Pauline on the Beach
June 29, 2005
I'm on my way to the airport — or rather, I will be on my way as soon as I stop dilly-dallying on the internet — to pick up my friend Pauline (Holland's intrepid reporter in the Ivory Coast). She and her cousin will be my house guests for the next week. We'll have to wait and see how that affects the frequency of my posts. I already upset Pauline's cousin with a post I wrote several weeks ago about meeting her in Amsterdam, so I have to tread lightly.
Stay tuned for hijinks and hilarity.
June 30, 2005
All of yesterday’s running around could've been avoided if I'd only double checked the flight information. What time does Pauline's flight get in? Hmm. I forget. I can probably find it online. What's the flight number? One-seven-something-or-other. I know it has a one and a seven in it. Here, British Airways flight 117. Arrives 11:15 a.m.
I overestimated the morning traffic and arrived about an hour early for flight 117. Thankfully, Deborah agreed to come with me, and so, as time went on and I stood around the terminal wondering where the hell Pauline was, I had someone to talk to. Someone to say, "I wonder where the hell Pauline is?” to.
There wasn't much going on in terminal number seven, and absolutely nowhere to sit, so instead of shifting our weight back and forth between our left legs and our right ones, we decided to return to the car and listen to the radio. After two minutes of that, we decided to sit in the back seat and make out. Someone was waiting in vain for our parking spot — probably saw us in the back seat and figured the spot would be free in fifteen minutes. It wasn't, of course, and when 11:15 rolled around, we climbed out of the car and went inside to find Pauline and her cousin. Except, they weren't there. That's when all the "I wonder where the hell Pauline is" stuff really started.
When the last of the suspicious characters held back by customs pushed out of the big silver door, it occurred to me that I might've gotten the flight information wrong. "Maybe the flight left on the 29th, but arrives on the 30th?"
In any case, Deborah had things to do to prepare for a trip of her own — to her hometown in rural Pennsyltucky for a five-day family get-together. So, three hours (and fifteen dollars in parking fees) later, we left the airport empty-handed.
I took Deborah home to her apartment, hung out with her for a little while, then said goodbye and went home. As soon as I got there, my cell phone rang. "Hello, Mr. James—Bood—Bud—B—"
"Boud, yes?"
"Hi, sir. You're friends are here at immigration. They arrived without an address. Can you provide the address where they will be staying?"
Apparently, I screwed up the flight info. Flight 177 NOT 117. Oops. Back to the airport.
Hello, sorry I'm late, how was your flight? Here, let me take your bag.
As we drove through Brooklyn's underbelly on the way to my loft, Pauline's cousin said she needed to stop at a pharmacy to pick up some contact lens solution. "Oh, don't worry about it. I have some at home," I told her. "Did the flight bother your eyes? The air is always so dry on a plane."
"My contacts always bother me," she said.
"Yeah, mine do too, actually. My lenses are supposed to be used for two weeks and then thrown away, but I've been using the same ones for about six months now."
"Ah,” said Pauline. “So that's why you can't see the difference between 117 and 177.”
July 1, 2005
Before her visit, Pauline was supposed ot visit an Ivory Coast witch doctor to bring me a magic amulet. She didn’t have time. She did, however, find me a talisman and, without going into detail, suffice it to say it has already started to work.
When we first arrived at my loft, Pauline and Magda were impressed. "Why do you want to move to Amsterdam ?" Pauline wondered.
"I don't know. It's not because of my loft, obviously — aside from the perverse rent that is. It's the city as a whole. It just feels so oppressive sometimes. You wind up putting up with shit here that you don't even realize you're putting up with."
Most of yesterday was spent ambling around the city, stopping now and then for coffee. We were up and out of the house too early, though, and our first stop —at Williamsburg’s famed second-hand store, Beacon's Closet —found us in front of a locked gate. "Oh shit. They don't open till noon. What time is it anyway? Okay, we can head over to the bookstores at the other end of Bedford Avenue, and come back here later."
The first bookstore wasn't open either. "It's the neighborhood," I explained. "Everyone around here either works in a bar or doesn't work at all. No one gets out of bed before noon."
The third time was the charm, and after an hour of poking around the shelves of the second bookstore, we sat outside at a neighboring coffee shop. Pauline commented on the plethora of tattoos on the passing hipsters. "I'm surprised," she said. "I would think that the whole tattoo trend would be over by now."
Pauline had spent a year living in the East Village in the nineties. Tattoos weren't quite as ubiquitous then as they are today, but they were close.
"It's only gotten worse," I said. "Everyone has a tattoo now. And the people with tattoos who are frustrated that everyone else has a tattoo wind up getting themselves completely covered."
