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morning sardines
Monday, July 23 2001
Today was my first day of work in New York City. I got up out of eight, took a shower, and then walked a few blocks down to Grand Army Plaza to catch the subway. It was rush hour and I knew it would be crowded but I had no idea how crowded. The doors opened, some people got out, and then I just sort of wedged my way in shoulder-first, just barely making it inside the doors before they slid closed. So there I was, packed up against all these other people, not making eye contact, just inhaling the cool subway air perfumed with all varieties of body-odor-masking substances. Whenever we stopped at other stops, more people somehow managed to pack in. I wondered how far things would go, if people would reach such a density that I would eventually be surrounded by six other humans honey-comb style. But then the density reached a critical mass began to discourage would-be commuters on the platform, women mostly. Once we crossed under the East River and headed past Wall Street the density began to drop off substantially.
I found the NYC offices of my Santa Monica employer, but it was 9am and no one but the receptionist was in yet, so I sat around in the lobby reading a Time Magazine article about an Alzheimer's Disease study done on a group of Catholic nuns. Eventually the right people showed up and I was shown my desk, which was already equipped with my workplace computer (it having been shipped from Santa Monica). I was also given the grand tour of the New York office, which has the look of your typical cubicles & exposed services dotcom, combined with big Composite (Corinthian and Ionic) columns. My cubicle is a large one in a mostly-untraveled part of the building. I think I can get used to this.
I walked out on the street to get a sense of Chelsea, my workplace neighborhood. I bought a bagel with cream cheese from a cart and it cost precisely what Gretchen had predicted it would, seventy five cents. Further on I saw a protest of whistle-blowing janitors featuring a huge inflatable rat.
For lunch I went out with one of the few people in the New York office who had one once worked in Santa Monica. It was the first time I'd done lunch with a co-worker since back in the winter. Such lunches serve a valuable political purpose even if they're not my preferred method of worktime lunching. The first news always arrives as gossip.
Since Gretchen was somewhere watching a movie, I took Sally the Dog for a walk in Prospect Park when I came home. She took advantage of not being on her leash and snuck back to some chicken bones I'd told her she couldn't have. She also aggressively scratched some dirt in the direction of a couple of lovers on a park bench and I had to tell her no.
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