Visit of OMG Redux: The Broadway Musical!

Sleeping in New York is like sleeping in Delhi. You're treated to couples having domestic disputes below your window in shouty, intimate fashion, as a kind of human counterpoint to the traffic noise and aeroplanes overhead. Usually it's three am, you're peering out at the proverbial fire-escape vista of a city that is currently all surrrealist stoplights as far as the eye can see, and you have a hangover. A really, really bad hangover. Possibly and inexplicably the worst one ever. (The Platonic Hangover, yes, I despair at myself too.)

Which should, I guess, be taken as evidence in favour of yesterday having been one of the best days I've ever had, really, ever. It was characterised by freezing cold weather, long walks through Central Park and a now-somewhat-embarrassing litany of Reasons Why Leigh and Iona Fail At Life, And Failing That, At Least At New York, and just... it was lovely. likethesun2 actually arrived on Friday night, having had a protracted altercation with the MTA buses from La Guardia, as well as being sans luggage. Which is ridiculous when you're only gone for two days, but I get ahead of myself. I arrived in New York on Saturday morning with Shuhbra and Shweta, and we wandered around the South Seaport area and I was feeling weird and transitory and when they finally dropped me off in order to go smoke hookah return demurely to Connecticut, we all got a bit sniffly. This trip of mine has unconsciously mended a lot of family fences, more on which later, probably. They disappeared just as it was getting dark, and I went to buy toothpaste and hugged myself at the thought of being alone and loose on New York, and after a bit, I curled up in reception of the hostel I'm staying at and read The Bell Jar.

Well, I tried. I looked up every time someone came in, and accidentally freaked out a mild-mannered couple from Surrey, but I didn't move until Leigh arrived. And it was so good to see her. When we did Visit of OMG I back in September, we were getting emotional in the airport at the thought that it might actually be years till we saw each other again, so I reckon seven months is quite impressive. And there should be more OMGs. We decided this at a bagel place across the street, where I ploughed slowly through a quite extraordinary amount of cream cheese - by the way, the American idea of whipped cream cheese? Best thing ever - and we talked about nothing in particular, about fandom and airlines and why I am dead by remixredux, and I was still feeling so much glee, and because that is what fangirls do, Leigh pimped television. She made me watch Slings and Arrows, which is not about Canadian investment bankers, but rather about a guy who went crazy playing Hamlet.

I was sold. And having watched the show, I really was sold; it's so much fun, and ohhh Paul Gross, and once again there is not time to watch all the television in the universe. On Saturday morning our roommates cleared out at ridiculous o'clock, and we emerged at a quite sensible time and wandered down Broadway in search of food. We found a diner that looked identical in every detail to Eddie Rocket's in Liverpool - in fact, it's not actually a myth that there are a lot of similarities between Liverpool and New York. They were opposite ends of the shipping route, I guess. This is not to say there was some sort of historical diner significance. What there was was a cinnamon Danish the size of my head. Honestly. It was bloody enormous. Too big to actually eat. I wasn't able to concentrate on the conversation - by this time we were talking about the relative merits of Opus Dei and bovine veterinary science - because I kept being distracted by the breakfast that would have fed the masses. Oh, my.

The plan for Saturday was to have the Panfandom Lunch somewhere in the city, but in the meantime we went to the Strand bookshop downtown and this is where it started to get a little silly. First of all, the Strand goes in my top ten list of bookshops; it's sort of like an eccentric indie bookshop for all it's enormous, and I kept on finding books I'd never heard of and finding the blurb fascinating, reminding myself of my limited budget, putting them back on the shelf and starting over. And while we were there, Leigh was trying to organise the Panfandom Lunch O'Doom and actually, I think I should make the list of Why We Failed At New York:

-I'm scared of the subway and compare it disparagingly to the Underground;
-Ditto Leigh, but for "Underground" read "DC Metro";
-She got lost on the way from the airport;
-I got lost at Columbia the day before;
-We got out of the subway at the Strand and proceeded to not, actually, find the Strand, despite the fact it's right there;
-Later that day we walked twenty blocks and across Central Park without finding anything we wanted to eat;
-After we did find something we wanted to eat, we got the subway to Union Square and went uptown instead of downtown and somehow ended up at 96th and Broadway (at that point I just said, resignedly, "Leigh, we went the wrong way");
-Once we made it to Union Square, Leigh accidentally told Tory we were in Chicago;
-etc. There's more, but I get ahead of myself.

So we made it to the Panfandom Lunch (we didn't know the name of the restaurant, but we knew it had a) a brown awning and b) was in New York) and met furies and tobiascharity and ate very spicy Thai food and were gossipy. (foreverdirt: I delivered a manly shoulder pat, as promised.) Following which, Tory, Leigh and I went to the Met, which was complicated, because we were stopping to misguide tourists, and because we spent most of the time in the Met looking for a painting of Washington crossing Delaware. (I should point out here that I don't believe Delaware exists.) We didn't find it (thus confirming that it doesn't exist), but we did find Egyptian tombs, four-poster beds, sculpture gardens, gilt armour for horses, all kinds of wonderful things. And eventually Tory disappeared to have dinner with her parents - who had been convinced that we all met at, er, Interlochen - and Leigh and I immediately got lost, because we Fail. And we continued to fail, walking out in the dying light across Central Park headed for nowhere in particular, but that was the lovely sort of walk, talking and talking until it really got too cold to stay out.

The initial plan was to go to Union Square with Tory after dinner and mooch round bars, but what with one thing and another (basically, Tory and I are underage, wooooe) we decided the best thing in the world would be to go to Tory's dorm room at NYU, drink gin and watch QI on the laptop. I still think this is the best idea anyone has ever had, ever. Tory can't measure out gin. I am unable to bring myself to consider this as a character flaw. And in fact my memory gets a little blurry here, but basically, we got ridiculously hammered in an equally ridiculous amount of time. I sent a brief email to my parents - am alive, am drunk at NYU, am catcalling Stephen Fry - and sat back and felt as stupidly, simply happy as I have ever felt. Through the gin, we watched three (or maybe four) episodes of QI, got steadily more maternal towards Alan Davies, looked for poetry in the bathroom (Tory's room is LOVE; last night was the first time in five weeks I'd been in a room that was a real room and not just somewhere to stay, and it's all pretty and bright colours and full of interesting things on the walls), giggled and giggled and finally, at some hour of the morning that I don't recall, I think Leigh and I agreed that we fail at the subway when sober, and when drunk would probably end up in Massachusetts. ("The subway doesn't go to Massachusetts," complained Tory, an entirely irrelevant objection.) So we got a cab, and I think I probably grabbed a cigarette along the way and was still stupidly, perfectly happy blowing smoke into the freezing air.

The cab took us uptown, and I paid the driver in Hindi without realising until later, and by three am, was listening through the window to the domestic dispute and feeling very much like I had gin coming out of my pores. But the thing that actually hurt my head was Leigh leaving me this morning at eight o'clock. I was, and am, bereft. Yesterday was a perfect day in New York.