Pauline soon gave up counting tattooed hipsters and began counting something else she was surprised to see: pregnant bellies.
"So what do you guys want to do?" I asked. "What do you want to see?"
"Don't worry. I don't expect you to entertain us," said Pauline. "If you have things to do, don't let us get in the way. You should just do what you normally do."
I took a sip of my iced tea, looked up and down the street. The neighborhood was beginning to perk up. The tables around us began to fill. "This is what I normally do," I shrugged.
July 2, 2005
Pauline and Magda wandered the city while I managed to squeeze in a little work yesterday. I met them afterwards for another leisurely cup of coffee at an outdoor cafe. "So what do you guys want to do tonight?" I asked.
"Could we see some live music somewhere?" asked Pauline.
Magda seemed to like that idea and asked about a few venues she'd been to in the past. "Is the Knitting Factory still a good place? I've been to Bowery Ballroom, I remember that was quite good—"
“Both places are still around, but how good they are depends a lot on who's playing. I don't see much live music these days," I told them. "My ears are kind of fucked up, so, unless it's a band I'm dying to see, I don't see the point in fucking them up further."
"Would you rather not go?" asked Pauline.
"No, no. It's cool. It'd be fun. I'm just saying, I'm out of the loop when it comes to what's happening on the music scene."
We checked the Village Voice and tried to find something interesting. Although you can't always judge a band by its name, nothing sounded good to me. Pauline recognized the name of a band she used to like. "Oh, Cheater Slicks. They used to be good," she said. "I've never seen them live, but I had an album of theirs I quite liked."
They were playing at Trash, in Williamsburg. "Sure, yeah. That's easy. Trash isn't far from my apartment. We can go home, chill out for a bit, get some food, and head over there later."
The only problem I could foresee was that there were four bands on the bill, and we had no idea who was playing first. The show started at nine, which meant it didn't really start until ten, and if Cheater Slicks went last, they weren't likely to go on before one or two AM. It was impossible to know. It didn't make much difference to anyone, though. Pauline and Magda just wanted to soak up a little of the local scene.
We arrived at eleven, paid the cover, and slipped into the back room where the second band was just setting up. As I feared, Cheater Slicks was last on the bill. "Oh well," I shrugged. "We'll see how shitty this band is, and if we can handle it, we'll stay. Otherwise, there are a few other bars nearby."
Needless to say, we couldn't handle it.
Pauline is as jaded as I am. She used to be the music critic for Het Parool, a Dutch newspaper, and she's seen a lot of music in her life. Twenty-ninth generation Stooges knock-offs didn't impress either of us anymore. "They looked like they're having fun, anyway," said Pauline.
"No doubt," I agreed. "But a band like that is a lot more fun to be in than they are to listen to."
Magda, who is younger and considerably less jaded than Pauline or me, stayed to watch the band while Pauline and I escaped to the relative quiet of a table in the front room. Relative quiet, but not truly quiet. Old hair-metal bands were cranking from the front stereo, while the live band's bass thumped from the back room.
We talked like old fogies about the way things used to be, interrupting each other with "Sorry? What's that? Say again?" and concluding that things didn't used to be much different. Everything gets recycled. Pop will eat itself.
Judas Priest?! Again?
The two of us had changed, though. "I used to be interested in clothes and makeup and going out to clubs," Pauline said. "But it seems so silly now." She admitted that the edgy hipsters surrounding us used to intimidate her, but now they just seemed like kids playing dress up. I suppose that living in West Africa for a few years, occasionally hanging around Liberian rebels, will do that to a girl.
I've asked Pauline to write a post for me. "What should I write?" she asked. "Who am I writing to?"
Good question.
July 3, 2005
When I asked Pauline to write a guest post, she was more than willing to do it, but, since she doesn't have a blog of her own, she was intimidated. "What should I write?" she kept asking.
She's a journalist and writes constantly — newspaper articles, radio correspondence, AP newswire items. I thought it was funny she was having trouble writing for a humble site like this one.
"But I never use the word 'I' when I write," she explained.
"Write about your impressions of New York," I suggested. “Write about the Ivory Coast. Contrast and compare the two. Write about your stay. Be honest. You can say whatever you want to about me, I don't care. Write about what you had for lunch. It really doesn't matter. But don't be afraid to try out the word 'I' once in a while."
She typed a bit, but wasn't very happy with what she came up with. "You don't have to put any of it up," she said. "You can edit it anyway you want, or delete it altogether. It's really not very good."
"I'm gonna put up whatever you wrote because, if nothing else, it means I get a day off and don't have to come up with anything myself."
