New York Narrative

Chris arrived in New York and stared with Iowa eyes at the tallest buildings he’d ever seen. The stalks and stems off all the mirrored glass building shocked and overwhelmed him, so when he visited his first bar and it happened to be drag queen night,?he had to stay for a drink.

At the counter, he asked for a Heineken and was ogled by two separate men/women from the other side of the bar. The one had dark skin and a blonde wig that was tilted to one side. He seemed flushed with whisky and kept poking a straw at the crease in his lips. As soon as his Heineken arrived he turned to walk back to a quite corner where he could observe the crazy scene before him, but he was stopped dead in his tracks.

The very same transvestite, who now he could see wore smeared red lipstick and had the speckled mustache of a forty year old man, swayed in front of Chris. His friend, skinny and freckled in his black skirt and leather top belched. Then the mustached drag queen lifted his skirt and said, You like balls?

Chris pushed his way around him, spilling some of the Heineken down the front of his shirt. He got to the table and?suddenly turned to make his way out of the bar.

I’m getting out of here. Now!

On the way out the door, the sloshed transvestite says to his partner, I guess he didn’t. Then he laughed. Chris wanted to run away from there so fast.

Everyone has one of these stories. You have to pee. You don?t know where to go. You’re in a foreign city or country even and you can’t figure out where to take that massive leak. This happened to me one day in a Greenwiche Village, New York.

My girlfriend and I made the trip to New York a priority that year. She wanted to visit NYU, because her old roommate was studying there and I wanted to see what the city was like. I always dreamed of moving there, from the hobbit hole I called home in Alabama.

That day we walked everywhere, looking at dresses, shoes, pants, stereos, fancy restaurants, street performers, bums, businessmen, all sorts really. When I had the natural urge to take a leak, we couldn’t find a public restroom. It seemed like we were looking forever. I knew some of the small storefront properties probably had one, but for some reason we didn’t have any money on us. I thought she had my wallet when we left the hotel room and she thought I had picked it up. She had two dollars in change from a cab fare the night before. The reason I say this most of the stores required you to purchase something in order to use the restroom.

Finally it became unbearable and we went into a vinyl record shop and I petitioned the front kid to let me use the bathroom, which he first began saying they didn’t have but after I started to unzip you get the picture. I basically threatened to pee on his floor if he didn’t let me use his restroom. I know it was childish, but I felt like being brazen at the moment, and, well, I really had to go. We’ve all been there, I know.