Here I am a couple days after returning from my vacation, my first-time visiting New York City and the east coast, fighting a small case of the sniffles. Because of the times we live in, I’ll also need to schedule a Covid test and hope I haven’t been spreading that around.
Two of my friends moved out to NYC earlier in the year and I had been putting off visiting them for long enough. I took a week off from work and the trip lined up well with my 29th birthday, so for me, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I even lucked out in that the weekend I visited was a small reprieve from the heat they had been having, but also just before a tropical storm came down and flooded out parts of the subway. I could tell that my friends had been having some trouble adjusting. Brendan had passed through before, during some time in politics, but the friend I’d met first, Christian, had never been. Christian had been working here in So-Cal as a nurse during the worst of the pandemic and had quit as soon as his boyfriend confirmed that he’d been hired at a legal firm in NYC and that they would be moving. Christian is a very fair skinned, almost white passing Latino, a couple facial features apparently give him away because he’s been having a hard time adjusting to Manhattan.
I can’t blame him. Although I had a great time in the city and will elaborate below, on my last day I passed through Jackson Heights. Perhaps I hadn’t noticed it as much at the restaurant I stopped to eat at on my way to the airport because I had been checking out the waiter, but at the coffee shop I smiled to be ordering in Spanish, asking about the Colombian words I didn’t understand and having the waitress translating them to a more generalized Spanish. I sat down and thought about why it was that I wanted to cry, why it was that I had stopped in Jackson Heights in the first place. I had been searching the entire trip for other Mexicans, other Latinos, desperate to find some sort of hint of what my life would be like had I grown up in NYC instead of in Santa Ana, in the greater LA metropolitan region.
On our first night out, Christian broke down crying once we were back in his apartment. The doorman had stopped us on the way in, asking us where we were headed. Once the club had closed and we’d said our goodbyes to the other friends they had made, Christian opened up and let me know that he’d been having a hard time adjusting. Life in Manhattan was too white even for him and he was not happy to be the only one of his coworkers who could speak Spanish and, as many of the patients passing through the clinic where he works couldn’t speak English, he was often asked to translate. He was most frustrated to come home and not have a partner who just understood what that feels like, who wouldn’t be able to understand without more explaining. I’ll return to Brendan later on too, later on the vacation we had our own heart to heart. When the doorman asked us where we were going, I was expecting Christian to react negatively, as he had mentioned many times during his rant on the subway that the doormen at their building always asked him where he was going, even though he was the first person on the lease, the first person they tried to call when they asked me to announce myself on one of my entrances back into the building.
We made it back up and Christian couldn’t believe what had just happened. Literally, it seemed that some sort of childhood trauma had sprung up because he kept asking, “Did that really just happen?” It was strange to be in that space, because of course it had just happened, he had complained that it would happen and then it did. I didn’t know how to create the space my friend needed in that time and that didn’t feel great. He kept repeating his question and I tried different answers, almost like a video game that was glitching and giving me the opportunity to repeat dialogue options until I got the correct one. Except, it didn’t seem there was a correct one because that moment was about so much more for my friend. Times in which he had been told by his parents that his feelings weren’t valid, times he’d been made to feel othered, times in which his class privilege failed him and he was still the subject of some racist attitudes, all of these reared up in this moment and the drinking till the clubs closed at 5 AM couldn’t have helped.
Christian and Brendan slept in the next day, but I was only able to stay in bed for a couple of hours before I got up. I went and walked down the Hudson, or up as after a while I realized I was headed inland toward upstate New York. The lack of familiarity with the geography around me was exciting. I had travelled before, but I was usually a lot more careful to know where I was going as I was in another country, or on my own, or in the wilderness. This was the first time that I could just relax, as it didn’t really matter what time I got back. In fact, I don’t think I would have thought to check where I was except a guy on Grindr told me he was over in New Jersey. I thought this was hilarious, the profile was only a mile away but he was in a different state, across a large river and might as well have been on Mars for the absolute lack of effort I was going to put into seeing him. Although I still want to visit New Jersey, it wouldn’t have been just to go find out who was behind the faceless profile hitting on me on Grindr. I walked past many older runners getting their Saturday jog in. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t seeing younger folks until I walked past centers for pre-kindergarten development, educational programs for toddlers and other such places designed to assuage the nerves of the wealthiest of parents. That’s when it hit me how affluent this corner of Manhattan was.
