The Dead Faces of New York City

Within 60 minutes I fell out of a plane and ended up in front of Grand Central Station. There was no time for a “Whoaa!”-effect. In fact, New York didn´t seem so big, menacing, frightening or whatsoever. Sleep-deprived and still slightly hung-over I had to make my way down to my hostel in Chelsea. It´s not that far. But one has to find the entrances for the subway first. I didn´t. Then: find the right direction the train goes. I didn´t. Then shove your big-ass suitcase through the gates…and yourself… I didn´t … in the end I spent ten bucks on a 2,50-subway-ride… Anyway, I tried a cab before, the driver just waved me off. Down in Chelsea, well, I didn´t know which direction. Luckily some black bike-courier lost some papers, I picked them up for him… and he told me which way to go.

The streets are as narrow, the cars are as small as back home...dissapointment.

Chelsea Hostel…on the pro-side it is right in the middle of Manhattan and not that expensive. But it´s an anonymous, frumpy, place with no WiFi in most of the rooms and bad breakfast (one bagel, one fruit, weak coffee). I lived in a two-bed-dorm that I had to share with an Indian guy. “Call me Paul”, he said. “You couldn´t pronounce my name anyway.” It was Phradiv. He was a hairy guy and probably a faggot…but he knew this town for ten years and told me: “Johannes, I don´t want you to go left of 7th, right of 3rd Ave. after dark. And stay away from north of 125th St.” “Why, is it dangerous there?” “No, but there aren´t any people. You could get mugged. There is nobody you can ask for direction.” He let me use his I-Phone since I wasn´t able to set up my Internet for two consecutive days. Shit, I never used WiFi in my life before! He told me where to find the next starbucks, a Best Buy, where´s a Laundromat. He was quite helpful and a decent guy…and, most important…he wasn´t snoring.

Chelsea Hostel

There I am. In the biggest city on earth. And I just wanna go back to where I came from. The last couple of days were pretty exhausting. In fact I didn´t have a good night´s sleep in ten days. Never more then five to six hours. Not being in the highest of spirits. Working my way from one hangover to another. Usually turning up still pissed at the news-room. Sobering up. Going out for the next one afterwards. Just to not do too much thinking. Keep the mind calm. My head was a total mess. Alcohol usually does the trick to get rid of those fuckers: the thoughts. The night before the flight, I stayed at my ex-girlfriend´s in Frankfurt. The plan was to 1st: get drunk and 2nd: get laid. Well, the drinking worked pretty well, but I was so fucked up– mentally not vine-wise - I just stranded on her couch, wallowing in pain and agony. I was in no mood for sex with the ex. I am still a little bit embarrassed, since I was just …well, pretty down. I think, one day I have to make it up to her. So here I am. New York is just a ghastly place. No one should ever go there. Is overrated and it´s fucking expensive to have a good time there. I paid four bucks for two tallboys. Compared to Germany – this is an utter rip-off.

The only thin bigger than back home

The thing I remember very vividly…well vividly, let´s say very well… is not talking to anyone most of the time. Later on, this guy Dave put it: “New York is the loneliest place on earth.” Indeed it is. The women there, they were just looking right through me. Like I was invisible. I have to confess, I looked like a tourist, given my old shoes (everybody there, even the bums, wears brand new ones). But I mean, these women over there: They are not ugly in particular. But neither are they beautiful. They have dead faces. I-Phone-earplugs and Marlboro-Lights. A bottle of soda-water and running-shoes with business-suits. Wandering through the streets and avenues, looking at them, I could see them go down for a blowjob. Every single one of them. Not in a sad, pathetic, exploited hooker-way of blowjob. More in a sad, pathetic, overworked, burnt-out, being on Prozac and shit, no joy in life-way of blowjob. It was all so clear. You see those women go down on you, or some other guy. And that´s the most in commitment they´ll ever do. They don´t have sex. Because sex means something. They don´t fall in love, because they don´t have the time for it, are stressed out, all guys are jerks. True that. But it was very sad to see these women. They don´t go all the way. They date. They go down. They never see him again. Something is going wrong here. They are too smart, too well educated, too successful, too status-conscious. They find no joy in “love”. That fucks them up big time. It was just sad and depressing. It was a pity. I felt sorry for them. But I liked the way they smoked their cigarettes though, so cool and casual. In fact, I fancied the idea of taking up smoking in NYC.  

I bought new smart shoes couple of days before I stepped off. Nice ones. I had to wear them. I got blisters. So my feet were already hurting when I came to the walking-capital west of Radeberg. I switched my shoes on daily basis: one day one pair, next day the other ones. So that everyday there was a different part of my feet bleeding. I walked so much, despite riding the subway and such. You can cover a lot of ground by foot, and you get a feeling for the place, or the size. Manhattan is not that big, neither is Brooklyn…or at least the part I discovered.

