I’ve done it on the subway and at the Museum of Modern Art, in Prospect Park, Tompkins Square Park and leaning against the locked gate of Gramercy Park.
If you live in New York, you’re bound to end up crying in public eventually; there just aren’t enough private places. Just the other day I saw someone doing it on West 12th Street. A tall woman in a beret, with a curtain of reddish hair, she had tears streaming down her cheeks. She wasn’t on the phone, wasn’t accompanied by a man, or a mom or even a dog. She wasn’t beautiful, the way a lot of people in New York are, but I couldn’t look away.
”Look at Me, I’m Crying - NYTimes (via rachelinbrooklyn)
{From the draft file … }
It isn’t just that there aren’t enough private places. In New York, you are inches from numerous people most of the time. The routines of daily life — getting to work, eating, exercising, running errands — all involve being physically close to lot of strangers.
As a defense to all that closeness, New York teaches you to create a bubble for yourself. When I step off an airplane in NYC, the change is immediate. (Absent conscious attempts to behave differently) I revert from curiously engaging with my surroundings to zipping through, eyes straight ahead, anticipating and reacting to the next obstacle in my path. It’s what distinguishes the tourists from the New Yorkers. Go to Times Square and observe; you’ll spot the New Yorkers by their apparent obliviousness to anything but people and objects getting in their way.
And because of that bubble, New York rids you of shame. The boundary between what you would do in private and what you would do in public blurs. You feel freedom to do things in public that you might have previously reserved mostly for private — crying, applying makeup, kissing. Safe in your bubble, it’s almost like no one sees or hears.
And so, rid of shame, when, while waiting for your order at Five Guys in the middle of Manhattan on a Saturday evening, you learn that your grandmother will likely die in the next few days, you will tear up at Five Guys in the middle of Manhattan on a Saturday evening.
And when the tears prompt an untapped well of emotion about your grandma’s passing, you will allow the tears to progress to sobs, until there is mascara all over your face.
And when the bathroom has a line, you will prop your mirror on the NesCafe Iced Tea dispenser next to the napkins and salt packets and straws and wipe off the makeup.
And if someone approaches the NesCafe Iced Tea dispenser to procure some tea while you are still wiping off the makeup, you will acknowledge them, if at all, with a glare that says, “Can’t you see I’m using this right now?”
