These Little Town Blues

Yankee Stadium, September 2005

So, the Yankees totally whomped on the Phillies tonight, did you hear? World Series, guts and glory, yadda yadda. It was really exciting though, wasn't it?

Thanks to Derek Jeter my old home town has been on my brain lately. Shoot, there's just something about Derek Jeter, you know? He just looks like Brooklyn to me. Short cropped hair, thick neck, Nobody's The Boss Of Me attitude . . . you know? Totally Brooklyn. And I'm not talking your hipster namby-pamby Williamsburg Brooklyn, I'm talking Red Hook, dingy, Coney Island Brooklyn. You know, the good kind.

And I know that not everybody loves the Yankees. Alex Muir told me the other day that he thought A-Rod was the most disgusting person on the planet! It's true, he said that! Look, it's not our fault we're Yankees fans. It was kind of decided for us, like fate. I mean, you live in New York and you've got your Mets, you've got your Yankees, you get to pick. We could just have easily gone the other way, except that I got tickets to a Yankees game for five bucks on the Holbsinator's birthday, and it was either ten bucks to see a baseball game or two hundred bucks to see Phantom, and honestly, I mean, tell me I didn't make the right decision, really.

So I can tell you from experience that there really is nothing better than a field full of pinstripes on a weekday night with a ten-dollar hot dog piled high with sauerkraut. I can tell you from experience that drunk Yankees fans are about the epitome of classy rowdiness. I can tell you this cause I was there, but you know the moment when Old Blue Eyes pipes in over the speaker at the end of the baseball game? It really is that good. You really do feel like you can make it anywhere. That's not my fault! It just happened. And then you trudge over to the subway station, wait an hour and half for your turn to pack into the train like sardines so you can smell other people's armpits all the way from The Bronx to Brooklyn. Oh but it's grand!

Also, did you know the pipe organ plays songs from Fiddler On The Roof before the games start? Isn't that delightfully weird?

Yankee Stadium, September 2005

Somebody once asked me what my favorite thing about living in New York was. I will tell you what, that is a big question. So I sat myself down and opened up the part of my brain where I keep all my memories (next to the part of my brain that registers when my elbows itch, I figure). In the first memory that came to me I knew the answer already.

It was our first night as New Yorkers. We were unloading our suitcases from the taxi in front of our hotel on Church Street. The hotel is taller than your eyes can see and across the street looms Ground Zero, empty like a heartache. The streets are crowded with tourists, suit types from Wall Street, and men selling knock-offs. Rolexrolexrolex they call. I was juggling three heavy suitcases and trying to pay the driver when a homeless man approached me offering to carry my bags into the hotel lobby in exchange for forty bucks. And in that moment all of the noises and smells and feelings were crashing in on me and I felt like I was about to be swallowed whole. I was so small. And it smelled really, really bad. So, I did what anybody would do. I cried.

Trying to get anywhere in New York is like going into battle. The streets are packed, the people are rude, the pace is fast. If you aren't ready for it it will knock you over. My first few days in New York I let myself feel overwhelmed and afraid. I let myself feel small and powerless. I let the people intimidate me and when I couldn't remember which street came after Houston I let myself lose my nerve. And then one day I decided to let myself thrive. And that's when I learned that I could make it anywhere.

In New York I learned that I can tame the biggest beast. My own two feet powered my destiny. At night when I came home to my teeny apartment my feet were filthy with street. I went to bed thoroughly exhausted. My legs would seize up in cramps while I slept, my muscles aching from exertion. Every morning the city would hand me the world on a plate, if I could take it. And I took it. And I felt like I take anything you got. (I think this is why New Yorkers are so rude. New Yorkers? New Yorkers think they are hot stuff.)

Let me tell you what, though. I once stripped down to my skivvies in a room full of models at a designer sample sale in SoHo. Now, in a situation like that you have a choice. You can cower in the corner with your short flabby thighs feeling ugly and trollish, or you can feel empowered. I walked out of that sale a braver woman, my friends, and with a really hot pair of Rock & Republics 70% off.

And that is why I love those disgusting Yankees. Because I have never felt tall in my life, but in New York, in New York I was a sky scraper.

(Also, but Alex Rodriguez has a really fantastic butt.)