The Dead Guy in New York (Central Park)

I had not seen Alicia in so many years, she had become a stranger to me. She lived in Washington D.C. and I still resided in San Francisco and after a botched book exchange our friendship quickly dwindled. Yet, driving across the country presented a good opportunity to add some life into our relationship, to learn about the strangers we've become while sharing moments of the friendship we had. Also Shakespeare in the Park had Chekhov's  The Seagull playing with Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Natalie Portman, Christpher Walken (Christopher Walken!!!) and John Goodman. The production was directed by Mike Nichols and it became my must in New York.

I met up with her in the park. Upon asking a couple people we found that we would have to spend the night in Central Park to get tickets. Since tickets were given out the next morning for free (two per customer) then most of our night and part of the next day would be sitting on a hill in a line watching squirrels. I talked to Alicia a lot that day. I found out that she fell for someone that did cocaine and liked Fugazi and that it didn't turn out well but she's all the smarter now because of it. I found out that she worked for some place that she thought would be temporary but turned out to be more permanent and years later she's still surprised she works there (a frequent trend with many of my friends). I also found that while I thought we'd no nothing about each other, a lot of things stayed remarkably the same. I missed hearing her laugh at things and I missed how we teased each other. We sat most of the day, tore up grass from the ground and talked until we couldn't think of what more to talk about. Then we sat for awhile in silence and that was pretty good too.

I also met many strangers that day: Jaime, a beautiful girl who said that you could tell everyone and who they are by the shoes they wore, James, her boyfriend who spent most of the time barefoot, Freddy who talked incessantly about a piece of cheesecake he had in Little Italy that tasted like a slice of heaven (whatever that means), and Jody who loved tic tac toe, could play it for hours, but never saw the movie WarGames. There were many scalpers in line and they wore their purpose as blatant as the tattoos on their arms. There were tourists, punk kids and locals complaining about the tourists and punk kids. Most of all, in a line of people that had to wait all night, there were whiners.

And the whining only continued as a police officer showed up around 11 o'clock to tell everyone that we had to leave the park, staying in a single file line, and sleep outside, on the rough and uneven cobblestone sidewalk. Sleeping in the park was not permitted and we slouched our shoulders and trudged one by one to our hard bed of stone outside the park.

At 6 o'clock, another police officer arrived and told everyone that the park could now be entered and we made our way back to our previous spots, our eyes squinting against the sun but cautiously spying anyone who might think to jump the line. Towards the end of the line people rustled and the commotion spread quickly that a man, a big black man, was found dead in the bushes. Many people in line, overcome by boredom, decided to go check out the dead man. I was overcome with morality at the time and, wanting to look someone morally superior at the time in front of Alicia, I refused to see the dead man. She stayed put as well and we watched the coroner and the police arrive. We joked about how this is the perfect New York experience and dazed away in the sun until they finally gave out tickets.

Since the show played at 8 o'clock that night, Alicia was exhausted and ended up falling asleep for most of the second act. Overall the show was incredible, exactly what we thought (Meryl Streep did a cartwheel!) and, though Alicia fell asleep through a lot of it, she said that she was happy to experience the event of it all. On our way out, men in grey suits we shouting near the exit. They asked if anyone had been waiting in line the night before. I approached one man and said that I was there and he pulled a photograph up to me and asked if I had seen that man. The photograph was the picture of the dead man, blood still covering him, his dark shirt soaked. I shot my head back and said no and walked away. Alicia asked what he looked like and I said that I don't know he looked like a dead guy you'd see on Law and Order or something. And then she said that it's weird how we relate those things to tv shows when the dead guy is real and Law and Order is fake and I agreed with her and he walked out of the park and then home.