City of Dreams
The day I landed in New York, a man told me to watch out. He’d seen two people get robbed, separately, the day before. One in Chelsea, one in Greenpoint. Busy streets, bright daylight. According to him, the guy in Chelsea had just stopped cycling for a moment, in between two parked cars. Someone wrapped him in a bear hug from behind, an accomplice grabbed the bike. They were gone before the man could blink; he was left confused and wheel-less on the ground.
The man who’d told me this was a mover I’d hired to lug my stuff out of storage. People are harder, now, he said. A little bit on edge. I don’t know. Things are different. You better watch out.
Midway through unpacking, I called a Filipino girlfriend who lived downtown, and told her what he said.
He’s wack, things are fine.
So I can go out for a run by myself, for example?
Not by yourself, silly.
I looked at the phone. Not at night. I meant in the day.
I mean, I wouldn’t do it alone.
I stayed in that night and looked up pepper spray options on the web. It was illegal to have them shipped in; I’d have to go down to a store to pick them up for thrice what they listed online. I pulled the address up on Google — it was a thirty-minute train ride out. So much time to get smacked over the side of my head, to incite the rage of another commuter for the cast of my gaze. I went into the kitchen and located my new housemate, a Chinese guy twice my height.
Did you ever feel unsafe here?
He nodded. This city is very unsanitary. Too many cockroaches.
I meant, for being Asian.
What? No.
But he was also twice my size. I went back into my room, and continued unpacking.
Like most of the world, I followed with horror as America washed over with rage. I knew that violence had always been a way of life for some, that the turn of the year brought nothing truly new. Yet I was naive. I felt as if none of it would touch New York, which I’d held up as a liberal, forward-thinking city, floating on an island away from the rest of the country, untouchable by the spores of hate that’d bloomed all over the nation. I was naive and I was an adult, which meant I believed I was past idealism. A dangerous combination. When videos of older Asian folk being attacked on the streets surfaced, I held my breath; when the bruised selfies of those who’d been sprung upon were tweeted and retweeted, I started feeling dizzy. When a young man walked into a spa and shot eight people, six of whom were Asian women, the world began to suffocate.
New York City has seen a 395% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes this first half of the year, as compared to all of 2020. In 2020, of all the major cities in the US, New York had the largest spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. New York, New York. Where dreams are made of. A Korean girlfriend texted me a week before I returned. Bleach your hair if you can, she said. So they can’t tell you’re Asian from the back.
Being from Singapore, where the ethnically Chinese form the majority, my fears have been limited to the crimes that might apply to those who live in a woman’s body. It’s a good situation to be in, as far as the circumstances for fear can be considered good. In terms of proximity to assault, whether physical, verbal, or emotional, check all the boxes that apply. Female, Queer, Minority race, Immigrant, etc. The lower your score the safer you are. Mine is next to zero, and yet, I fear.
The month before I got on the plane, I started cramming self-defense lessons. Krav Maga, Kapap, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, you name it. I learned to wrench my way out of three types of grip, flip a grown man, slip out of a bear hug. In some classes, we practiced with a plastic gun, a rubber knife that bounced from side to side when landing a hit. In all of them, the instructors said, good job, but if you can, run.
I have drinks with another friend, a week after my arrival. Things have been okay so far, no scowls thrown in my direction, no need to whip out my clumsy, half-practiced attempts at jiu-jitsu. Still, I share my worries. He says, you’ll be fine. Then he checks, quickly: you have common sense, right? and repeats, you’ll be fine.
Perhaps fine has always been contingent upon circumstance. The truth is, I’ve now been in New York for two weeks, and I feel alright. People are more abrasive, it’s true, though maybe I can only tell because I’ve been away for a while. Americans have moved on, yet another friend promises me. We’re having dinner in K-town. They’re angry about other things now, no one is going to punch you for being Asian. The sum total of my own lived experience thus far, combined with the reassurance of various folk, has done much to ease the knot in my chest.
But, despite all this, if I may? Permit me, reader, a moment to be naive, to be idealistic, and stupid. Isn’t it possible that we might someday come to expect fine, all of us, without side-eyeing the Russian roulette which determines next season’s targets for fear? Can’t we refuse to adjust for and therefore accept the possibilities of attack, on us, on our neighbors? Or must some of us always live in the dark? If we truly believe this to be the city of dreams, then why not this one? Just let me be for a moment, reader, and then we can move on.
