Showing around Shannon; a tour of the real New York

Showing around Shannon; a tour of the real New York

I have no kids and never wanted any, so I was a bit anxious about playing tour guide for my 14-year-old-niece, Shannon, on her first visit to New York City. But my brother John said she could not wait to see Manhattan. It was quite a trip for an eighth grader from the Jersey Shore.

They arrived early at my West Village apartment. My phone rang at 11:15.

“Where are you? Oh you’re downstairs, outside my building. Give me 10 minutes.”

And we were off. Aunt Kate whisked them via cab to St. Mark’s Pl. in the East Village for lunch at a falafel joint and rock apparel shopping. I was the cool aunt buying a T-shirt of her favorite emo group, Hawthorne Heights, in a store I’d walked past hundreds of times but never set foot inside. I had lived on wild and crazy St. Mark’s Pl. between Second and Third Aves. for two decades.

“I don’t want to go in there,” my niece said when we were on the sidewalk.

“Why not?” I asked, puzzled. I knew she wanted this gift.

“Because they sell drug stuff,” she noted, pointing to a case with pipes and bongs.

“Then I guess you won’t get your shirt,” my brother said dryly.

Things had changed from my youth. She was brainwashed against marijuana and here I was trying to remember if I’d left any rolling papers out on my coffee table.

After spending an hour with her, my latent maternal instincts had kicked in. All the guys in the store were staring at Shannon while she chose between two designs. My niece is a pretty brown-eyed blonde with a grown-up figure; she wears too much makeup and dresses too sexy. I worry because she looks 18, not 14.

We left St. Mark’s and headed to E. Seventh St. between Second and First.

“Didn’t you used to live on this block?” asked my brother, who had not been in this neighborhood in years. 

“Right there,” I said pointing to the tenement where I dwelled in the late 1970s. “You helped me move in. Remember?”

As we spoke, I pictured us at that time, young and single, in our 20s.

“How could I forget carrying that big clunky desk up those stairs,” he said.

“And that stupid winding turn we could barely get past.”

After shopping on E. Seventh and E. Ninth Sts. and Avenue A (my niece loved looking at jewelry and bought a clunky ring), Shannon wanted to go to a coffeehouse — not Starbuck’s. She had an image in her mind. Luckily, my suggestion, Yaffa Café on St. Mark’s, met her approval. We sat in a booth decorated in leopard-skin material while

hipsters ate brunch next to us. My brother, a high school English teacher, looked so suburban. I had not been inside Yaffa since I moved across town eight years ago. I was rediscovering the East Village through my new role.

While we waited for our cappuccinos and hot chocolates, I was thinking how my niece’s visit was so much hipper than my first trips to New York City: the Ice Capades at Madison Square Garden with my Brownie troop or the time my aunt took me to see “Peter Pan” on Broadway. I still remember the strings holding up Mary Martin as she flew. I didn’t discover Downtown until college.

It was a cold day and by the time we finished our drinks, I was ready to return home. But it was only midafternoon and my niece wanted more sightseeing. So we took the subway to Rockefeller Center and walked to Times Square. I could not wait to get away from the crowds of tourists in the Theater District and breathed a sigh of relief when the train pulled into 14th St. I had suggested a bus downtown but my guest wanted to ride the subway again because “It’s so much fun.” When was the last time I thought riding the subway was fun? By the day’s end, I was exhausted, and I’ve been walking around New York for 30 years.

Back home on Bethune St., Shannon kept saying how her bedroom was almost as big as my entire place. She kept looking for more rooms, the doors, as I explained that this was called a studio apartment — and it was spacious — for a studio. As she checked out my home, I was not sure if she had noticed my vintage gay liberation poster in the corner. Shannon was my youngest niece and I had not yet come out to her as queer Aunt Kate. As a junior high school student, Shannon was still at the stage where she and her friends said, “Oh, how gay,” meaning, “Oh, how gross.”

While I fixed them cups of tea and we waited for my partner to meet us for dinner, Shannon asked if she could use my computer. I hesitated. I’m a writer. This was my office equipment.

“I have to send my friends an e-mail to tell them about today.”

“Can’t this wait until you get home?”

“I want to tell them now.”

“All right, go ahead,” I said, wondering what she would say.

When my partner, Slim, arrived, she greeted them and kissed me hello smack on the lips. Shannon did a double take and put two and two together. She had gotten a peek into my authentic life — not the one she only saw on holiday visits at my mother’s house. Just by being myself, I showed her the real New York City.

The next day, when we spoke on the phone, Shannon told me she liked the fact there were people all over the place. She liked the subways, the cab ride, the coffeehouse, the fast-food falafel — all things I take for granted. Of course, she can’t wait to come back during spring break. She’s already hinting at an overnight visit.

Walter has just finished a memoir about her 30 years living in the Village.