Intimately interposed:
Baumann, Paul
OF SEVERAL MINDS Paul Baumann INTIMATELY INTERPOSED COPING IN MANHATTAN It was some time in March before I broke down and surrendered my first quarter to a beggar. It was a bitterly cold night,...
...As I meekly protested this violence in good Commonweal fashion- looking around nervously for a weapon-a large white man stepped between the antagonists and the battle ended...
...A sparse crowd was waiting complaisantly on the platform, a few couples huddled together...
...When the little man appeared, like some absurd and portentous symbol in a religious fable, I dropped a quarter into his hand...
...Early one evening a small group of toughs rushed onto my train in a high state of agitation...
...I gazed up blankly at the mottled glass near the ceiling-the intermittent light from car headlights gave the windows a burnished glow-until I could buy a token...
...He wore a green army jacket, and sang beautifully...
...How did he get there...
...One member of the group was cursing loudly and nursing his bleeding knuckles...
...Not that there isn't a degree of romance in all this...
...Strangers turn away from each other's eyes in New York, hoping to avoid giving offense or excuse to the inevitable loony...
...I was nervous about returning, and knew I couldn't afford to live or raise a family in New York...
...Standing over her, I watched her stomach, slightly exposed by her outfit, rise and fall as she breathed...
...I've always wondered who bought all those tas-seled loafers...
...Another cold night found me marching with military bearing up Broadway from the Columbus Circle subway station...
...Turning away from him with a twinge of paranoia ("Why me...
...the wind that funneled down the streets froze you in your tracks...
...Like everyone else in New York, I am accustomed to seeing men asleep in subway stations...
...Yes, you could survive if you worked at it-there was always Chinatown, or an obscure Ukrainian restaurant, or pizza...
...I love you, but not enough to die for you," our tearful heroine concludes...
...Sometimes I give, sometimes I don't...
...A man bundled up against the cold was playing a baby grand piano on the sidewalk...
...Only a lover is likely to brush as close to a woman's cheek or perfumed hair as a routine subway rider does...
...Such are the compensations of riding the rails...
...For one thing, it was too cold...
...Through our skylight you can glimpse the World Trade towers...
...And always there is the testimony of yet another longtime resident who, after three burglaries and two muggings, finally was moving back "home...
...And I was worried about spending money...
...What did he do with the piano when it was time to go home...
...And there's plenty of advertising to distract the eye...
...May she rest in peace...
...there is an element of physical intimidation in nearly every human transaction, from the toughs on the street corners, to jockeying for place in the subways and in restaurant and movie lines, to the uniformed doormen in front of the fashionable buildings...
...Racing across the street with the traffic light, I hurried out of the cold into the surprising warmth and light of the subway entrance, a mausoleum-like building on the concrete island in the middle of the boulevard...
...She was pretty, Hispanic I imagined, and clutched a small purse to her chest...
...A furtive little man in a filthy knit cap and torn sneakers first solicited me at the curb on the east side of the street...
...You come to realize that the city's permissiveness is a matter of necessity: tolerance is the first virtue when people occupy a limited amount of space with those they don't know and probably will never see again...
...I had lived in New York for a brief time after graduating from college, but that, as they say, was a long time ago...
...Subways are also the last place in America where people still read...
...Women are more physically vulnerable, and therefore seem to be at greater risk...
...Most of the buildings at this end of Manhattan are low enough to let the light hit the pavement...
...Below, around the corner, an itinerant saxophonist was playing "My Favorite Things" and "A Love Supreme" in obvious homage to the great John Coltrane...
...Closing your ears is another matter...
...interposing of arms and legs...
...Still, back then I would have given my first-born child for a decent writing job in New York...
...I had been working in New York for about a month at that time...
...Painted in fuchsia or shades of orange, some of these extended digits seem as long as lacrosse sticks...
...When my five-year-old son visited New York for the first time this spring he made much of holding his nose in distress...
...Now, of course, I have a first-born child, and a second, and New York seems farther away than ever in some ways...
...Another early morning I was pushed to the back of a subway car where I turned to find a diminutive young woman curled up asleep across two seats...
...She wore the imperturbable expression of a cartoon character who had somehow sprung back to life after being squashed or flattened or shot from a cannon...
...As I passed under some elaborate scaffolding on the east side of the street, my way was blocked by a large but indistinct object twenty yards ahead...
...On another occasion, this time in the morning, I ended up in the middle of a brawl between a white man and three teenage blacks...
