never seen trees before, how she has never thought to look up, how she didn’t really know looking up was a thing. At this, I look down at the ground and see a rat scamper below our table; it gives the half-obliging, half-scornful look renters shoot their landlords before disappearing into their units. Rat, I say aloud. See what I mean? she replies.
In her bedroom she shows me photos of us as children and I come to see what our family means, that I didn’t get my features from my parents or anyone in our family. Do you want gum? I ask. She says she has an idea. Next we’re on a stolen boat to Ellis Island to see if we can learn anything. The harbor chops us up and down and we’re nearly thrown out of the boat, the freezing water hitting our clothed and exposed skin in ways that feel unexpected, unpleasant, and ultimately, unwanted. Seagulls overhead shoot us disapproving looks, either about how we are on a stolen boat or we are planning to sneak in after hours or how we are second-cousins or how we are high on amphetamines dealt to us by my trainers at the gym, “gym.”
Ellis Island is dark and empty and cold, resembling a more modern American approach to immigration; I’ve never been here before. Immediately we see another couple there probably also on a Hinge date and we don’t say a word, we just nod our heads solemnly and do our best to take different approaches to our respective ancestries. Something about them seems to say, ENM. Down our footpath, we see a robotic guard protecting the entrance and momentarily consider employing violence or water to incapacitate it, but then we cartwheel past him undetected. Then, inside, we do the robot, jerking our arms and torsos to celebrate getting in undetected and also to mock the poor guard. This goes on for some time.
In the Grand Hall we feel more like we’re in a chapel. It makes us feel holy, consecrated, as if we’re getting married or baptized or something of the sort. We go up to the altar and light one of the votive candles that’s on display for visitors. We say a little prayer, and then perfectly timed with this, Leonard Cohen comes on from the overhead speakers, as if Ellis Island or some other deity were responding to our prayers the best way it knew how. Pretty neat, right? I say, looking over to my second-cousin. But she’s gone and I’m alone again. Offscreen in the distance I wonder if the noises I am now hearing are her laughing with the polyamorous couple sailing off on what would be our newly re-stolen boat.
Ville de Paris I learn is the vessel by which my grandfather and grandmother made passage to Ellis Island, originating from the north of the Lebanese Republic. So that explains it. Pretty neat, right, I say to myself, now in the form of a statement. Leonard Cohen is off playing his later catalogue, plaintively.
I am now on Canal Street passing a bodega with many different kinds of art magazines in the window. Popping in, the sleepy clerk offers me a free bottle of poppers complimentary with the latest issue of Kinfolk, a magazine I have always seen in the apartments of friends I consider to be my cool friends; I pay seventy five dollars for it, and receive it and the small bottle in a black plastic bag.
Next I am at Williamsburg Pizza located in the Lower East Side eating a slice of pizza that is more covered in grease than cheese. Having forgotten to ask for a plate I use the Kinfolk issue as my surface to eat the floppy thing, pushing it down the length of the magazine and into my mouth, as if I am sweeping crumbs from a surface into the trashcan. Four NYU freshmen in leather jackets next to me can tell I am eavesdropping on their conversation that has been ranging from backgammon strategies to their forthcoming exams to the various considerations around sexual intercourse with animals. I’m cool, I try to tell them with my look, my pizza melting into my magazine and dangling into my mouth, we’re all cool here. No need for trouble. They are now raising the cuffs of their jackets in a way I register from television and movies as a threatening gesture and start to back away as they step closer towards me.
It’s at this point I pray for Leonard Cohen to come back on and protect me from receiving more blows today. Mercy, mercy. Now I am running and the four NYU freshmen are chasing me through Chinatown and I am shouting for help and they look possessed by something more awful than drugs. Poppers, I remember. I throw the bottle at them, temporarily blinding them and making them feel lightheaded; too bad my complimentary poppers had to be used for self-defense and determent and not for its opposite intention. I take off into the night, popperless.
Suddenly after snorting mephedrone in a Korean spa I find myself at the top of the Hudson Yards Vessel looking down at myself, waving. Hey, I call down. Do you see me? Are you seeing this? I shout back from the ground to the top of the vessel, to myself, I see you! I am waving to myself from down there and we have a nice moment. From somewhere in the distance the YMCA song is playing, so I do the Y from the top of the vessel; from the ground I mirror this by also doing the Y. This repeats until we finish each letter in the acronym, twirl, mimic the can-can, attempt handstands, laughing from our different perspectives.
