Whaddyatalkingbout? Noo Yawkas dun tawk funny, Bruddah. Assajuziwayigoze!

new york

“Would you like some champagne, sir? Champagne? Champagne for you?”

Departing Tokyo. American Airlines Flight 168 and I’m passing wistfully through the first class cabin. Everyone is already seated and looking bored as they wait for the rest of us to shuffle past. A large family is spread out in their luxurious looking chairs sipping complimentary beverages rehashing their Tokyo holiday in Shinjuku, Akihabara and the like.

I pass through and join the rest of the riffraff back in economy as the masseuse enters and the dashing butler arrives bearing freshly picked strawberries to hand feed to the first class passengers. To keep the envy green and alive no curtains are drawn to separate the two cabins. We are all free with falling expressions to watch them sip their champagne, whilst lounging on their diamond-encrusted thrones, their high definition miniature televisions effortlessly in front of them.

I am suddenly jostled out of Japan. The flight attendants all weigh more than a hundred pounds, no longer look like kewpie dolls, have not stepped daintily out of a Shiseido ad, do not have permanent smiles embedded on their faces, are taken aback when I utilize the phrases “please” and “thank you so much for your kindness!” and seem mildly put out when I ask them for a pillow or a glass of water.

They waddle up and down the aisles and say a harsh “NO!” to the Chinese travelers sitting to my right who ask for hot water to add to their instant ramen that they have brought on the plane. The flight attendant then chuckles at her creative bout of sarcasm, grabs the Styrofoam bowls and pads off to go find some boiling water.

Twelve and a half hours later it is the same time it was when I left. The plane noses down and jerks to a halt. Unlike the airports in Japan, every inch from the plane to the arrival gate is air-conditioned. The gelid air pleasantly chills my bones as I wheel my luggage behind me, once again, on Sweet Home Terra Firma, New York.

I have made miraculous time getting off the plane and have no baggage to claim so am first on line to go through customs. I have been blessed, and simultaneously cursed, with a certain unthreatening outward appearance that usually makes customs a breeze. The guards barely look at me and wave me through failing to notice the rare, exotic tarsier monkey poking its fuzzy head out of my suitcase whilst brandishing a samurai sword in one hand and a vial labeled ‘Biohazardous Waste. Someone Please Stop me Now’ in the other, a crazed look in its gleaming, bulbous eyes.

This incontrovertibly Lover-Of-Jelly-Doughnuts-NY customs officer takes my passport and gruffly flips it open. Thinking that I may have forgotten to include the small slip of paper promising the United States that I’m fairly sure I do not have small pox, nor any other dire disease and am not acting as a vehicle for Asian bootlegged goods with which to further ruin the film industry, I begin fumbling in my bag poking around for it.

“Whaddyadoing?”

“Eeeeeh!? Maybe paper I forget,” I say, still clearly unaware that I can now speak normally. There is no need to yank out verbs and tack them on the end or to express a bit of surprise with an elongated grunt slash squeal that a jumpy, keyed up rodent might make upon having its tail cut off.

“Oh yeah? Fuhgettaboutit,” he says to me.

It’s that moment it clicks. Me and one of “New York City’s Finest” have just shared a New York Moment. It’s almost movie-esque in it’s perfection. Me with my rolling suitcase, he with his quintessential New Yorker phrasing. After spending the past twelve months insisting to other foreigners, be they from Scotland, Ireland, Canada, England, Brazil that I do not have a New York accent, and really, not that many people talk like Fran Drescher, Tony Danza or Joey’s agent Estelle on Friends, I realize that I am a complete and utter jackass. Yes, of course, everything IS just like how it is in the movies.

The quick lipped, slurred New York phrasing washes over me as I emerge at the arrival gate. My parents are no where to be seen so I make my way to the conveniently located shop to buy a cranberry juice and get change to make a phone call.

“Excuse me, but I get a dollar of that in quarters, please?”

The request is a simple one, politely made. The man looks up from the register, glares at me and blinks several times, as if trying to comprehend why on earth this bothersome harpy might need quarters after just getting off a plane from a foreign country.

I return his black look with a pastel, happy one of my own. He slowly begins to count out four quarters for me. He passes them over ruefully and then shoots another couple daggers from his eyes. There is no, “Oh great customer, thank you for shopping here. Please do come again at your next possible convenience so that we might serve you once more. And here, have a present – on us! Thank you!” spiel. No one shouts “WELCOME!!!!” at me both when I leave and enter.

I can feel the cold scowl on my back as I turn away. No toadyish cries of gratitude. Nothing.

My smile is pure and genuine. I’m home.

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Published:
9.3.07 / 11am
Category:
what i call life, travel, culture, unschoolish