Image Credit – Pixabay
~ by Ray E. Lipinski
“The arches would rise more than a hundred feet, like majestic cathedral windows or the portals of a triumphant gateway” ~ John Roebling, Architect, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge
It was the spring of 2016, the faint smell of tulips mixed with the gruff smell of asphalt were in the air. Walking up the steps from the City Hall subway station that familiar excitement that New York stirred up in my veins began to pull at my heartstrings. Having been to the great city three previous times, I had eluded this destination for one reason or another, but now I was almost upon it and my excitement was building with each step out of the station.
Like coming up out of the depths of some medieval cave or a dark, dank basement a group of glimmering skyscrapers (I would later call the Sisters) greeted me with their concrete and glass “hello.” Just their hulking presence looming over me was like that giant warm hug from grandma waiting for you with a warm plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Welcome, she’s over there,” they seemed to say and looking over to my left, there she was, the Brooklyn Bridge. Having always been a history buff and lover of the grandiose, she had been on my bucket list for some time. With every visit to New York I was falling more and more in love with the city and with one of its gentlemen, Jeff whom I had met in Texas, a few years before, and who was already ten steps ahead of me walking onto the pedestrian ramp that would bring me closer to her. From the moment my foot stepped on the first wooden plank, my love affair began and after my first walk across her, looking back at the concrete jungle of Manhattan, it was confirmed, I was now madly in love with her and the city.
It had only been a few minutes since I traversed the long walkway to the bridge and like a million other naïve tourists was shocked at the multitude of people and bicyclists covering every inch of space – silly to be expecting a vacant bridge like on the post cards. I thought to myself, “I wonder what it would be like to see her with no people around.” Nevertheless, I was in a state of euphoria with all the sites, smells and untold stories that were set before me.
Brooklyn Bridge was more immense, grander, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined, and the mobs of people never stopped coming. A German soccer team in their red, yellow, and black uniforms came jogging past. A beautiful, tall, dark haired woman wearing Middle Eastern garb and a black strapless dress adorned with a huge diamond necklace was standing on one of the benches with the city as a backdrop while two photographers snapped her serious gaze. Young and old couples holding hands, some taking pictures, others engaged in conversation among the various street vendors with their wares set up, their own reflection of the bridge beckoning everyone to take a look.
Stepping off her for the first time I almost had a sadness of having to leave her but Jeff, who was always humming some country song to himself, said we had more adventures that awaited us. I said goodbye to my beautiful bridge, that iron goddess of steal and cable that would become my mistress, my muse, that old friend you wanted to run to and share your secrets with and tell all the ramblings of life. Little did I know at the time how many of those secrets and ramblings I would tell her.
Walking through those two grand arches one can’t help but look up and get lost in their sheer and utter grandeur, capturing the kaleidoscope of history that has passed under her vaulted ceilings. I had my favourite places to go in the city, The Met, Central Deli in Grand Central Station, The Castle in Central Park, St John the Devine Cathedral, but no other place captured my heart and filled me with such a calm, soothing contentment as Brooklyn Bridge. I always visited her last and I would feel myself being drawn to her, yearning to walk on her even from way across the city.
On a hot day in September of 2017, I was again walking with Jeff, my heart skipping a beat, taking all the mysticism of the olden metropolis in, walking with this man of beauty on this bridge of beauty, I was overcome with a profound sense of joy. We had been on-again off-again lovers for three years and trying to maintain a long-distance relationship between New York and Texas was strenuous at best, but with Jeff anchored in New York, that left only one scenario. A plan had begun to form a year ago on my last visit to the city at the thought of becoming a permanent resident. I was in love with him, in love with Brooklyn, in love with the city and as we descended down into Brooklyn itself and looking over the bridge, I could almost hear her, the Sisters and all of the surrounding skyline of glass and steel say “Yes, come join us, all are welcome.”
So, on the journey back to Manhattan I jumped up on one of the metal beams, grabbing hold of one of the cables and like a drunken frat boy donned my best Frank Sinatra and began singing New York New York with Jeff yelling at me to get down before falling to my death below no doubt to be crushed by a giant yellow taxi cab, how ‘New York.’ The silly thought only added to my joy. As I jumped down onto those glorious planks, I could hear the Sisters and all the family of concrete monoliths breaking into applause. My mind was made up. I would move to New York. I told them I would be back soon and as if in answer a cool, swift, sweet breeze blew up from under the bridge and swirled around me as if they too were happy about my decision.