...Then I noticed the blunt seam of her pants and realized, with a kind of inexpressible sadness, that her clothes were on inside out...
...Three or four people were ahead of me at the token line...
...It's the story of Julio and Marisol's unconsummated passion...
...Now I know...
...But I didn't want to retreat before even engaging my fears...
...As I waited, the little man appeared again, presenting his open hand with its blackened and broken nails...
...New York's subways are absurdly crowded during rush hours...
...Across the express tracks on the downtown platform a tall black man, his head wrapped in a red muffler against the cold, was playing a string bass made out of a broom handle and a wash basin...
...I'm still nervous...
...I read these with growing apprehension...
...At the subway station I often use now, a flute player wearing a Wolfman mask used to be a regular performer, specializing in Vivaldi, along with variations on the "Battle Hymn of the Republic...
...During that sojourn I acquired the firm conviction that living in Manhattan with little money was like hating snow and moving to Vermont...
...Feverishly embracing Marisol, Julio presses her to "prove" her love ("Vamos, Marisol, prueba que me amas"), only to storm out of the apartment when she offers him a condom...
...He said nothing...
...the few women I see somehow disturb me more...
...Beggars continue to solicit my charity...
...He played in that bold melancholy vein for a long time, but he wasn't pestering me.wasn't pestering me...
...It was a wholly inexplicable sight and sound, a magical juxtaposition of subterranean gloom and fears and the transcendent harmonies of a Gershwin tune...
...There are less edifying sights...
...Those of us around her moved to avoid contact when she shifted her position, stretching out a leg or an arm...
...You keep your head down in solemn stupefaction...
...New York is also the city of Fu Manchu fingernails...
...A somewhat more somber exhortation begins "No one came to my funeral" and is accompanied by a picture of a body laid out in a morgue...
...But day-to-day existence was exhausting, like living behind enemy lines and not speaking the native language...
...Newspapers abound, but popular novels and even technical manuals are also staples...
...Around the corner are the oldest Methodist and Catholic churches in the city, and all the crooked streets of buried New Amsterdam seem to lead down to the water's edge...
...Sorry," he said, drifting toward the stairs, "I know I've been pestering you...
...An adult woman sat across from me on the subway dressed entirely in gray plastic garbage bags, even a plastic bag hat and scarf...
...I ignored him...
...There was something especially forlorn about her childlike stature and carelessness, but I couldn't quite place it at first...
...It was a bitterly cold night, and I was making my way across Broadway to the subway station at 72nd Street...
...One day early in the summer we had the windows open...
...You find yourself pressed against perfect strangers in an intimate The editors, and the many readers who called, extend their condolences to our columnist Abigail McCarthy and the McCarthy family on the death of Mary Abigail McCarthy...
...It was unusual in my experience to find a woman asleep on the train...
...Drugs were the culprit My favorite isacartoon soap opera titled "Decision" that appears in both English and Spanish as a warning against AIDS...
...The most flamboyant ladies decorate their lacquered appendages with tiny sequined designs, miniature and perishable mosaics that seem especially exotic in a nail-biting town like New York...
...Doubtless he disposed of it with a flick of his wand...
...No library or monastery demands the strict silence observed on an early morning subway packed with sleepy executives going downtown to work...
...Before I started at Commonweal in February, the Times seemed to run an avalanche of stories on the violent decline of the city...
...Our very pleasant office is just blocks from nefarious Wall Street...
...Thinking myself free of the man's gentle but eerie persistence, I hurried down the steps to catch the express uptown...
...But it's been seven months without having to witness any bloodshed or particular barbarity beyond the $2.75 for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at the local deli...
...An anonymous identification tag hangs from a big toe...
...With my family still up in Connecticut, I tended to dawdle at the office and rarely ventured out at night...
...One beg-ger without any fingers on the stub of a hand...
...New York is a place that is always rubbing up against you...
...another man without legs who propels himself through the cars on a skateboard...
...Of course you are sometimes close to people who emit more of the aroma of a landfill than of Chanel...
...The truly ubiquitous Jonathan Zizmor, M.D., with a prestigious Park Avenue address, inquires after your unsightly moles and boasts that he is a "Board Certified Dermatologist...
...There was one about the problem of people urinating in the street...
...most are direct, a few belligerent...
...Once again, music-the signature of New York's public spaces-was in the air...
...They were in a state of explosive nervousness in the aftermath of a fight, boasting of their prowess to ward off their fear...
Vol. 117 • September 1990 • No. 15