The first day I had mostly spent on my own while Christian and Brenden worked. I ran around Central Park, excited to be jogging through such a beautiful park, then showered and gone off to the museums. While there, a man off Grindr agreed to meet me at the museums, we chatted for some hours and ended up back at his place. The short walk from the museum to his place had us both sweaty and while I was comfortable with the knowledge that I had showered, I realized that this humidity probably lent itself to many of these conversations about hygiene on Twitter. I showered often throughout the day even at home, but when going from one air-conditioned space to another, home, car, office, car again and back home, it’s easy to stay clean. Not so walking through a city as dense as NYC. With such a dirty environment, it seemed even more critical to be as clean as possible. Perhaps too, this was a way of enforcing an implicit class divide. If you couldn’t afford to stay clean getting across the city or lived somewhere that would require you to take the subway, you’d have greater opportunities to pick up the odors of this city.
This man was even more bitter about racial issues and he described a level of entitlement that I hadn’t witnessed back in So-Cal. I wondered aloud whether it was that white people in California were barely a majority anymore and that it felt like we were better mixed here in the LA metropolitan region. He said maybe it was that, but that he couldn’t stand the white people here. His neighborhood was in Manhattan too, but he said it was a more affordable portion, still a short walk to Central Park but decidedly more normal than the spot my friends were at. I asked him if he thought too that the people here were flashier with their wealth, that perhaps NYC was so well stratified along class lines that the affluent white folks were just not used to having many people of color around them, those few who made it into their financial circles still had to behave a certain way that let the white folks feel entitled. I chuckled to myself, for all the hate the automobile gets, perhaps the car was the great equalizer back home. Yes, we were alone in our cars, but we were all stuck on the same freeways. In NYC, I imagined myself as a wealthier person and I realized that would mean I would do my best to never ride the subway.
So it was that I didn’t really have to confront the relative affluence of my friends’ neighbors until the second day. Yes, there is a level of privilege in taking off a whole week from work, flying across the country, and spending the day jogging around a park before going off to museums for cultural enrichment. The irony is not lost on me and I assumed this was part of why Christian was struggling so much. We are well off by most American’s standards and the three of us individually would do, have done, and are doing well in Greater LA. But in that corner of Manhattan, we were nothing. Those two at least, a lawyer and a nurse, could afford to live there now, but neither had grown up in it and perhaps that was something their neighbors could pick up on. For myself, I knew I’d never fit into that world, that no amount of degrees and certifications would stop me from craving to be around people who spoke Spanish, for example.
My youngest sister seems to have adapted far more in that respect, her Spanish incredibly rusty and forced. I met up with her and one of her friends on that second day, another trip to the museums. My friends were supposed to meet us as well, but by the time they had woken up and recovered, my sister and her friend, Clarice, had to go back toward Long Island. Clarice’s family was planning on taking their boats out, tying them up and enjoying some beers and fireworks. It wouldn’t be the Fourth of July until the next day, but like many other Americans, they would be celebrating ahead of time with some illegal fireworks displays. I laughed that the topic of therapy and intergenerational trauma had come up and Clarice was chiming in with her own problems. It wasn’t that I thought affluent, white people couldn’t have relatable problems, but rather I was laughing at my sister. In college, I had found all the broken Mexicans, desiring that sort of familiarity. As I’ve already mentioned, my sister has assimilated much more into the American culture, so her friends are more mixed than mine, but still as damaged it seems. I haven’t brought it up to her yet, but I wonder if she’s aware and actively looking for people who might understand her or if she’s doing it subconsciously, finding others who carry around similar familial trauma.
On the Fourth of July, we celebrated by going out Sunset Park for some dim sum, in a restaurant where less than half of the staff spoke English. This was one of the other neighborhoods I had wanted to see. Not Sunset Park specifically, but I was excited to see that it was a mostly Asian neighborhood, probably majority Chinese although I wasn’t looking carefully at the people as we walked through. Somewhere, there would be a similarly Latino neighborhood, specifically one group over the other. I hadn’t wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, or the 9/11 Memorial, but the ferry back from Sunset Park took us close to the Statue and dropped us just south of Wall Street. We ended up walking through Wall Street, taking in the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Hall and the aforementioned 9/11 Memorial, adding up to the most patriotic Fourth of July I’ve observed yet. Again, I was impressed by the density of even the cultural objects, as we were just strolling through the city and could walk to many sites of historical importance.
On the evening of the Fourth, we watched a play out in Central Park and I got a chance to spend a little more alone time with Christian and one of their friends, Manh, separately. With Christian, I let him know that I had restarted therapy as I felt that there were still things I needed to deal with from my childhood, things I had already been in therapy for, but also specifically I wanted to work on the resentment I felt now and the adjustments I was having to make as I climbed the economic ladder. I pointed out that he likely felt similar resentments and would benefit from therapy. Thankfully, he told me agreed and that he was working toward getting to a job that would give him medical benefits that he could use to take therapy. I was happy for him, glad a friend of mine was trying to take care of himself. I mentioned it often and I said it again, that I was curious to see what my life would have been like had I grown up over there and figured the best way to get a sense of that would be to find raza and ask them over drinks. I mentioned that I could see myself moving now to NYC, to specific neighborhoods, but that it would be so different as a young professional. He let me know too of other places they had considered moving to and listed a couple of places that he knew of that had more people of color, specifically more Latinos. I made note of them, letting him know that I’d like to visit and see what the guys there were like.
