Todd Levin

Today I woke up with an erection (not so unusual; i have a farrah fawcett latch-hook rug displayed on my ceiling above my bed) and it has persisted all day. I can’t get it to relax, no matter how many times I punch it with my fists or slam it in my office door. Yes, It’s spring in New York City today.

If you don’t live here, where the loveliest men and women on earth come to nest, you might have difficulty fully comprehending this all-consuming sensation. Perhaps where you live spring weather simply means more parked cars with Tasmanian Devil sun visors propped up in the windshield. Maybe it means the soccer moms are hornier. Or maybe it’s springtime every single day, and you’re a huge jerk. I don’t know how you roll. But here’s how we do it:

Imagine one day waking up to find that everyone you’ve been sharing a bus/subway/train with, everyone you’ve barely acknowledged on a daily basis, is suddenly the most gorgeous, sexually desirable creature you’ve ever seen. They’re 25 pounds lighter than you’d remembered. Women wear their hair animal-hot and let it curl at the ends like beckoning fingers. Guys have melted off their carb faces. Grey, bland complexions are flushed with curiosity. And everyone seems to be wearing the same expression – the one that says, “ask me about my uncontrollable libido.” In New York City, there is a name for this unusual phsyiological phenomenon. It’s called “86 Degrees Farenheit.” Excuse me while I smash my genitals with a phone receiver.

p.s. Last night, on the soft eve of this beautiful weather, I was buying produce at my favorite – i.e. most conveniently located – Korean grocer. I struck up a conversation with the cashier as he scanned my baby carrots and weighed my fudge (4.5 pounds). Suddenly, after several minutes of complaining about his sore hands, he announced, “maybe it’s because of all this Nature’s Beauty that my hand is hurting.” (his english – not the best. just like mines.) I looked puzzled, sort of the way a dog looks after the ‘disappearing treat’ trick, so he elaborated.

“Nature’s beauty. You know. All these pretty girls.”

“Ah.” I concurred politely and silently, by making the split-finger gesture over my open mouth and flicking tongue.

Then he added, “You so lucky to live here in Park Slope. In Queens – nothing.”

Hey, Queens – our heavily politicized lesbians are sexier than your Greek Orthodox senior citizens. Eat it, QB!!

Stood at the gate of the midtown tunnel tonight, at midnight, waiting for elephants to emerge from the Queens side. Isn’t that an odd sentence? But it’s true. The circus elephants made their annual low-key progression from the Queens Midtown Tunnel, up to the 34th Street, and across town to Madison Square Garden. What a lucky site to observe.

I would also like to point out that, of all the people waiting right by the tunnel entrance, I was the absolute only person who remembered how much elephants loved peanuts and how little they would mind if I bought a whole bag of them and tossed them in the street. I had an adult case of the giggles (or, as my friend simon used to drawl perversely, “the geeegles”) as I watched the more ambitious pachyderms temporarily break their elegant trunk-to-tail chain in order to hoover up some squished peanuts from NY’s finest asphalt. It felt a whole lot better than my show tonight, which I sort of shitted up. I know exactly what I did wrong, and next time I’ll correct it onstage rather than in my secret diary many hours later. (hint: i hope the next audience likes peanuts.)

People complained about the wind-blasted cold; then they complained about the snow. Not me. I choose my battles carefully and I’ll always be snow’s leading advocate, as long as I remain a pedestrian in New York City.

When the snow first began falling on sunday evening, and I saw it through a hole in the Union Square subway stairwell, I did something I’m never moved to do in any weather: I grabbed my camera. The Union Square stairwell (on the nw corner of the park) is a lucky one. Instead of leading back, then forth, affording you a view of tile and steel and nothing more, the stairs go up one way. By standing in the right spot one can easily see the street from the floor. And up beyond there, the sky. Filled with snow.

I snapped a couple of photographs very quickly, producing an accidental variety of photographic effects by pushing buttons and adding or removing flash. I still haven’t mastered my camera. It knows more than I do. But, for the first time, I came really close to capturing snow exactly as my eye sees it. It falls like fairies.

