22nd December 2016, arriving in New
York
The taxi ride from the JFK airport to Harlem was a
fucking nightmare. We played Tetris with the cases until we could make
them all fit, then wedged ourselves in amongst our carryon, neck pillows and
handbags…jammed together like sardines. But not Captain Fantastic, he
rode gunshot with his new trilby hat perched on his head like an advertisement
to all of New
York of
his coolness. It was late and we just wanted to get to the apartment so
we were mostly silent.
The cab driver kept accelerating and braking constantly,
drifting between lanes and we were all jerking about in the car, looking for
all intents and purposes like we were on a theme park ride. I was in the
middle so I couldn’t even hold onto the Jesus bar but I had my hands on the
roof holding me steady because I was sure death was imminent. He took the
Van Wyck expressway. A Seinfeld episode springs to mind with George
yelling at Kramer “not the Van
Wyck, it’s a suicide mission!”
After ten minutes of this shit, we started glaring at the
knob driving the vehicle with an intensity that should have made his head
throb; should have at least made the fucker aware of his nightmare
driving. The Captain, sitting in the front seat, glared at the guy like
he was a Martian and said rather loudly, “...are you on the drink, mate?”
The cab driver, who was as Asian as fuck, shook his head and mumbled something
incoherent to us but The Captain informed me later he’d said he was tired and
had done back-to-back shifts. Are you fucking kidding me?
We really could have died at the hands of this tool.
He continued to drive like an incompetent idiot, with all
of us jerking about in the cabin and the people unfortunate enough to share the
road with us beeping their horns and throwing up their hands in
frustration. I wanted to wind down a window and scream at them “I know, he’s
fucking crazy!” but instead, I just slunk down in my seat and prayed for swift
and safe passage to the apartment. Then, he turned to The Captain and asked “do you know how to get there?” The Captain started laughing his you’re a fucking idiot laugh, loudly, and said, “We’re from
Australia, mate.” His mirth made me nervous because Captain Fantastic
doesn’t suffer fools. I didn’t know what is going to come out of his
mouth because anything can happen when he laughs like that but mercifully, he
went silent, chuckling to himself like he was suddenly deranged.
Meanwhile, I was trying to call ahead to Tracey, the
poor girl waiting for us at the apartment who had been sitting there for hours
awaiting our delayed flights and death defying taxi experience so she could
show us around and explain shit to us and then go home and live her own
life. We finally pulled up outside a brownstone apartment and
I was sure I had just been transported to a movie set – it was exactly how I
imagine New York apartments to look. The Captain exited the vehicle
and grinned at us, “Welcome to the hood,” he said…we all groaned in unison.
We found out that we had to lug those giant cases that weighed a bomb up
numerous flights of stairs to the second floor. Miss Marvellous was
silently cursing her snow globe addiction because they made for heavy
lifting. We were eager to get inside and start chillaxing so we just got
to it. Inside the apartment was even better that we imagined…we had
separate rooms and the kids had separate beds in their own room.
Everybody was doing their happy dance. The temperature was comfortable
and not an oven, and there was a laundry and a TV with cable and everything! The
people on the ground floor must have been sick of hearing the elephants on the
second floor doing a jig…except the Captain, he’s too cool to dance, he told us
to stop being weird. Fun sucker! Tracey explained the ins and outs
of a duck's arse to us and we nodded mutely. She was finally allowed to
leave.
23rd December 2016– Day 1 in New
York City
We decided to walk the few paces outside of our apartment
to the subway and catch a train to Central
Park to
explore the great city of New York. We were standing on the train because
all of the seats were taken. Nobody spoke, we were all just silently
standing and out of nowhere, something rolled across the floor and Miss
Marvellous shot out a foot to halt its trajectory with her foot. First
day in New
York and
we encounter a crack pipe on the subway. Excellent!
The overwhelming smell around Central
Park is
horse shit. Horse drawn carriages were everywhere and the air was
permeated with the scent of their arses! A build-up of ice hugged the
corners of the pathways and I was excited that we might actually get some snow
while we were there. It is here, for the first time ever, we see
squirrels. Miss Marvellous and I almost lost our minds. They are so
freakin’ cute I couldn’t stop squeaking and clutching my balled fists under my
chin in an effort to control my excitement at their cuteness. After five
seconds of viewing this behaviour, the boys were bored and keen to move on but
Miss Marvellous had her long-range lens out and was snapping photos of these
charming creatures like they were modelling for Vogue! Squirrels are
tiny, adorable and twitchy and every animation ever created about them is
delightfully accurate. A woman standing beside me looked pointedly at me
like I’d lost my mind (which I most certainly had) and said “you act like you’ve
never seen a squirrel before.” My eyes were crimped as I excitedly
squeaked, “I haven’t, we’re from Australia!” She was not impressed so we
had to fuck off before we piss the locals off.
As we were walking around, taking in the sites we saw ice
skaters on the Donald Trump rink, we saw a frozen lake and discovered 5th Avenue, 7th Avenue and 8th Avenue. We walked past Trump Tower and
The Rockefeller Centre and saw more ice skaters there. We visited Times
Square , which is busy, bright, lit up and
teaming with tourists. A long queue snaked around the square and we found
out later they were for last minute tickets for live theatre shows.