Manh was a trip. Even though he himself did not live in Manhattan and was not an NYC local, I felt that he gave me all the look I needed to know that I would hate to date in NYC, in Manhattan even more. Manh is a Vietnamese immigrant, working in some financial capacity for one of the many stock exchanges. He took offense when I said he was a “finance bro.” Our entire conversation that evening had felt like he was trying to convince me of things that weren’t, or making himself out to be the exact opposite of who he was. He started a conversation making some comment about his age and mine, saying that he felt old compared to me. I told him I understood it didn’t mean much coming from a younger guy not even in his 30s, but that I felt the gay community was too obsessed with age as a number. He said something else self-deprecating, and I told him he shouldn’t do that, put himself down just to compliment someone else. So he switched instead to picking on me, saying maybe I was as immature as my age suggested if I spent any time on TikTok. On that too, I asked him not to make himself feel better by trying to put me down. The topic changed to dating, I was clearly making him uncomfortable. He let me know that he didn’t have a specific type but that the most important thing was that there was “chemistry, or something instant, a physical attraction.”
“Oh yea, so like looks?” I asked.
“No! That makes me sound shallow. It’s just, take me for example, I don’t obsess over that but I try to take care of myself,” he nervously pointed at his core while he said that. Perhaps he tried to puff out his stomach to make himself look flabby, but it was quite evident to me that Manh actually cared a lot about his appearance. “Oh stop, you’re making me feel judged.”
“Well, you can say it however you’d like, but I think you should be honest about what you like and how much you take care of yourself. Hell, when people ask me, I let them know I lift often and run almost every day but that I also like to eat. I don’t expect that level of physical activity from people I date but I also wouldn’t mind it.”
“See, you’re the shallow one and you’re trying to make me sound shallow.”
“If that’s what you’ve gotten from that, that’s fine.” I really had no interest in changing his mind, but I thought the conversation very revealing. I had already commented to Brendan that I found it interesting how, the night we had stayed out till the clubs closed, Manh had told us he felt ugly and unwanted. This same man had found three separate handsome guys to make out with throughout the night. I stayed quiet then too, Christian handled that conversation while I looked for food. Still, returning to this moment and trying to continue the present conversation, I asked Manh his opinion on the Manhattanites. Sadly, he didn’t have much to say and turned the conversation to the skyline, the buildings covered by the sulfurous haze of fireworks just past.
Back in the apartment, Manh told me he didn’t want to wear the shirt we had gotten from the performance troupe out as it made him seem too skinny. I started saying maybe he should eat more but he cut me off to repeat himself and bring up a different boy. I saw that he was on Grindr then and was happy I hadn’t checked the app in a while, so my profile’s location would be somewhere north of Central Park, not visible here in the southwest corner. When I saw that he had put his phone down, I logged onto the application and blocked him as soon as his profile loaded. I was pleasantly surprised to see that all the places we wanted to go to were open and the lines made it clear that few people were staying in on the Fourth to celebrate with their family. We danced for a while, but this time I was intent on going home at the same time as Brendan, so the four of us ended up at a diner some time around midnight.
The next day I was up early again and wandered around the city for a while, looking for a good bagel and a good coffee. I had been so far unimpressed by the bagels the city had to offer. They felt more like they were such a highly esteemed item because they were fresh. In that way, they were like a fresh baguette in France, fresh bolillos and tortillas in Mexico, other fresh breads elsewhere. In other words, special because they were freshly made and regional because the local shops specialized in providing that kind of fresh bread, but otherwise unimpressive. This morning was no different and as well I was again disappointed by the coffee. I headed back to Christian and Brendan’s, noting that just this once I didn’t have to explain who I was visiting or where I was headed to the doormen. We went out for the day, to the east and west villages, saw Stonewall. Brendan told me that he felt that while people headed to LA to try and become famous Hollywood actors or social media influencers, they came to NYC, to the villages, to become artists. I laughed because I was initially excited to finally see people in NYC that looked like hipsters. I considered whether I cared if they were fake and decided no, not really, and imagined a life in the village. From there we made it out to Astoria, a Greek neighborhood.