Next I open the door to a birthday party in Brooklyn Heights in a large fourth-floor apartment that is blanketed in white: its walls, furniture, even its floors. The Partiful notification said to take off your shoes upon entering, so I do, and find the apartment’s ceilings to be tall enough that I feel a vague sexual desire for them. The host tells me his name is Yves and welcome to the party and he’s into ENM. Cool, I say, and hand him a glass bottle of Baijiu from my jacket. His hair is so blonde and curly I wonder what kinds of products he uses to maintain such a nice sheen. In the distance I see a few friends and a few enemies and choose not to say hi. I wait an hour in the corner for someone to engage me in conversation and then finally this man wearing Dior and Gucci and spiked hair who looks so direly out of place here comes up and tells me he is a model, he writes a weekly column, he’s about to go to this exclusive Fashion Week event. Cool, I say, looking around for where Yves keeps his copy of Kinfolk.
He has not left for his exclusive event yet, so I ask what his column is about. Inflation, he says. He sees I was not expecting this to be the topic of his column, and seems to appreciate my disorientation, my dawning awe at his unobvious range. So he adds, I just track the weekly shocks and deviations and adjustments to inflation from any new international monetary policy, that sort of thing, nothing spectacular. Have you heard of Eugene Fama?
Mercifully Yves comes back with shots for us; we clink and drink, and I cannot help but complement the height of his ceilings. This he takes as an invitation to describe each interior design choice, which was his, which was his wife’s. Sure, I say, when next he offers me and the model-columnist a tour, mainly in hopes of finding where his copy of Kinfolk is so I can confirm my theory, then maybe steal it. The kitchen is dark and resembles a batcave by the way we only see the dilated pupils of the partygoers sitting on the floor spacing out on ketamine.
Yves takes us into the bedroom where there are perhaps twenty or so people occupying every bit of space available in ways I find very creative: a man is seated on the nightstand, a woman straddles the television dock around her legs, two men challenged for floorspace are supporting one another in a two-person squat, some are trying to have quiet sex in the closet. I look around for the magazine and find it on the bed, in the hands of my second-cousin. Hey, I say. There you are.
Here I am, she says, Why are you holding your ribcage like that? I tell her it hurts from the gym earlier. You go to the gym? she asks. Kind of.
Now it’s Sunday and I am in Queens seated across from my parents who are visiting for the weekend, at a brunch I will not ever offer to pay for; my dad is wearing his Raybans and my mom looks amazing. They ask me what I’ve been up to lately and I tell them nothing much. We order Spring Rolls and Lo Mein which is strange because my Dad hates Spring Rolls and Lo Mein. Too greasy, he always protests. My mom is more easy going, like me, but today my dad has granted us an exception and we do not accept this gesture lightly as we eat together in silence.
What about New York are you loving most, one of my parents asks me. I ask for them to repeat what they had said because I was zoning out watching the Toy Australian Shepard from across the street that’s being walked by a young lawyer couple bark at every passerby with such fervor and intensity that, in another life, must’ve meant it was a K-9 or served in the military. After they repeat their question, I take off my sunglasses and I guess my eyes look very abnormal because this has the effect of a jump scare on my parents and they actually flinch in their chairs, strands of Lo Mein flying instead of movie theater popcorn. Are you alright son, my Dad says. Your eyes... My Mom begins. What happened to you?
In the metal reflection of the napkin dispenser I see my eyes are entirely red, dilated and bruised from the gym. Just a bad night’s sleep, I say, returning my sunglasses to their original position, as they look to one another.
You know, we came to visit because we were worried about you, my Dad says. Are worried, corrects my mom. Yes, thank you, my dad says, that’s what I meant, are worried. Are you ok, son? he asks. You don’t return our texts anymore, you haven’t read any of the articles I send you. We just want to make sure you are ok.
It’s actually the shimmering, I say to them.
The what? they ask in unison.
They look at me more sharply, as if they may better understand what I am saying by looking at me with a new angle. It’s the shimmering, I repeat. I lean back into my chair as though I just finished my exam, and I am satisfied with the result. What are you talking about, son, from my Dad. Can you clarify what you mean, from my Mom.
This is what about New York I am loving most, I tell them. The shimmering.
Son, what are you saying? I note how my father is suppressing anger in his voice.
I look up. The plaintive trees are beginning to stir, and my parents follow my gaze. None of us says anything.
Johnathan is a writer based in Brooklyn.