Liberating a Christmas tree

Of all the ways you can entertain your 15 year on a Friday night in NYC, getting her drunk and then stealing a Christmas tree is not among the most responsible.

It started with Mexican Bulldogs at Benny's Burritos on Greenwich Avenue. A seemingly innocent drink that tastes sweet, but not too cloying and boozy, but not too strong, nothing like the usual firewater cocktails they serve up in this city. It's a frozen Margarita with a corona tipped upside down into it. Possibly on reflection, they don't seem that innocent and the name may be a clue to the trouble that lies ahead. Anything with bulldog in doesn't sound like a soft option. Come to think of it, there are no soft options in this alcoholic town. You can easily get drunk on two cocktails due to the lack of measures and the fast and loose pour of the bartender. They want you drunk so they'll make better tips. You want to be drunk. This is a mutually satisfying relationship.

The Mexican Bulldogs were discovered when The Welsh were in town. The fourth lot of Welsh since I arrived. This time my best mate's brother and his girlfriend, who patiently tried to explain the science behind the Mexican Bulldog. I just couldn't get how the Corona was going down as I sipped the Margarita through a straw. It was something to do with physics they said. I still don't understand now. In the middle of my second Mexican Bulldog, I also didn't care. I was still trying to fathom how I had not yet discovered these fast tracks to nirvana on my previous visits to the restaurant just two minutes from the apartment.


It was love at first sip. That night we went to the lighting of the Christmas tree at The Rockefeller Centre and despite being feet away from Aretha Franklin, Shakira Shakira and Rod Stewart, the only conversation was about The Bulldogs.

So the following Friday I take The Teenager to Bennys and we order up some Bulldogs. Well who else is going to appreciate a new booze experience better than a 15 year old?

I tell myself she is nearly 16 and if we were still living in Cardiff she'd be on first name terms with most of the bouncers by now. Such ability of sense and reason did not last for long. We must have only have two or maybe three Bulldogs and then the next thing I know we are trying to get into a bar. Am I trying to have a pub crawl with my teenage daughter? Who is not 3 but 6 years underage here? Yes, it appears so. There'll be no ID problems at this joint, we've gotton in before without ID.

''ID?"
''Oh no," I slur "This is my sister and she doesn't have any."
"She can't come in then."
Awkward pause
"But she's British?"
Silence
''We're British, we don't do ID."
"You can't come in either then."

Fuckity, fuck, fuck. The night is young and I want to drink more.

''Let's nick a Christmas tree." says The Teenager, eyeing up the stall over the road.

I don't remember what I said in reply, but it can't have been much in the way of parental protest because after a quick tactics meeting we are grabbing an unwrapped 10ft pine from the end of the stall and dragging it away.

We haul it over the road and The Teenager falls on top of it.

''Get up, for fuck's sake!'' I shoo her off the road and grabbing the tree I run as fast as I can, in order to get out of the line of site of the stall holders.



We go the long way home to avoid detection and drag the pine by it's top, so it's shedding needles along the pretty cobbled streets of the West Village. We march past bars where people double take out of the windows and we surprise those sitting on their stoops smoking. Some people talk to us, cheer us, shout. I shout back that we have 'liberated the tree'. My reasoning is something along the lines of 'The tree began to nature, they stole it from nature, we are liberating it back'. This is fairly weak considering I planning to hold it hostage in a small 2 bed apartment, rather that release it back into the Norwegian forest.

We turn the corner onto 7th Avenue past the homeless medical centre and a manned NYPD police car. Then we bump into a couple who collapse into laughter and ask us what we're doing to which I shout 'Liberating a Christmas tree!'' and they ask if they can take pics and then The Teenager and I are standing in the middle of 7th Avenue posing drunkenly with the stolen tree and then we are talking to the couple and they are inviting us to a party in Chinatown and The Teenager wants to know if it will require ID and I say more importantly we have to get the bloody tree home. And then we are talking about Flight of The Conchords and how they would make a Liberating a Christmas tree song and then we are all singing that song and then they offer to help us get the tree into our building and then the lady is taking my email, cos she says I must have the pics, even though I know they will be awful and drunken and I think what a cool pair of Americans. That's a first.



