Last weekend, Lance and I took a bus up to New York City. I used to think I wanted to live in New York, but now I know that I could never do it. I’m so glad Jesus spared me by letting us move here to DC and just visit the City on the weekends. I have too much of a need for sleep, and FOOD. Alcohol cannot be my only substance with which to live, IMAGINE THAT. Apart from having only two meals and 4 hours of sleep over the entire weekend, it was fun to be in the City again. New York is really quite lovely at Christmas time.
We arrive at 2:30 pm at Penn Station. We’ve decided to splurge and stay in a hotel instead kicking Lance’s brother Duane out of his bed again, so we go to check in. The line is OUT THE DOOR to check in. We stand in line for an hour, during which I have to pee, so I go find the concierge and ask where the restroom is. He tells me “You need a room key.” I say “I don’t have one, because my husband is checking us in and there’s a huge line…” He looks extremely disbelieving. I wait. Finally, he says “You’re married!?” I blink. That’s the part of this story he can’t believe? “Yes…” I say. “You’re WAY too young to be married!” he exclaims. I blink again. I really have to pee and I’m not too patient with this little interview. “Look,” I say, and take off my left mitten. I flash the ring at him. He silently slides the key across the desk to me, eyes wide as dinner plates. When I finish emptying my bladder and return to the line, Lance is still standing in the exact same place I left him. Damn. He and Duane (who has patiently come with us during this little excursion) are geeking out over Duane’s iPhone.
When we finally, FINALLY check in, we decide to get a late lunch. After an iPhone application tells us what we want to eat, we consult the all-knowing iPhone so we can find out the best way to get there. It is nice; we spend a long time over lunch and don’t leave the restaurant until it’s dark and we’ve drunk way too much sangria. Lance wants to see the Rockefeller tree; I want to see a show. So we wind our way down to 5th Avenue and squeeze through the hundred million or so people that ALSO want to see the tree. We make it out alive, amazingly, and Duane leaves us at TKTS, where we don’t find tickets for anything we particularly want to see. We temporarily lose all ability to reason and forget that hello it’s Christmas, which is the time for getting OTHER people gifts, not just our selfish selves, and robotically, having no control you see, Lance pulls out his wallet and buys us two tickets (8th row, center, sir, thank you, I have no control over this statement I am making right now) to THE LION KING!! Unshaven (Lance) and wearing day-old make up (me) and donning jeans and sweatshirts (both of us), we mummy-walk into the theater. I am ecstatic, but also freaking out. I fret the whole time we are drinking wine in the lobby. I fret the entire way to our perfect seats. I fret as I look at the playbill. I fret as the lights go out. Then an African chant rings out somewhere above my head and the little kid in front of me turns and points, his face illuminated by the spot light, wearing a look of utter joy and amazement. And my fretting stops. I suddenly realize we could not have spent our money on a better item.
The Lion King is by far the best part of the trip. It’s so spectacular that I can’t believe I’m alive and I’m suddenly very aware of tingling in my fingertips, toes, etc. I don’t blink through the entire performance. A life-sized elephant comes in through the back and touches our legs. Giraffes on stilts weave expertly between puppet cheetahs, antelopes, birds. At the end of the first song I’m in tears, and I look over at Lance and the two of us, weeping like little girls, have Lion King Tourette’s and are sobbing things like “The Circle of Life!!! It really DOES move us all!!!” I continue to weep through the production and I can’t help thinking about my faith and how much I love the Father and how peaceful I feel knowing that He’s always with me.
After the show, we walk back to our hotel. Lance draws the curtains to block out the sparkly City so we can um… celebrate. After about an hour, I peel myself away from my husband and the sheets and walk over to the bathroom, which is by the door. And the door is OPEN! Like, wide open, like, holy shit, how did we miss this? We look at each other and I see the same thoughts running through his head that are running through mine: How loud were we being? then the realization: Pretty loud. Then: What if someone had COME IN!? Naked, I silently close the door. “Well,” I say to Lance, who is beginning to blush. “It’s a good thing we closed the curtains!”