The walk, cab ride, and subway from Tribeca to the bridge was horrifically hot even for this Texas boy and even after a refreshing glass of ginger lemonade, an avocado toast at Lenox Café, and being very New Yorkish, Violet and I were still covered in sweat. When we stepped off the C train and to the entrance of the bridge, we both agreed that the summer of 2018 was something out of Dante’s hell. As always, she stood in her regal elegance, her arches saying, “How nice, you brought a friend with you”. Yes, a very dear friend.
Violet had been my girlfriend my Sophomore year of high school and while we had suffered a distant void in our friendship during college, we had reconnected in the early 2000s and now were as thick as thieves sharing the trials, tribulations, and struggles of our rainbow journey. I had just spent the last few hours telling her the shambles of my life. I had been in New York for about three months, so my plan to move had been a success. I knew which train to take and where, when not to take a cab, and quite a few wits and wisdom about the city shared by my now fellow New Yorkians. But the dream where Jeff and I would live happily ever after and retire to a quant Florida beach house was over before it started, and that dream had become a nightmare; my life had pretty much imploded. I was lost, confused and a feeling of dark hopelessness had set in.
My relationship with Jeff had become a horrible Greek tragedy with no one in the audience. I was so grateful that Violet had come to see me all the way from LA. She had had some of her own personal hardships and challenges and I knew she was the perfect Godsend to help me out of this mess. So, it was no surprise that we ended up smack dab in the middle of the bridge when I confessed all my secrets. In my loneliness and desperation for affection, a few weeks earlier I’d had a brief liaison with Samir, a beautifully, tan sultry Wall Street accountant from Iran, my best friend Sonya was dying from a four year battle with a seven consonant cancer that I couldn’t even pronounce the name of and I was torn with missing my family and two daughters and staying in New York trying to salvage something with Jeff.
I loved New York; she was in my blood but for the first time the city had no reply. The sisters and my skyscraper friends had nothing to say. My bridge had nothing to say. But Violet, never one to let me linger in the doldrums, gave me her sweet smile, a long hug, and then a dose of sound reality. She informed me that Iran was a beautiful country in many ways and as a matter of fact, with an evil grin said, that thoughts of Iran always made her happy. I should, in her opinion give Samir a call and have some fun, put my faith in God with Sonya and relish the time I still had with her, cherishing the memories. Violet reiterated what a strong person I was and that I could handle New York on my own if I chose and that my family would always support me in whatever endeavour I was to embark on. With Jeff, she simply said “forget Jeff, time to jump that sinking ship, him and his nonsense.”
It seemed that the bridge agreed with another breeze blowing around me and I felt I had received absolution. Back in the city I was refreshed with new hope and a new resolve and looking back at my Gothic beauty now lit up like a silver beacon, beaming in the night sky, I felt a calm, peaceful resolve and that ever-familiar cosmic connection to her.
Three weeks later my daughter Kayla came to visit. My walk across the bridge with her was like Violet’s. I told her about the roller-coaster of my life and all the confusion with Jeff and the encroaching reality that Sonya was nearing the end as I had just found out she had been moved to hospice. A week after Violet left, Jeff and I had spent a Saturday that was like something out of a surreal romance novel. We had spent the day at the Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park, which is part of the Met collection, looking at medieval art, knight warfare exhibits and the utterly indescribable magnificent Unicorn Tapestries. Afterwards, on the way back to the subway station we were hit with a freak monsoon rainstorm and were inundated with hordes of screaming tourists trying to run for cover.
We ducked under an awning with some crazy Jamaicans singing Reggae tunes, we were forced to buy umbrellas from a street vendor who I’m sure would have sold his children for the $30 we gave him and made a paper boat sending it down to a waterlogged oblivion down Hudson street with no chance of survival. We walked around a melting, flooding New York for two hours, soaking wet, just laughing at each other before ducking into a tavern for a hot meal, followed by a night of passionate love making to the sounds of all-night thunder. But dawn came and so did the reality of a broken relationship that was still broken.
I had impressed Kayla with my manoeuvring around the subway system, showed her in real-time what a New York minute meant and sipped on $12 lemonades while looking up at the Flat Iron building. Here I was again, walking on my wonderous bridge, pouring my heart out, feeling like a fool and a failure. What was my baby girl going to think of my idiotic, half-baked romantic ideas and belief that there might be a shred of hope? Well in true daughter form she told me quite matter-of-factly that I had nothing to feel foolish for, with the exception of holding out any hope of my Cinderella/psycho relationship with Jeff being salvaged and “it’s time to move on dad, seriously, now let’s get a drink at the Stonewall Inn and make a toast.”
