The Sixth Station(5)

2





Outside I became part of a sea of people filling Forty-eighth Street, busting out from the police barricades erected to keep them in. Parking was suspended and traffic banned on the avenues, with the exception of single lanes for emergency vehicles between Twenty-third and Fifty-seventh Streets, to discourage the protestors from coming in.

Right, good luck with that.

There were countless protestors even on my street, which is several blocks from the United Nations. It looked like pickpocket paradise—more crowded than Times Square on New Year’s Eve, suffocating even on this crisp day.

The NYPD had recruited cops from all over as well as whatever U.S. soldiers could be spared from fighting on the fronts in the endless wars on terrorism. They were manning the metal detectors set up all over the city.

The plan had been to keep demonstrators at the west side docks (ben Yusef’s supporters up toward the Intrepid Museum, and his detractors downtown at Chelsea Piers) and, failing that, on Tenth and Eleventh Avenues—twelve full blocks away from the UN. When the crowd projection swelled to millions, that plan went out the window and U.S. President Lydia Wallingford-Hudson decided that the best course of action was for the cops, soldiers, and security forces to take a Gandhian approach of passive resistance—unless and until the paid troublemakers and rabble-rousers acted up.

That didn’t stop the crowds from pushing, yelling, and smelling, however. It just stopped the uniforms from pushing back. The cops and soldiers were so polite, I noticed that they were saying things like, “Excuse me sir, but I would appreciate it if you’d put your backpack on this screening device, please.” What city was I in?

Not known for my patience, I didn’t even attempt to get into the passive resistance groove. In fact, I felt trapped inside the rudeness, the pushing, the incessant pressing against my body, the constant shoving of my bag against my side; the arms, the legs that were everywhere, refusing to allow for any kind of personal space. I could smell the onions on the fat lady’s breath next to me. Somewhere cigar breath; elsewhere the unavoidable body odors from a thousand different cultures—curry seeping from the pores of some, garlic oozing out of others, and everyone was sweating despite the sixty-eight-degree temperature.

With an unbelievable effort, I pushed and shoved like all the other people who had to be there that day for whatever reasons, and managed to skirt over to the outer edge of the street on the south side.

Being on that side, albeit shoved up against the barricades, gave me a good view of the sidewalk, where the vendors were hawking everything from T-shirts with ben Yusef’s picture emblazoned on the front baring slogans like “King of the Terrorists” and “King of the News,” to the obscene, “He Made a Killing in New York!” Others were selling flags, balloons, and other totally inappropriate items for an occasion that was supposed to be so solemn.

It seemed like foods from every nation were being sold from carts whose smells assaulted and invigorated my senses: Thai satay, peppers-sausage-onions, steaming hot dogs, and toasted soft pretzels that could always bring me back to my first autumn in New York as cub reporter, when I’d left the comfort of my parents’ Long Island row house to make it “on my own” all of thirty-five miles away.

Despite being 1960s hippies who were still true believers in peace, love, and granola, they acted like overly protective suburbanites when it came to my brother and me, as they went about saving the world—my dad as head of a NYC homeless organization, and my mom as a pediatrician in a clinic.

When I moved out of the first apartment I’d had with roommates in the city and took a studio in the Village on my own, they worried I’d be lonely and alone at best, and murdered by an intruder at worst.

Despite their terror, I had not been murdered by a crazed serial killer/intruder, nor had “alone” ever been my problem. Except for when I was out of work, I always felt, if anything, that my life was too crowded. There was always another story, never a shortage of interesting friends and interested men. No one like Donald, of course, but I suspected that he was my excuse for not getting involved with anyone who might actually be available. I wanted my freedom to rush to a story wherever there was one.

Now I was in it again full force—in a massive mess of humanity. And I loved it.

But even more overwhelming than the smell and sight and push of the crowd was the din. The Super Bowl, the World Series, and the World Cup at the same time. It seemed that the very air had turned solid with sound—filled with deafening chants, curses, and complaints.

Over all of that was the ever-present blast of police-car sirens, ear-shattering blasts when they were near you. I made a mental note to never have a drink again as long as I lived.