Yeah, going to Brooklyn is another story: on the search for the holy hipster. So, I went to Williamsburg, jumped of the train: Yeah, fuck, this doesn´t look like Kreuzberg. In fact It didn´t even look slightly hipsteresque. But there was this guy, stache, stupid haircut - so I walked up to him. “Hey, ´Xcuse me. Where´s Williamsburg?” Yeah, quite a few miles up the road, but anyway. I saw a hot chick on a fixie. Can you feel it? It´s like getting closer to the nerve. But I had no luck. At first. Friday afternoon, NYC and the streets are empty. In fact, it looked more like my imagination of the barrio, Mexicans and shit. Anyways, I passed by this Burger-Place. At least, they sold food and people were sitting there. And when I did not find any hipsters, I turned back. Ordered a burger from the cute girl and – of course, got the least attractive – waitress. Good beer though. Very impressive. Awesome burger: Finest ground beef, fresh lettuce, home-made buns, even a decent mustard. Having some root beer. Reading Moby Dick. They had a nice restroom too. So, I went back in, and asked the cute one behind the grill: “Tell me: This is Williamsburg, right? Where all the hipsters are supposed to be. But I can´t see any of them. Where do I have to go?” Two blocks down the road. I tipped with a smile – and a couple of dollar-bills of cause, this – still – is New York, Epicenter of greed.

What just comes to my kind right now. Back then, sitting there, reading, chewing, pretending to be intellectual, I thought: Well, quite an experience, you have to take this trip seriously. When I fuck shit up, and I fuck shit up a lot, I use an old drug technique: Whenever it got too worse – just to calm me down – I counted to three. Idea being: You feel bad in the moment, but counting to three, that moment is in the past, forever gone. You can´t change the past anyway, so why bother? When I live through a bad experience, it works. One, two, three…gone. Saying something stupid: one, two, three. It´s easy. I never care. One has to ruin one´s good mood with the future anyway, so why try to cope with the past. It´s pointless. Here we go: The past. It´s pointless. So sitting there, not enjoying the actual moment because of thinking: “Yeah, that has to be a great experience.” That ruined it. I was just pretending. Not living. I had to have a good time. That was mandatory! Period! Now, four months later, I think: well, I´m a hypocrite, an idiot, and I have been even more of an idiot back then. Like Hunter Stockton Thompson said:

The scene I just witnessed brought back a lot of memories - not of things I had done but of things I failed to do, wasted hours and frustrated moments and opportunities forever lost...

It is funny, what sticks to your mind, what seems less important today. The struggle to spend my evenings out…by myself, lonesome, wandering through the streets, no idea where to go. Ending up at Times Square like four times by sheer accident. I walked through Central park: It don´t means nothing. I wandered through the streets of China Town: It don´t means nothing. Saw the WTC: Don´t means nothing. The thing I remember about Wall Street: The Hot Dogs of cart down there are 4 dollars, whilst two blocks up, it´s only three. Same company. It don’t means nothing. Not a thing.

What I remember is going into a thrift store in Williamsburg. And Williamsburg is as pathetic as the ubiquitous hipster itself: The fun-part is only ten by three blocks. Well, just looking for things to bring for my friends. They had post-cards there: thousands in a box. I went through them until I found the one that was perfect: Saying San Francisco, with a streetcar, vintage, but stylish and very classy. This one should perfectly suit my needs. It did, with the right set of words, more than carefully chosen. Sometimes I just put a lot of thought in the tiniest details, things no one would ever realize.

Can I take a picture of your bike? Why? Oh, I´m just bike-nuts.

People Zoo. They all did look like average guys. T-Shirts, Jeans. Period. No one looked particularly hip. Really, is the eternal, everlasting hipster gone already? Nowhere to find? There was Unswagness everywhere. Back at the tube, I finally found them: skinny jeans in size zero. Stupid-stache. Rapist glasses. Jute-bags. Gotcha! You know what happened, when I came closer? They spoke in German tongue! These proto-hipsters were Germanz! Superior uber Nazi-scum! Succeeding in being cool – dogmatic, perfectionist and joyless as always. Where was the Kerouac paperback? Did I travel that far, to be surrounded by the ugly Hun everywhere?

When I was looking for some action on a Friday night in Manhattan, I realized: I am not used to the American custom of making out and dating. The place was packed with designer-fashion over tighty-whities. Strolling New York Streets on a Friday night by yourself, one feels pretty lonely. Anyway, I ended up on Times Square again…for the fourth time I guess. I just wanted to check my E-Mails, so I decided to find a Starbucks, have some cake.

A New-York-style "park"

Next to the Broadway there was a tiny shop, when I entered the two women spoke Spanish to me. Right in the Epicenter of Manhattan. But these girls were the only ones being nice to me in NYC. This reminds me on “those tiny people” – the ones sweeping the floors, mowing the lawn, the guys on construction sites. They didn´t look Hispanic, nor Asian. More like a weird mixture. I don´t know, maybe these people were Philippinos or Indios from South and Central America. The black people rose up, and the brown people did too – so someone else needs to do the shitty jobs: those tiny people, chasing the American Dream five feet tall.

So far, the United States sucked. I needed to get out of NYC, problem being, that I´ve only had planned my flights and the accommodation in this aseptic clean environment called the great city of New York. What´s next? What´s the score here? Chilling panic was crawling up my back. Well, fuck it, go to the Mexican right now, I said to myself. I left the loneliest place on earth with the calm and dead words of my host: “You know, you´re leaving a day early? There is no refund.”