No, I Don’t Want to do That

But I’ll do it anyway

“Let’s go to Brighton Beach Saturday!”

That’s my partner, my bothendsburningman, who really thinks going out to Brighton Beach when it’s only going to be 38 degrees is a great idea. He also thought that going up to Inwood in search of Manhattan’s only remaining original growth forest would be a good time (it was). This is the man who talked me into getting up at 3am to take the train out to Coney Island in time to catch the sunrise saying it would be fun.

And he was right; it was fun!

We aren’t exactly a case of opposites attracting because we like a lot of the same things. We agree that fiction is more engaging, important, and honest than non-fiction. We love foreign films or independent cinema but both agree that Jim Jarmusch is overrated. Left to our own devices we’ll stay up until the wee hours of the morning writing or watching obscure movies and then sleep until noon. We’re avid non-consumers who would wreck the economy with our disregard for the newest, coolest, latest whatever.

But when it comes down to it, I’m lazy. And, yes it’s sad but true, I like being comfortable.

AleXander isn’t like that.

So off we went last Saturday, bundled up and ready to hang out with the Russians (the people who live out there in Brighton Beach are mostly Russian immigrants so a trip out there is kind of like a trip to a foreign country). All the store signs are in Cyrillic and most of the conversation on the street is in Russian. By the time you get that far out in Brooklyn the trains are back to being elevated so everything happens under the clatter of the subway trains overhead.

We got off the subway at the Ocean Parkway stop and walked over to the boardwalk. It really was too cold to go all the way out to Coney Island and walk back, but we did get over to take in the ocean which was a deep indigo blue.

There were people playing volleyball on the beach although they were fully dressed. A woman was feeding a raucous flock of screeching gulls. Well bundled up ladies with carefully coifed hair and layers of makeup sat on benches in the sun. Once we were past the big fancy boardwalk restaurants like Tatiana Restaurant and Nightclub, we headed back in to walk along Brighton Beach Avenue, lined with fresh vegetable markets, cell phone stores with giant signs in Russian, and dollar stores featuring a fine selection of fur coats (not for a dollar).

New York City has a reputation for not being a particularly friendly place. Brighton Beach makes Manhattan feel like Sunnybrook Farms. Unless you open your mouth and let loose with a flood of Russian, or at least Ukrainian, expect to be ignored or skewered with a pointed glare.

It was glorious!

We finally made our way back to Skovorodka, one of our favorite restaurants out there, for huge bowls of borscht and an enormous “appetizer” of delicate little pierogis filled with potato and onion. For under $40 we dined like czars…or comrades. And once again I had to admit that AleXander was right; it was a perfect day to be out by the ocean, cold be damned.

I’ve lost count of the times over the past nine-plus years since I met this human dynamo that he’s dragged me along to do or see or experience something that I grudgingly go along with only to wind up have a thoroughly amazing time.

There’s the Bronx Zoo for example. On Wednesday mornings before 10am, admission to the zoo is free so off we went one Wednesday soon after I lost my job. This wasn’t our first trip up to the zoo but we agreed that it was probably our last. Seeing a bald eagle in a cage just a little bigger than our living room with barely enough room to fully spread his wings was too depressing. And we actually spent more time admiring the trees than the penned up animals having both recently read Richard Powers’ “The Overstory” (blatant plug; this book is brilliant and if you’re at all aware of our current climate crisis you need to read it).

Better than the zoo are the botanical gardens: Bronx and Brooklyn. Both have free admission on certain days and both are a reasonable facsimile of nature, enough so that we always have a great time in spite of my grousing about having to get up so early to get in for free. There are a surprising number of free or inexpensive things to do in New York and we’ve done a lot of them.

My bothendsburningman is hyper-aware of how limited our time on the planet is and he’s determined to wring every drop of adventure, fun, awe, and joy there is from the time while we have it.

I may grumble and complain and even suggest we go tomorrow but inevitably we have such a great time that I’m humbled. This is true even of the rainy afternoon when we went up to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx after hours of wandering all over the New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. Arthur Avenue is the “other” Little Italy that boasts block after block of Italian bakeries, restaurants, and markets.

Yes, we got caught in the rain without umbrellas. Yes, we “settled” for our fine Italian late lunch in the place we were standing in front of when the skies opened. And, yes, the walk back to the train on the Grand Concourse turned out to be a lot longer than anticipated. And, yes, I pissed and moaned all the way to the train!

But that’s another truly memorable day etched forever for me and I have AleXander to thank for that.

All this is not to say that I was some kind of shut-in before he came along. After all, I did go skydiving with a bunch of friends and had been out to Coney Island a number of times as well as Governers’ Island and from one end of Manhattan to the other repeatedly. I’ve also gone to Venice, Italy on my own as well to Prague twice. But I certainly never would have experienced nearly so many fascinating adventures if I weren’t grudgingly ready to go along with AleXander when he says, hey, let’s do this.

It’ll be fun!

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This will be fun, too!