A short series in which our anti-hero surbanite author travels to urban New York to meet his two co-conspirators, returns to the silent sunlight of San Diego, and realizes that he has found the ever-elusive element of life, his purpose.

The real nature of man is the totality of social relations.

Karl Marx

“This, this is the shirt that got me a free ride back from Williamsburg. I told you this story didn’t I? Oh my god, this is my favorite New York story.”

He flicks his hands, both of them, limp-wristed in front of his chest. Why do gay men do this? The (few) gay friends I have do not have limp wrists. What does it mean? Where does it come from? What does it define? Is it a way of asserting one’s identity, like the ‘I just got charly-horsed in the thigh’ gangsta stroll?

“OK, so we were at this show in Brooklyn, the band was so bad they were good …”

His voice trails off as I mix my two sugar-in-the-raws into my coffee and watch the dripping white cream swirl into homogeneity. Above the plastic containers of six kinds of sweetener is a sign which reads, “Did you know that all Housing Works employees are volunteers? Please be nice and grateful.”

All these young, beautiful, and well-read hipsters in here … all working for free? “… employees are volunteers” – aren’t those two titles mutually exclusive? Isn’t that exploitation? Is that why people come to this city, to find others who are also willing to work for free? But then later I see that the bookstore is a non-profit organization that uses all of its sales to help families affected by HIV and AIDS. And I am ashamed of my reaction: pure skepticism. Skepticism that the money goes where it should, skepticism that so many beautiful people are willing to work for a good cause from which they don’t benefit one bit. I mean, these people, they pay like $1,000 a month in rent right?

The nice thing about Housing Works Bookstore Cafe is that you can read any book while sipping on your coffee and crunching down on your biscotti. My company during these two mugs of joe is “Nobrow: The Culture of Marketing; The Marketing of Culture” by John Seabrook. What he says makes sense to me:

Over the top of the newspaper, I looked down the train at the other passengers. Mostly people coming in from Brooklyn, a few also wearing rap in their ears. The outward face of civic urban blankness, nodding along with the inward roil and extremity of the music. It was the same weird, disconnected feeling you got walking around the newly cleaned-up, barricaded, Giulani-time streets of New York City. On the surface things couldn’t be better – a time of great economic prosperity for the few, money everywhere, a paradise of consumables in the shops. But underneath that was the world of desperate people with their heads pinned down onto filthy carpets while the police cuffed them from behind, that other life that Americans like me only ever saw on TV shows like Cops. Rap, especially gangsta rap, connected the materialism and the racism: the unreal spectacle of wealth and happiness in Manhattan and the real social relations between the people in the street.

Last night I headed up to Spanish Harlem to see a friend. Her large, pristine apartment is in the middle of the projects. Compared to my other two friends’ apartments – in trendy Williamsburg and upper-class, Lower West Side, this part of New York was another universe. We grabbed a torta y una pirata in a nearby hole in the wall restaurant. Nobody spoke a world of English. My friend and I caught up in Spanish – the first time I had an entire conversation with a Mexican in months. I felt the sing-song of my newly-acquired Argentine accent wear off as I was told about life in the city. I was told about the drug dealers and the gangs that run the various corners and neighborhoods surrounding her. How proud she was of her fellow Mexicans who came with nothing and worked their asses off just to save up enough money to send some back home. And how frustrated she’d get by the Blacks who were coming down from gentrified Harlem and who were mostly lazy and living off welfare. Other than my learned reaction of white, liberal political correctness, I was in no position to argue.

Bobbing up the steps from the six line onto 110th I was met with the same feeling I had when descending onto Macchu Picchu in Peru: “wow, it’s just like I’m in a movie.” Here was urban ghetto east coast life – somehow decidedly more authentic than its west coast parallel. The Black men with finely trimmed goatees, corn rows, and gold medallions hanging over their NY Yankees parkas seemed larger than life. As I breathed out small clouds of steam in front of a fried chicken restaurant, a six foot six, 250 pound, 50-year-old man walked by with his cane in his left hand and what seemed to be a young protégé on his right. His suede jacket was yellow, purple, and black. A glittering diamond covered one ear lobe. As we passed and our eyes met, I realized how huddled together I was trying to stay warm. I felt like I was one third this man’s size.

I’m too lazy to look for it, but Octavio Paz once said that we are no longer able to experience life as it should be encountered because we have already seen it all on television. Every city, every situation, every friendship and relationship – they are all compared to their prior telegenic portrayal. In a way, it reminds me of Plato’s concept of “forms;” those abstract truths that lie beneath our imperfect lives. Which is why in Peru my first thought was, “that’s some crazy shit, just like they show it on the Discovery Channel” and now nearing 111th I’m thinking, “what the fuck man, I’m in the middle of NYPD Blue.”

Unlike SoHo where I looked at each and every passerby, on 111th around midnight I admittedly avoided eye contact. Looking above the first floor graffiti, I tried to imagine the daily lives that took place in all those dimly lit apartments.

To be continued …