We pull on clothes and metro out to a party with Duane and some of his friends, where I am the only woman and Lance is the only straight man in the room. I think gay men are always fascinated by Lance because he is completely comfortable in their presence. He isn’t trying to prove anything; he has no guard up or anything. It’s fun to watch him interact with Duane’s friends, because they seem amazed and keep asking him questions. We have a good time drinking wine and eating bits of cheese, talking about shoes, and playing with Lucky, the birthday boy’s miniature dachshund. Then at 3 am, when the rest of the party men decide to go to a bar, we decide to go back to the hotel. We collapse, exhausted, and realize we’ve only eaten one meal all day but it’s too late to worry about it now.
The next morning, we wake up groggy, shower, pack, and check out of the hotel. Our bus back to DC isn’t until 8 pm, so we decide to store our bags ($4 per bag at the hotel “luggage room”). Half an hour later, we’re out in the cold sunlight on the way to a bakery to get some breakfast. We decide we want to just walk around some more and not spend money today, so we mosey around the City shopping and looking at the fabulously decked-out store windows. We find a church market and buy some apple cider and costume jewelry. We wander around until we’re hungry again, and meet up with Duane for brunch. For the second day in a row, we stay until it’s dark, and it ends up being our one and only meal of the day (unless you count the muffin and coffee we had this morning… I don’t). Then we shop some more. It’s a very pleasant day… then the madness begins.
It turns out that New York loves us and does not want us to leave. New York has bent its knees and is holding us by the hands, begging us to stay.
The train back to Penn Station is late. We’re waiting, waiting, waiting… then we realize we’re on the wrong platform. Slightly nervous about the time, we move to the right platform and the train whooshes us off. We mall-walk to our hotel from the subway stop to pick up the bags we stored. We both need to pee, but figure we’ll just go after picking up our bags. We rush downstairs to the luggage room, and the door is locked. Lance is going “oh no… oh no…” and I’m yelling things that are definitely not very nice, and wriggling the door handle even though I know it’s locked and that never works, not even in the movies. Really panicking about time now, we run back upstairs and to the concierge desk. “Bags… locked… need… key…” we pant, and he says “Ah yes, I will slowly help you. Like a snail I will move over here to open the drawer. Like a turtle I will realize the key is not here. Like a sloth I will look around, wondering where it could be.” This continues… and I begin drumming my fingertips on the desk to show him how angry and impatient I am. He blinks at me and I stare him down. “Do you have a key to the bathroom?” I ask him. As long as he is being slovenly at least I can pee. He gives me a plastic card key and says he’ll meet us with the luggage room key, and we run back downstairs. The key doesn’t work. Lance runs back upstairs to urge Sloth Concierge to hurry up. I sit. I wait. 15 minutes go by, in which time I have plucked out all of my eyelashes. I call Lance. “WHAT THE HELL!” I say into the phone. “I KNOW!” he says back. After flying cars have been invented and our hair has gone white, we have our bags and run, flat out, to the bus station. We load our bags and grab seats… the bus is already mostly full. I beg the bus driver to let us go in to the station bathroom and not drive away, and he consents.
It’s the worst bus ride I’ve ever experienced. The bus driver is obnoxious and loud, and keeps coming in on the microphone to say inappropriate things. For instance, two or three times he tells us “Rule numba one on mah bus is you do naht do a numba two on my bus. If you need to do a numba two, you bettah not do so on mah bus.” Then he turns off all the reading lights and forces us to watch Rush Hour II and Blue Streak (another cop movie featuring the INSPIRED Martin Lawrence). I am so mad about this, because I was looking forward to continuing this totally engrossing book I’m reading called The Time Traveler’s Wife. If you have not read this book, RUN, DO NOT WALK to the nearest bookstore and buy it immediately. Anyway, finally we are in DC after a grueling trip and we get a mumbling-to-himself taxi driver to take us home. It’s 2 am.
I realize as I’m brushing my teeth, zombie-like, that it feels really good to be home. I am crawling into my soft bed and thinking “our bed is so much better than that hotel bed” and squeezing my kitty, who is purring on my lap. I realize how blessed I am. I kiss the hubbs and pass out on his chest. I love New York, I really do, but thank God I’m back in DC.