We wandered through The Public Library of New York and it
was awesome. The architecture and art that adorns the walls are
breathtaking as is the magnificent ceiling in the Rose Reading room. It
felt odd to see people actually reading and studying in there but it is, of
course, a working public library. That night we dined at The Irish Pub
and got charged a service fee to have someone walk our drinks over from the bar
a few paces to our table. No tip for you, fuckers!
24th December 2016– Christmas Eve – Day 2 New
York City
We went shopping like bargain hungry tourists. Miss
Marvellous spent an eternity in Forever 21 and purchased a stupid number of
jackets…like her wardrobe isn’t chock full and suffocating in her
obsessions! Every time we entered a department store (or any store), we
had to remove layers. Inside the shops the air was stuffy and warm, made
so by heaters and sheer body mass of the tourists who slowly walked around in
herds. During one of the de-robing occasions, I lost my favourite winter
hat and had to purchase a replacement from a street vendor that was itchy and
scratchy and stood up on my head like a snowman’s erect dick. Every time
the kids walked past me from this point forward, they bopped the pompom on the
top of my head and said “boop!” Kids are annoying shits! How long
did they think that was going to last before I channelled my inner pterodactyl
and screeched at them to stop already?
We went into Macey’s and I felt like baaing like a sheep
as we got shuffled along by the crowds. I was waiting for the sheep dogs
to start bouncing on our heads. I had removed my coat, hat and gloves and
was still feeling hot enough to roast a fucking duck with my tits when I
realised I was in the middle of a hot flush. Jesus, fuck I was hot.
My face was clammy and my hair was stuck to my face like I’d just walked out of
a sauna. I stripped down to my singlet top and looked like a pack-horse
carrying all of my bundled clothes around. It took half an hour of
walking around the streets of New York City in 2◦C for my core temperature to
slowly drop enough for it to feel like my head wasn’t going to blow off my
shoulders with steam. The Captain curled his lip at me, Billy Idol style,
and reported that I looked ridiculous. In my ire at being ridiculed for
my aging body’s response to menopause, I resorted to my teenage offspring’s
vernacular and retorted, “your face is ridiculous!”
Boy Wonder discovered the NBA store and went absolutely
nuts buying shoes for a sport he loves but doesn’t play. We all refrained
from any line of questioning that would bring this to the fore and left him
alone to spend his own money how he saw fit. As we were making our way
back towards the subway, the Captain spied a shoe store which was packed to the
rafters due to a sale, and tried on some pretty funky shoes. My eyebrows
floated somewhere near my hairline but I kept my mouth firmly closed and my
judgement to myself. Whilst I was wandering around waiting for him to finally grow a set and choose a pair, I found
a devine pair of ankle boots! The first person to help me was an arrogant
little upstart so I found another of the young guys and asked him for
help. He was adorable. I made sure they got his name at the
registers for my sale and not the little shit with an attitude bigger than his
dick. That night we dined on local cuisine at The Grange in Harlem …in
the ‘hood’, as The Captain kept announcing, loudly enough for us to look around
us to ensure we wouldn’t get knifed by a local for the Honky with a smart mouth.
25th December 2016 – Christmas Day – Day 3 New
York
Christmas Day dawned bright and sunny and bloody
chilly. We had no gifts for kids as we’d already shared our gifts back
home at the sneaky Christmas before we left on this holiday (which was the
biggest present of all). Part of the Christmas Day celebrations involved
our first NBA Game (another of the Christmas gifts) which saw The New York
Knicks vs The Boston Celtics at Madison Square Gardens .
This was a fabulous way to spend our Christmas Day. We had never been to
a basketball game at all let alone a major one and on Christmas Day, a most
coveted game. The atmosphere was thrilling. They had the dancers
(hot dancers according to The Captain who’s eyesight was suddenly 20/20)
shooting t-shirts into the crown with giant pump guns but since we were up in
the nosebleed area, only a fucking bazooka would have sent one our way, but it
was exciting all the same. A whole lot of excitement happened in the last
quarter with the scores even with twelve seconds to go…only to have the Boston Celtics
win by five points in the last few seconds of the game. A very exciting
couple of hours that inflated the boys up to total buoyancy and even got an ‘I
loved it’ from the sport intolerant Miss Marvellous.
After the game, we made our way to Times
Square in
search of facilities. My feet were protesting about being shoved in brand
new shoes that hadn’t been worn in (yes, I know the rules but it was Christmas
Day people!), all in the name of fashion. The Captain told us to sit in
Starbucks while he queued for tickets to a Broadway show. We all gave him
our recommendations but a couple of hours later he came back with some show
called “not that Jewish” with Monica Piper. Who the fuck is she?
Why would I want to go see this? I’d never bloody heard of it or her but
I shoved my disgruntled non-appreciation of his efforts deep down until I’d
actually been to the show – reserving my judgement until then. I thought
Boy Wonder was going to absolutely hate the show and groan through the whole
thing but what the hell do I know? He thought it was great. Who are
you and what have you done with my son?
The show was really funny. It turns out Monica
Piper was one of the writers on The Rugrats, Mad About You, The Wild
Thornberrys, The Mr Men Show and Rosanne. Okay, perhaps it was wise of me
to stow my judgement. That night we dined at a bar called Harlem
Public. Merry Christmas from New York, fuckers!
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