A New York judge denied United Peace & Justice a permit to march in protest of a potential U.S. invasion of Iraq. This sort of saves me some of the intense conflict I was experiencing at the prospect of marching. I absolutely believe in the cause and think, particularly in New York, it’s an important public statement to make. However, I hate chanting. Really hate it. I don’t even like applauding, and I have always resented that first guy to initiate a standing ovation after a performance. It’s often far too generous, but puts others in the awkward place of accomodating a social obligation out of guilt. I usually protest this move, but I do hate to be the one guy who has to defend his honest but preferably silent opinion of a lukewarm (or even good) performance. “I’m sorry I didn’t give ZWAN a standing-O. I just thought their sound engineer could have worked a little harder. The bass was mixed too low. There! I said it!! The show’s up there, everyone.”

That’s how I feel about protests. I come for the same reasons everyone else does, but that doesn’t mean I’m just like everyone else. If you don’t chant at a protest, sometimes you’re regarded as an interloper. I don’t interlope. I swear, even if it seems the contrary is true.

But this has very little to do with the NY Times article I just read. The story mentioned the city’s proposed alternative to a march on the UN. Here is a section of that counter-proposal:

The city’s counteroffer included the rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, 47th Street and First Avenue, which is within view of the United Nations. An overflow crowd of any size could be accommodated in pens on First Avenue, the police said.

Pens! Just like freedom, only more organized. It’s like the city is constructing ready-made holding cells for the protestors. I’d hate to have to go back to the group with that proposal.

[AND THIS IS WHERE WE ENTER ‘FANTASTI-VISION’. LET’S GO!!!!]

“OK, here’s the deal. We can still protest, which is great. Let’s not forget how great that is. We won’t quite be able to march on the UN building, though. Please. Please just give me a second. We can’t march on the UN, true, but we can march a few blocks away, where some of you, if you crane your necks hard enough, will be able to see bits of the UN building. It is recommended that these people describe what they see to the others who cannot see the building. That way we will all be apprised of which direction to face while yelling from the safe confinement of our chain-link and razor wire ‘protest pens.’

“Alternately, to avoid confusion we have been granted persmission to construct a fake UN building at 3/5 scale, using 100% recyclable materials. Remember, that is a time-permitting item and, provided our view of the UN building from 47th street is decent, the model construction will become priority level ‘tan.’

“Oh, and technically we can’t march. This isn’t such a big deal because it would be difficult to march inside our protest pens, anyway. But before you get upset, our lawyers are working very hard right now to grant us a “walking in place” permit which would enable us to simulate a march on the UN building. I’ve already recruited several volunteers who are willing to drag the 3/5th scale UN model -should its construction be required – behind their pickup trucks to give the appearance of being ‘marched upon’ by our 10,000 protestors.

“What’s that? No, that wasn’t a mistake. I said ‘10,000.’ It seems the city is only able to guarantee the protection and safety of 1/10th of our projected masses for this anti-war march-in-place near the United Nations building. But let’s make the best of it. The government is about to feel our mighty roar of protest, and clearly it is already listening! Get ready to march in place!! Oh, one more thing: no chanting. The residents of Tudor City have said they’d call the police if it’s too noisy. FOR PEACE!!!”

The flat-surfaced facing benches, commonly found on older subway train cars, such as the Q, 4, 5, and 6 lines, are exactly long enough to accomodate one transient of average size, stretched horizontally to his full-length (minus shoes), plus one additional upright commuter making a tremendous effort to gaze distractedly in every direction with the exception of his direct left – where a grown man in stocking feet just rolled over into a more comfortable sleeping position. It’s true. I measured it today.

I win!

Mass transit commuters understand the variety of pet peeves and irrational fears that emerge from years and years of hurtling through their city’s bowels. (or above them. big ups, chicago. you keep your shit elevated, dunny!) Everything from greasy pole touch to a staunch refusal, no matter how crowded your train, to sit on a bench that has anything on it. Could be a newspaper, or a love note, and it wouldn’t matter, because someone must have taken a shit on or beneath it, surely.

Two pet peeves that bind us all (unless we live in chinatown) are People Who Clip Their Nails On The Subway and People Who Eat Hot Food On The Subway. Because the former gives my spine the chills whenever I discuss it, I’ll focus on the latter. In my seven-plus years here, I’ve seen enough mass transit feedings to make someone move to a safehouse. Fried cod fritters, a full chicken wing dinner (coupled with the diner spitting the denuded bones right on the subway floor), McDonald’s fries. I once saw a man greedily inhale tuna maki. I never understood how that could happen.