And so, Pauline writes:
I have suddenly become indecisive about everything. It takes me several minutes to decide how I want my coffee or my food. Even ordering a beer was an ordeal last night (bottle or draft, Rolling Rock or Heineken, large or small). I realize again how nice it is to live without having to be conscious that what I buy might say something about me. I have it easy. I'm pretty impressed to see how people like Jamie actually manage to deal with all these choices.
In the sandwich shop yesterday, the woman behind the food counter refused to take my order. She gave me a form I was supposed to fill in and check the box for the sandwich I wanted. So I looked for the particular sandwich I had already chosen from the menu posted above her head among the tiny print on the paper sheet, checked the box, and handed the form to her. She took out her reading glasses from her breast pocket, folded them out, and searched for a painfully long minute for my check mark.
"So you want the mushroom & sundried tomato sandwich?"
"Yes, please."
She put the paper form aside and began making the sandwich.
The New York fashion costume: low at the hip jeans, flip-flops (but not the cheap plastic ones I used to wear to the beach as a kid), tank top, visible bra straps, and oversized sunglasses.
The most striking difference between people living in this part of the world and Africans is the devices. Here, people carry mobile phones, earphones, pocket-sized cameras, and laptop computers. People don't come alone. They carry bags, they fiddle with phones, they converse with their laptops in public. Devices seem indispensable. They are also an important topic of conversation.
July 4, 2005
Pauline and Magda seem to enjoy people watching, so where better to go than Coney Island?
"There's a boardwalk with rides and arcades and all that kind of stuff," I told them, "And there's a freakshow. Actually, come to think of it, the whole thing is a freakshow."
What's billed as "The Coney Island Freakshow" doesn't really feature any freaks, per se. Not anything you wouldn't see walking around the East Village, that is. In fact, when the "Tattooed Man" started telling the audience about his "addiction to tattoos" while pulling his shirt off, I couldn't help thinking: "Shit, I've dated girls with more tattoos than that ."
In any case, what I'm trying to say is that there weren't any traditional human oddities. No Siamese twins or flipper-footed men. The performers managed to provide entertaining spectacles, regardless. Fire-breathing, sword-swallowing, a guy who hammers a nail into his nasal cavity. Shit like that. Although for the most part, the performers lacked any real showmanship, they were so earnest, you couldn't help loving them anyway. One guy even gave a speech at the end of his act about diversity and acceptance. It was touching. But also made it slightly disturbing to see a booth only a block away, urging people to "Shoot the Freak".
We watched a guy shoot paintballs at a "Real Human Target" for a few minutes before Pauline looked around the boardwalk and observed, "This is a pretty easy place to shoot the freak. All you have to do is aim the gun in the opposite direction and you're bound to hit one."
I couldn't argue.
Magda wanted to feel the ocean, so we braved the broken glass and chicken bones and walked to the shoreline. I'm exaggerating, of course. The sand was surprisingly clean. The water, on the other hand, was hard to judge. I tried to convince Pauline that, even though the water wasn't as clear as the beaches she'd grown used to in the Ivory Coast, it was still relatively clean. I'm afraid I didn't believe it enough myself, however, to be truly convincing.
Between Pauline and Magda's Dutch accents and my bad hearing, a lot of their visit has been spent with me saying, "What? Hmm? Sorry?" So when we walked into the thick of it--barkers on megaphones, music blasting from loudspeakers, and kids screaming at the top of their lungs--conversations became nearly impossible. It didn't matter— all we had to do was look into each other's faces to see we'd all had enough.
July 4, 2005
The other day, as Pauline and Magda were planning to do a little shopping, Pauline mentioned the Métro and asked which one they should take.
"Sorry?" I said.
"De Métro," she said in Dutch, and then repeated it with a French twist, "Métro."
"Oh, the subway," I said.
"Yes, of course, the subway. Do you only call it the subway, or do you sometimes call it the Métro?"
"No. No one ever calls it the Métro. It's just the subway. Or sometimes, the train."
"Yes, of course," she nodded. "Métro is a French word."
"That's right. And I'm 'merican goddammit. I don't ride no stinkin' Metro. I ride the Freedom Train."
Anyway, happy Fourth of July.
July 5, 2005
Jamie can't write anything today. I'm afraid his Dutch friends have worn him out.
He braved the human sea of frantic shoppers on the fourth of July to help me get me a pair of Levis; he patiently and gracefully let me use his computer anytime he was rather using it himself; and he managed to entertain us for a whole of six days, guiding us tirelessly through New York, pointing out this and that — in short, being the best host a friend can be.
He also came away from Coney Island with a splinter in his foot. I told him it could be a fragment of magical chicken bone, designed to get him a publisher's contract, but it hurt too much, so he took it out this morning.
He now walks with a limp.
So I am taking him to the park, and I am going to feed him some ice cream.
—Pauline
