New YAWWWK

I’ve visited a decent number of cities (she bragged). I’ve seen Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berlin, Tokyo, Taipei, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Brussels, etc.

My favorite city to visit is New York City.

Among other reasons, I love New York because it’s not a place people go to half-ass things. Whatever you want to do with your life, you move to New York to do it with your whole ass.

Case-in-point: The queer punk outlaw wrestling match I mentioned earlier.

(To resolve the mystery, it was a wrestling match and burlesque show. There might have been live music later, but I’ll never know. I left during intermission. I couldn’t take the heat! Apparently, queer punk outlaws do not require air conditioning.)

My babies, I cried.

I mean, first of all, as I said, those performers left it ALL on the mat – including, I can only assume, the water their body requires to function. I even saw one of them drinking a beer between bouts. I have never been so young.

Then one of the heels came out in a blonde ponytail and athleisure. She belittled the queerdos in the audience for making her feel unsafe by simply existing. She told us that it was she who called the cops and snitched on the planned match in Manhattan, forcing us to meet in Brooklyn.

Then, as the Black, queer heroes came out and kicked her and her old, white, bigoted boyfriend’s ass, I felt overwhelmed by the realness of it all.

Sure, wrestling is fake, in terms of writers scripting the outcomes of the matches beforehand. But there’s levels to this shit, I realized, sweating my balls off in someone’s common area. The conflict this bout represents could not be more real. I know the archetypes the heels and the heroes represent. I’ve met these people. I’ve watched them duke it out in comments sections, City Hall meetings, and in documentaries.

It was really, like, yesterday when I started to realize that one benefit of age is that I appreciate art a lot more now. I’ve seen enough to begin to understand how new pieces converse with what came before. I have enough context to sometimes begin to understand what a piece might be pointing to outside of itself and the artistic tradition in which it lives. When I look at art, I have the option to consider interpretations outside of the most obvious and literal.

We also saw burlesque at the Slipper Room, which was cool. But my second-favorite show, after the wrestling, was at the Comedy Cellar. You don’t get to know the lineup when you reserve tickets, and world-famous comics often drop in unannounced. We ended up sitting front row, center. Of course we got razzed a little. But less than the drunk, annoying bachelorette party in the back. The show was perfect. I thought I might have recognized a few comics from TV. Despite not being a household name to me (yet), every comic was great. The host was great. And it started and ended exactly on time. I can’t wait to go back.

I loved eating a bagel every morning. I loved showing Rob the Met. I loved walking and taking transit. I loved the fancy cocktails and dive bars. Amazing town. Amazing trip. 10/10, will get inside NYC again.