Tenderness

Man, I wish I'd brought my camera with me tonight. Really, you have to experience this city in the middle of the night if you haven't before.

So, the day starts at the office, and I stay late at work, and rush like hell to the apartment before heading up to Swing 46, where I told my swing dance classmates I'd be by 8:30pm. Got there at 8:41pm. That place is amazing; not just for the price of the cover and of the drinks once you get inside, but for the quality of the band and the atmosphere. Harlem Renaissance Orchestra was playing, as they were during our last outing a couple of weeks ago. One of the instructors showed up at a little after 9pm; he danced his ass off with someone who revealed herself as the beginners' instructor that night, with whom I took the brief class. About that time, one of my classmates and our other instructor arrived. A few good drinks and a few good dances later (stretched, torn, bruised, sore ligaments be damned! (even as I type this)), we were out the door a little after 11pm.

An example of why I can't believe I got hired: I caught a cab right out front, at 46th between 8th and 9th, and asked to be taken to 24th and 7th. Through. Times. Square. Of course, there was traffic. But, I dunno—maybe it was worth it. When you have a slight buzz, the back of a cab through Times Square seems like the back of a limo. Lots of flashy lights, people seeking, searching. The ESPN board showed highlights of the Serena Williams match at Wimbledon today. I would have watched it were I still wasting away in Virginia. But here I was, staring out the back of a cab at Wimbledon highlights as if I was crashing on the couch of my Mom's house. The amazing thing about the champion players, like Serena, is how much they make the other player move in relation to themselves. Serena moved about 4-5 feet to either side during one of the highlights I saw. The other, 40-50. Granted, the other player was obviously talented and heroic. But still, it was in Serena's pocket the entire time. You could just tell.

As we were pulling through 41st, 40th and 7th, there was a construction crew (bear in mind this is, like 11:15pm) tearing up part of 7th Ave.—there was a backhoe tearing up asphalt and dumping it in the back of a truck. At first, the operator directed the hoe to strike the asphalt violently a number of times to break it up. Then it dumped the first shovelful. But with the second, it scooped it up, then jostled the scoop a little, then dumped the scoop, and then spread around the dumped asphalt with the scoop a bit as it lay in the back of the truck. Really, who would've expected such tenderness from a backhoe?

After those striking experiences, though, the expense of the cab ride began to lose its luster. I asked the cabbie to drop me off at Penn Station instead, and he obliged. Well, it's wasn't just to save some money— really, at that point, the extra expense was trivial. I really wanted a pretzel. Badly. So I got out, found a street vendor just on the verge of closing (at 31st and 7th), and he fired up a pretzel on the barbie—literally. I though it would set on fire. But he served it to me, just in time, at the modest price of $2. (I can hear you EU-ians laughing—that's like, what, 0.0017 Euros?) (Actually, it's 1.27064803 Euros.)

But, wait, the magic isn't over: As I walked the rest of the way back, I passed another backhoe digging site along 7th, except this time the hoe was still as two guys were grinding away at something in the pit. The sparks coming out of this thing were spectactular, really, I hope to see something half as glorious during the 4th this weekend, which I'll likely spend in Williamsburg (the original, in Virginia, of course) or Yorktown (again, in Virginia—in fact, the place where it was ultimately decided we'd retain the sovereignty with which to preserve this celebration). But what struck me about this magical image of the continued forging (inside joke for some of you) of America's future was the fact that the backhoe operator, amidst all this sturm und drang, was comfortably nestled within the womb of his mechanical alter ego, texting some buddy or loved one through the modern wonder of cellular technology.

Dancing. Alcohol. Music. Lights. People. Tennis. Machinery. Dirt. Asphalt. Earth. Friction. Sparks. Bandwidth. Handheld cellular communication devices. Asynchronous textual communication infrastructure. Pretzels. Apartment. TV. Bed.

While writing this with fingers swollen almost the size of the mechanical bull I fell from Saturday, I finished the pretzel from Penn Station that tasted like a million hot dogs (probably quite literally) from the comfort of a corporate apartment I'll trade for my own hole-in-the-wall soon. These are the things that get me by in this life, along with the love and well-wishes of friends.

What do you know, I found one last bite and a pinch of salt at the bottom of my pretzel bag. Nirvana!