I Decided to Yell

We arrived in Grand Central and my little one, who’d just eaten before we'd left, wanted to use the bathroom.  I was pretty sure where the men’s room was but she plowed ahead, into the inchoate space next to the Rail Museum and darted into a ladies room, which was, as plumbing pipes no doubt dictated, right above where the fellas lavatory was, one floor below.  The food is also one floor below.  A shawarma place caught my eye and I began to taste tahini sauce on falafel in my mind.  I met her upstairs, brought her down the escalator and soon had a heaping stuffed pita.  At the adjoining shop, I got a small bottle of Pinot Grigio to wash it down with.

The cab driver, a gnarled older man with a Russian accent immediately cursed the driver in front of us as we took our seats. I answered a call from a friend on wechat, which didn’t hold and I involuntarily decided not to eat my sandwich in the back of this man's cab.  The going was slow.  We made our way through Time Square.  People were walking faster than our ride, but we weren’t in a rush.  I double checked my daughter’s app.  Two more blocks, then I wished my friend a safe flight and turned to my daughter just in time to hear our driver call someone to his right a 'mother-fucker.'  I cringed.  He shouldn’t have used that language with a young person in the car.  And then I think he knew.  And rather than scolding our driver I wished him well and told him to be safe, as he pulled to the curb near Madison Square Garden. 

Yes.  I wolfed my sandwich down right outside the metal detectors.  It was delicious.  I was hungry.  I am not proud.  My daughter who was pumped to see the show asked me why I hadn’t eaten it in the cab.  I didn’t have a good answer, other than to say I didn’t think it would be polite.  But neither was eating it here.  She went in to get “merch.”  I agreed to join her shortly. 

She bought a stick that is only associated with this band, “Super M."  It lights up and will color coordinate with everyone else, during the show.  It cost $80.00.  Um. Well.  It was different in my day.  Up and to the left we wait in a big scrum for the doors to open.  I am amidst a mass of a few hundred people and I am certainly the oldest non-employee male around.  Three African American ladies, and a young girl who seemed to me Italian, were all dolled up like superheroes and animated about being able to take in Super M.  There were certainly a disproportionally high number of Asian ladies here in the huddle.  More than you'd see in a random petri dish of New Yorkers but I was more impressed by what an international crowd this Korean band had managed to source this evening.   

Up and up and up we went on the escalators.  Ta da, there’s the Garden.  Do I remember it?  Oddly my most pressing memory is of a Nazi rally I saw a film of that was held here right before WWII broke in 1939 or so.  But that was February of 1939.  (I just checked) and this structure was built, anew in 1968.  So memory doesn’t serve at all.  I did see The Police here once and remember nothing of it. We have seats up against the drop down to the next level.  Soon, Super M. will arrive. 

Super M, were fine.  They strutted their hearts out.  Ant-like I couldn’t see them.  They have a few key tunes, which had been played thirty eight times each before the show so I'm ready when they break into a key chorus or two:  "I don't even care . . . " I cannot tell if what I’m hearing is live or a pre recording.  I don't believe it matters to anyone.  Everyone was yelling so loudly.  I decided to yell as well, though I chose to yell obscenities, which was certainly juvenile.  What I yell doesn't matter to anyone.  

Super M pranced.  Super M gesticulated.  Super M danced!  But in the end, it was when they spoke English or Korean with translation that, for that one moment, that I considered them each as odd young individuals rather than just simulacrum.   

Wednesday, 11/20/19