Walking NYC at night

I used to walk Manhattan at night, in fact all thru the night till after midnight. I would take the bus from Rutherford NJ and arrive at the Port Authority transportation depot in about an hour. Although Rutherford was only 8 miles away from Manhattan, if you did not get an express bus you were obliged to take the local bus route, which wound its way thru various town, ultimately reaching Secaucus or Union City before proceeding into NYC via the Lincoln Tunnel, the construction of which I always intended to study one day; I found it amazing that the NJ Transit bus I was on, as well as all of the other vehicles, both cars and trucks of various shapes and sizes, would somehow traverse the water by way of a tunnel that took them from an urban NJ setting and, within the space of a few minutes, emerge into the heart of the Manhattan district. I never ceased to marvel at the feat of engineering that the Lincoln Tunnel represented: "Surely," I said to myself, "the air pressure must be regulated in such a way that everything goes smoothly" -- but I found myself unable to control my anxiety at those times when, for reasons unbeknownst to me or my fellow passengers, out progress would come to a halt while in the tunnel itself, when everything went black around us and the lights in the bus came on. However, whatever the cause of a momentary stoppage, if indeed there was one, the bus always emerged from the tunnel and proceeded up the ramp to the Port Authority building. In 2003 I was acquainted with an orthodox Jew from Brooklyn named Gedaliah, who was part of the management at the Manhattan Life Insurance company; he lived in Brooklyn (I believe) and he prided himself on the fact that he had never been inside the Port Authority itself, but I understand that to be just an example of the inherent prejudice New Yorkers have for those who reside out-of-state, the "bridges-and-tunnel" people was the derisive epithet used against commuters. Although I had originally wanted to live in New York for a time, I now found it way too crowded for me, and preferred the environs of Bergen County, still vastly more urban than Thiells NY, where I grew up, whereas Rutherford had a "city" feel to it without the sense of overweening claustrophobia that prevailed in a town dominated by skyscrapers. I felt that had no idea what they were missing out on, the joys of comparatively "country" living to be had from residing in NJ, which to my mind was a world with more natural features and comforts, not having to go to park to see grass and trees, for instance. ======================================================== Anyhow, I would spend my days in NJ and my evenings in NYC. I would catch a NJ Transit bus at 4 PM, get into Manhattan at about 5 PM, at would soon find myself on 42nd Street, heading east toward Broadway. At Broadway I would turn South and walk all the way to (usually) Canal Street, then walk east to Fifth Avenue, then head north to 57th Street, walking my way past the Plaza Hotel and Trump Tower, or sometimes as far as Central Park South, where I imagined that perhaps someday I would have a girlfriend with me that I could take a carriage ride thru the park with, then I would turn back towards where I came from, the West Side of town. I rarely, or I should say almost never, went east of 5th Avenue. As I plodded those streets, I pondered my place in life, what I wanted to be and who I thought I should become. Some of the nights I walked the streets of Manhattan was during the time immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, somehow, thru a social worker I was in contact with, I had received a six-month period of rental assistance as a grant thru a head injury fund; there was also work assistance, but my case manager seemed uninterested in working with me, plus the fact that I was too scared to drive to his office, as my vision was horrible and the roads were so confusing that the one time I did go and meet him, I got stopped by a police car for making a right where it said "No Right Turn" and received a ticket for the violation. ======================================================== One day at the Nat Sherman smoke shop I used to frequent I met a young Indian fellow who spoke with confidence and seemed to be an entrepreneur, as he kept repeating "direct to air dot com" like a mantra. He said his name was Jay and he was a self-made man from California and visiting New York for the first time and although he was only twenty years old, he claimed to a multi-millionaire. We hit it off immediately and spent the day together, walking all the way from 42nd Street to the WTC site, which was still papered over with "missing person" posters. He wanted to see for himself where the tragedy took place, I believe he may have known somebody who was killed in one of the towers; Jay and I mourned for his friend. We strode thru the crowd, arms over each other's shoulders. We made a strange pair and people thought we were undercover police. About this time I let him know that I had attended Bard College and he replied, "What a remarkable coincidence! My sister is studying at Bard College right now, in fact she's in the city right now and I'm going to see her tonight." However, he didn't mean she was studying at Bard in upstate New York, but at one of Bard's satellite campuses in Manhattan. We split up and made plans to meet again at Nat Sherman's at 4 PM. When I arrived at Nat's at 6 that evening, I saw a woman showing him around the humidor as, apparently, he had reserved a space for his personal cigars collections. Only the wealthiest and most spendthrift examples of Nat's clientele took these steps. Needless to say, I was impressed by what seemed like his financial acumen. We smoked cigars (I smoke cigarettes) at Nat Sherman's for awhile, and then he wanted to go to another smoke shop he had heard about which was downtown, he said. We eventually made our way down to the West Village, where he let me know his philosophy of life: "Nothing can happen to you, you have to get over your fears," he said to me, and sat down in the street, on the pavement before a moving car. I held my breath as the car zoomed into the other lane, avoiding Jay, who got up and dusted himself off with a sweep of his hand. "See," he said, "I'm alright." We found the place we were looking for, it was a hookah shop where people gather around a water pipe to smoke tobacco and blow smoke. I had never seen one before or since that time, in fact. Jay and I were introduced to a number of people who had also come to this establishment to smoke the hookah. A not very attractive girl said she had just gotten out of a relationship with a contortionist, meaning a man who could bend his body in a variety of ways. Jay introduced me as a money-manager. All were suitable impressed. We left there and eventually made it to the dorm where his sister was living. She yelled at Jay for quiet some time. Apparently he still lived with his mother and was less than fully independent. Such is life.