New York Times: Hour One

I'm pretty sure that my first hour in Manhattan couldn't have happened anywhere else.

I'd never been to New York City before. When my parents and I first arrived in Manhattan, I noticed the crowds and tall buildings much as I had expected to. I noticed something else, something I hadn't expected: everything was famous. We would need to transfer from the Newark Airport shuttle bus to a Hotel Shuttle bus; this transfer took place in front of Grand Central Station. Famous.

We boarded the Hotel Shuttle bus, were quickly mired in traffic next to other famous places. Two of our fellow passengers had lived in New York, pointed out that our driver was driving the wrong way to get to our hotels, decided to walk; we decided to walk, too. I found myself hauling my luggage across Park Avenue, Madison Avenue, the Fifth Avenue. Famous, famous, famous. I was stumbling, exhausted, past famous shops. My eyes were blurring as I walked past landmark buildings. I couldn't focus, but I'd already seen everything.

I stood, swaying in the hotel lobby, which we had just entered. My mom whispered, excitedly--Sam Shepard, the actor, was standing outside our hotel, talking. I nodded. Of course. Famous.

On the elevator ride up to our room, everything seemed normal at first. Three other people had boarded with us, one man was standing right in front of me with his back to me, two others were on the other side of the elevator. They knew each other, they were talking. The man in front of me said he might be coming down with a cold; I made a face and tried to squirm away from him; one of his companions had some echinacea to share. Normal. The companion talked about how when the pictures from the "shoot" with "Kyle" came back, the people at the lab had asked if this was "that Twin Peaks guy." Famous?

Later on, my mom would tell me that the man I'd made a face at was none other than Ethan Hawke, the actor. Famous.

[Addendum: a year and a half later, a Hamlet movie appeared in cinemas. Sam Shepard, Ethan Hawke, Kyle "that Twin Peaks guys" MacLachlan, and our Hotel appeared as Hamlet's Dad's ghost, Hamlet, King "that evil uncle guy" Claudius, and the Hotel Elsinore, respectively.]

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