We had dinner in Astoria and while we ate I ignored my phone. I almost regret that, as we had started dinner late and by the time we finished, most people would have been getting ready for bed, off to sleep for work the next day on Tuesday. I did wander around myself after, Christian and Brendan made their way home sooner as they had to work. I walked to the riverfront and watched people set off fireworks with the backdrop of two rivers and the skyline of Manhattan. I walked to the end of the park and then back through it toward the metro station. At one point, I heard a scooter coming up behind me on the park paths and I figured, this is it. Instead, I was surprised to see as I turned that it was a young mom and her kid on a scooter. I checked my phone, 11 PM, and figured I would really like living out here in Astoria if it was calm enough for a mom to be out riding her scooter and if the men on Grindr were telling of the guys I’d find in this neighborhood. I was trying to find a similar analogue, as Long Beach is to Los Angeles, so too was this indeterminate neighborhood to central NYC.
Before I left to Jackson Heights the next day, I chatted for a while with Brendan. I already mentioned the coffee shop, so staying on the topic of the men of Grindr, in Jackson Heights as in Astoria I was excited by the kind of guys I saw. I felt like I fit in more, for one, more visually similar to these guys than the ripped, smooth torsos of Manhattan and two, I was back to having even conversations on the apps in Spanish. I promised myself I’d come back one day on my own and actually spend time out here, adding to the ever expanding list of places I want to visit alone.
Brendan is thankfully not blind to Christian’s struggle to adapt to their move. My last morning, we finally had a little time to chat while I waited for my laundry to finish. I asked him how many of our conversations throughout the weekend he had been able to overhear. Certainly the first night, well, the first dawn, I figured he would have heard everything given how loud Christian was talking. On the specific issue of the doormen, I agreed with him that there wasn’t much he could do so long as Christian didn’t want him to interfere. I told him personally I would have already complained, would have absolutely had my white boyfriend escalate it if it was bugging me as much as it was bugging Christian. But, I also told him that I don’t know that it would bug me this much, it seemed a specific issue for Christian because he’s always been a little white passing, a little affluent enough to escape some of the attitudes people have against Latinos, and so he expected more even in Manhattan. He told me he felt frustrated though, because Christian didn’t want to explain many of these issues to him. I told him I empathized but also felt it would be better for Christian to just find some queer, brown friends and vent about these things. Most of the issues he brought up seemed more like things you got off your chest and moved on from, annoyances on the long list of things that queer, brown men will experience in life. We were discussing the racial differences and he brought up that he also felt out of place in Manhattan, himself being from a very rural area. I latched onto that, recalling an earlier conversation the three of us had had, noting that there was a certain privilege from growing up in one of the many metropolitan regions that the world centers around. I told him that was a good analogy for the ways in which we couldn’t understand each other, try as we might; Christian and I would never experience being from somewhere as rural as Brendan and would often make gaffes or speak in ways that showed some bias against him. In a similar way, Brendan would never be able to experience being Latino in the US and especially with a partner as unwilling to be open as Christian. I empathized with his frustration, stating that I saw the unfortunate way in which Christian and I were similar, shutting down sometimes rather than explaining. I told him unfortunately, Christian was holding onto that resentment, whereas I was just trying to get to a point where I was able to let go of things I couldn’t change, to make a certain peace with the racist and homophobic attitudes of my coworkers.
There was no solving the issues that Christian was having, but I hoped that Brendan would understand that there were deep issues that he couldn’t solve himself and that Christian was open to therapy. I could tell that Brendan wasn’t happy with that, but I reminded him that so much of Christian’s frustration right now stemmed from having to work as a nurse through the pandemic. Christian wanted empathy and understanding from us, he said as much, but when Christian brought it up I told him he was minimizing what he had gone through if he thought a couple of white collar professionals could relate to what he had gone through. I think by now we have all heard horror stories of nurses watching people die, telling families of Covid patients, day after day. Christian had gone through all of that but wasn’t allowing himself to grieve properly, even as he teared up while telling me this. I reminded Brendan of this again and again, because I could tell a source of his frustrations was a desire to be the one to help Christian out. I’m single, so I don’t know how much of that comes from a healthy desire to help your partner and how much of that was his own desire to be a savior. After our heart to heart, I left, still making up my mind on whether I would grab lunch with Christian or check out Jackson Heights.
I eventually made my way to the airport. Brendan and I had had a running joke before the trip that, native to So-Cal, I hadn’t experienced real weather yet. He’s absolutely right, but one habit I had already picked up due to my time in construction was to check the weather. The forecast for the day unfortunately had some troubling news and so, when we boarded the plane finally and it started to rain heavily, I was not surprised. When the flashes of lightning came through the window, I was not one of the many passengers blaming the airline for the thunderstorm. We took off 6 hours later than we were supposed to. Many hours later, two additional flights, I finally touched down in Long Beach and walked out, enjoying the dryer heat although tired and dazed. I had used points for my flights, so that meant accepting some less than stellar routes there and back. Once home though, I showered and went to bed, happy to have visited New York City and wanting to return in the fall, but happier still to have found a place for now that I was comfortable in.