But today I really do think I hit the jackpot. Feel free to challenge me, but during the morning rush I saw a guy eating a full pancake breakfast on the uptown 9 train. It was amazing. Fork, knife, styrofoam plate. Beat that. Think you can? Well, you can’t because just when it couldn’t get any better, he whipped out some maple syrup and applied it liberally. Touchdown. I really do hate when people eat proper meals on the subway – I can stomach packaged foods, for reasons so irrational that to offer any explanation would just seem like a foolish attempt to dignify them – but that might have all changed today. If you think it’s OK to have your pancake breakfast on the subway, you deserve to be mayor. That’s the rule.

Then, thinking I’d absorbed all the magic my pores could hold for one day, I was walking down the street, dreaming of high-speed flapjacks and crossed in front of a man delivering a stack of cardboard boxes on a small hand-truck. When I got within six inches of him, a gust of wind ripped the lid from the topmost cardboard box to reveal its contents: LIVE LOBSTERS! One half second later and I would have missed a wonderful glimpse of street lobsters. People expound endlessly on the power of this city, but it’s because they can’t help it. You see, New York can be very difficult. It doesn’t try to help you out when you’re feeling down. More often, it simply exacerbates. But sometimes it sees fit to lift a lid or open a window, and let you see something so perfect that you forigve it all of its regular brutality. It’s just like Ike Turner that way.

I haven’t written about my wonderful city much lately, primarily because I haven’t really felt like one of its denizens lately. I’ve been inside on the outside. Away from parks and downtown and uptown and museums and all the other reasons I moved here. I think I’ve been indulging in the familiar, such as my neighborhood bars and restaurants and video stores. But last weekend and today threw me right back into New York City, face down on the pavement. I’m so giddy I’m seeing stars.

I took a weird tour last weekend, accidentally, and it made everything clear. Under the vaults of the Manhattan bridge. In the back of a movie theater foggy with pot smoke. Inside the narrow, left chamber of that pair of hideously over-decorated Indian restaurants on 1st Avenue, just below curry lane. I’d walked past these restaurants 100 thousand times before, watched the hosts pop out in perfect symmetry like wooden cuckoos, trying to pull left or right, as if it made any difference, every time someone dared to mount the steps. Maybe people see the christmas lights, hung thick like berries, and their senses give out. They’re drawn upstairs. But the hosts take advantage of the daze

It’s one of those rare, sought-after nights in my neighborhood. A light snowfall, and the sky does its disappearing act. The cathedrals and brownstones cut severe outlines against the negative space, illuminated by white reflecting off white. And I get to jog on the side streets, my tank somewhere between half and “F” on red wine.

I’m warm for a change, insulated by my headphones. I can’t hear anyone except Plastic Bertrand shouting gibberish in French (or any language), and the voice of this cd’s curator sweetly mispronouncing my last name. And as I race toward my apartment and all the carbohydrates it stores, I look up at the missing sky, and keep repeating a separate chorus, the one I made up just now: Tonight is another good night to start again. And I don’t care that I’ll wake up tomorrow, hung-over and regretting the majority of these words. If you don’t believe me, move to New York City.

Just (barely) in time for Christmas, I’ve created an NYC holiday slideshow screen saver. Eschewing the Rock Center tree, which already gets more attention than the captain of the flag squad, I took a few pictures of low-rent holiday preparations in local neighborhoods. Highlights include: my trip to Dyker Heights, near Bensonhurst, where each year wealthy Italian-American families display all of their holiday and religious fervor, and absolutely none of their restraint or respect for energy conservation; a stroll through the eastern and southern-most edges of Park Slope, Brooklyn, where the holidays suffer from chronic loneliness; and a lucky snapshot in Chelsea.

If you’d like to make this screen save yours, you’ll need an Apple computer and OS X. From there, it’s as easy as one, two, three:

1. Open your System Preferences
2. Choose Screen Effects, and from the effects menu, select “.Mac”
3. Now, click the “configure” button and, in the new window that opens up, where it asks you to type in a .mac user screen name, type “tremble” and click OK.

And you’re off! Sorry, PC users. You’ve got enough neat stuff to do, though.