The next morning, we were on board a breakfast cruise going up the East River sipping mimosa’s and devouring spinach omelettes bathed in a French hollandaise sauce. The cruise started at Pier 61 in Chelsea, routed to the Statue of Liberty and up to the Brooklyn Bridge. I knew I had come to the crossroads and everything in my life was at an intersection with no detour signs. I knew it was time to decide, that the inevitable was here.
Kayla could always sense my emotion and trying to be the strong father figure and holding back my tears through my dark Ray Bans, she just took my hand and squeezed it, “It’s going to be all right, you’re going to be all right.” At that moment we were just approaching the bridge, looming over us like a protective guardian. I walked to the back of the boat, the shadow of her now enveloping us as we crossed underneath her and began turning back. My mind became a TV reel of the last six years. The heartache, the joy, the dreams, the regrets, the multitude of rodeos Jeff and I attended in Texas and the hundreds of pizza slices we ate in New York cafes. All of the sadness and all of the laughter. The movie was over, time to shut the reel off.
I looked back at Kayla, smiling in her white dress with animal prints, downing another Mimosa and my beautiful bridge as a backdrop smiling, hugging me with her friendship. I took the silver ring off my finger, having bought it at street festival in the city, a symbol I thought, of the love Jeff and I shared….and “plop” dropped it in the East River along with a million other trinkets lost in the drowning depths of mankind’s desires and broken dreams. Kayla left the next day. Sonya died the day after that and on one of the hottest days in New York, mirroring a Texas summer, I decided to move back home.
Oddly on takeoff usually banking to the right, the plane turned north instead and made a loop around the city, almost as if on purpose so I could have a farewell look at the city I loved and to say goodbye to my beloved bridge. There she was, so tiny, flying a thousand feet above her. I pressed my head to the window and whispered, “you can’t keep me away darling; I’ll be back luv.”
It had been one of Violet’s desires to visit New York during the Halloween season and in October of 2019 the two of us along with my other daughter Kendall hit the city, with a new resolve and vigor at enjoying life to its fullest. I had been single for a year and revelling in my new freedom with all the possibilities of the dating scene before me. Always saving the best for last, the three of us walked over that outstretched beauty of iron majesty talking about good times and lost loves. The precious moments of family members long gone and those friendships that stand the test of time.
Snapping a picture of Kendall inside the arches, that familiar wind began to blow, and a surge of a happiness swelled inside of me as I knew the bridge was smiling at me in all her mechanical wonder. Later that night in celebration of our last evening in the city, we took a dinner cruise that, like the previous one, would circle the great bridge. After indulging in a buffet of filet mignon, gorgonzola stuffed chicken and the best basil/red pepper pasta on the planet, we danced the night away to songs from our youth in a comradery of vodka and laughter and just the joy of being in each other’s company. I was happy.
The captain came over the speaker and announced we were coming up on the Brooklyn Bridge. I left the festivities to go outside and as we approached her, I looked up at her luminous presence bearing down on me. “Hello ole friend,” I said. Pausing under her, once again I was lost to the passionate romance of wonderment that always tugged at my soul. Violet and Kendall came out and shared the view with me and after a while ushered me back inside. I took one more long look at her, my mistress, my muse, shimmering in her purple, glistening light. The reflection of the moon was now showering off her metal beams like angelic rays caught in a tempest storm. I was intoxicated by her presence, “I’ll always be here, till next we meet,” she said. I inhaled the sweet smell of the river mixed with the cool New York wind and exhaled, “yes my love, yes my love.”
***
Epilogue – Spring 2020
I got a ding on my phone from my ole buddy Daniel, he had sent me a video. I had met him while living in New York at a dance studio by day and country western club by night off of 52nd and Broadway. Daniel is one of those multitalented persons, artist, singer, musician, and one of the best backup Broadway dancers I have ever seen. The video was a panoramic view of him walking across the Brooklyn Bridge. An elderly couple was slowly walking, holding hands, two joggers, one young couple taking a picture and one bicyclist. That was it. That was it. I remembered my thought when I took my first steps on her, “I wonder what she would look without all these people”. As Daniel passed the arches, the video played a sombre violin/duo and you could feel her emptiness, her darkness, her loneliness. A surge of sadness enveloped me like a Brahms symphony and tears streamed down my face as the video faded to black. I whispered to the screen “I’ll be back my love, traipsing across your timbers, holding on to your cables and gasping at your never fading beauty, I’ll be back”
Personal Journal – June 23, 2020 – Eight million infected worldwide with Corona Virus, 437,000 deaths. New Outbreak in China.