During summer in Manhattan, most of city’s wealthiest inhabitants flee to the Hamptons. This leaves the heavily pounded pavement a little less crowded and provided me with pleasant morning and afternoon walks to and from my summer job at the museum. Everyday, unless it was raining, I would undertake the two mile walk, altering my route a little to rent a video, walk by the Puerto Rican markets, or stroll alongside Central Park.
This particular summer was (dramatic newscaster voice) the “Summer of West Nile.” The virus had first appeared in New York in 1999, but during the summer of 2000 approximately 9 people died in New York City as a result of the virus and the media helped to shape it into a full-fledged epidemic. The CDC and a team of researchers based out of the very museum that was employing me had figured out that the virus was transmitted from birds to certain species of mosquitos who in turn would transfer the virus to humans via their itch and bump producing bites.
One of the perks of interning at the museum was the weekly curator lectures. The fifteen or so student-interns working on various projects throughout the museum would meet every Wednesday afternoon in the lounge where along with a nice spread of cookies, coffee and soda, we were treated to a lecture on a curator’s research. We heard about research on leeches and whales and conservation in Viet Nam. And one week, the woman who was the head of the museum’s research on West Nile filled us in on the scientific facts and the political/media hype of the whole “epidemic”.
For the average, relatively healthy human being, West Nile manifests itself in the form of flu like symptoms, but for the very old and the very young it can have fatal consequences. The CDC and the NYC government, headed by the since-knighted Mayor Rudolph Guiliani, decided that the best way to deal with the threat of West Nile was to spray the hell out of New York City. So, late at night, you could hear the high pitched wheezing siren of trucks driving up and down the streets of New York releasing chemical clouds into the environment for the supposed good of the human inhabitants. The theory seemed flawed to me. The curator seemed to concur with my opinion.
Needless to say, I’m pretty sure that the extreme flu like symptoms that I developed at one point during the summer were the result of West Nile Virus. I was bed-ridden for three days, with my savior/friend Michelle sporadically calling to check on me and delivering grocery bags filled with bagels, cup of soup and Gatorade fruit punch.
Ah, but all of that was just tangental back story. AMNH is located on Central Park West between 77th and 81st streets. It’s right across the street from Central Park which was a great place to eat lunch and take a break from the ice cold office where I was slowly downward spiraling into the mindset of an eco-terrorist.
One day, I met two other interns working on molecular analysis of brytozoa for lunch. Sounds interesting, right? Ha! Yeah, that’s the way I felt about their work.
Karen and Greg and I walked across the street to the park where we settled on picnicking on the rocks by the lake where people rent the row boats. We found a good spot under a tree on the rocks and chatted about research, gossip, and evening plans. The area was kind of empty that day and we were sitting pretty close to the surface of the row boat lake. The rocks formed a little hill and at the top of it was a middle-aged guy who was sitting on the rocks in a pair of running shorts.
I didn’t pay him much mind at first, but during the middle of my lunch, I noticed a frantic movement out of the corner of my eye. I looked up toward him and he suddenly stopped doing whatever he had been doing. He just grinned at me and I turned back to the conversation and my lunch. But, within a minute he was back at it. I looked up at him again, and though he stopped, I was sure that I had caught him jacking off.
I was simultaneously amused and disgusted (seems to be a common conflation of feelings that I experienced in my tenure in New York) and I turned to Karen and Greg and asked, “did you see what that guy is doing?”
They both nodded no. I blurted out, “that guy up there on the rocks-he’s jacking off!” The both looked at me in disbelief.
Greg turned to me and said something to the effect of “Ali, I think you’re wrong. People don’t do that in public.”
I looked at him in complete and total disbelief. Almost more shocked by his response than to actually catching Jack-off Joe in the act. All I could say was, “Greg, where are you from?”
“Kansas City” was his response.
“Maybe people don’t do stuff like that in Kansas City, but here in New York City, everything is possible.”
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