Then we are dragging the pine through the front door of the apartment and The American is sitting on the sofa eating take out which actually falls from his mouth when he sees the giant tree, which now looks even more massive in our Manhattan broom closet. The Teenager and I are singing the Liberating a Christmas tree song and then we explain that we actually stole it and then he really is shocked.

But then he gets quite excited at the danger of it all and he insists on going to the 24 hour Duane Reade to buy a stand and I say

''Get me a Diet Dr Pepper!"

And The American goes off muttering how all Welsh are "fucking mental".

And I know that whatever else happens in our lives and however much we fight and she thinks I am uncool-The Teenager will never forget the night that her and her mother got drunk and stole a Christmas tree in New York City.

Liberating a Christmas Tree: That's how Christmas should be.

Finding my New York...

New York City is an assault on the senses.

It is loud, smelly, breathtakingly beautiful, it feels rough and smooth and sometimes leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Today I hate New York and New York hates me right back.

I am standing on a corner in Chelsea crying into the phone to my Mum. The reason for this is the perfect Manhattan apartment that I gained blisters trying to find looks like it has fallen through. I can't take looking at anymore overpriced shoeboxes or hanging around on blocks where even the drug dealers fear to tread. So I am crying like a big baby.

In the UK simply having a deposit, the first month's rent and not looking like a psycho is usually enough to secure you a flat. It was certainly the only requirements I had for my tenants. Not so here: Imagine the worst job interview you ever had. Now imagine you had to pay for the privilege of going through the stress.

The real estate agent has come back and said that the landlords require yet another month's security. With a 15% fee you might think they could deliver better news. The amount the landlord require us to put down before we move is roughly the same as my annual starting salary when I graduated.

And who are we to argue? What with The American's imperfect credit rating and my non existent U.S. one. So this is where the call to my mother comes in; to beg for cash, which felt acceptable in my twenties, but is simply humiliating half way through my thirties.

New York doesn't care that I am crying, I am just another freak on the street. The noise level seems to go up tenfold as cars whizz by and beep their horns aggressively and a big, gleaming truck screeches it's breaks so loudly I can't even hear my own sobs.

I just want my bed. Then I realise I don't even own a bed here and this makes me cry even more. I call The American and I can't hear what he is saying so I shout down the phone against the noise. I tell him I just want my own place in New York, that I just want to find my place.

*
When I pull myself together I walk down the street towards the subway when a camp man swinging a Whole Foods bag bumps into me and nearly knocks me over.

'Stoopid.' he mutters.
Wait. He bumped into me?
I pause. Then go for it: ''FUCK YOOOO!'' I shout.
He swings around and eyes me threateningly ''What. Did you just say to me?''
Oh crap. I picked a fight with the gobbiest gay in Chelsea.
''I said..." and I gulp and get ready to run: ''FUCK YOOO!'' and with that I leg it into the subway, praying he doesn't have a metro card to follow me.
"You're a cunt lady." he screams after me
''And you Mr Are an even bigger cunt!'' I holler back.

I have never called anyone a cunt in public before. It is my first public cunt and my first New York FUCK YOOO! and it feels great.

*

"Hey huneee. I got us this."
The American places a small red radio down on the table. I am furrowed eyebrows.
"It's a wind up radio." he explains.
"Like they use in Africa?"
"Yes!"
"Oh right. Ummm. Why?"
"Because huneee. We can listen to announcements should Manhattan ever get attacked."
"Are you being serious?"
"Manhattan is an island huneee. There is no way to get off in a disaster."
"Matthew. This is not a disaster movie."
"Huneee we had a real life disaster movie here? 9/11?"
There is not much retort to a sentence that ends with 9/11 so I shut up.
''Huneee I just want to protect you and my stepdaughter. I just want to protect my new family''

The American has found his place in New York.

*

I go for a drink with the first in a long line of Cardiffians who've promised to come out to New York. I meet Nick and his friend Jim and spend a great few hours talking to them about home and their impressions of New York while I sip small but deadly $6 cosmos.

The bar woman offers to buy us all a round of drinks and Nick and Jim think it's some kind of joke. Like any good Welshmen would, they want to know what the catch is and I say as far as I know there isn't one. I am a little too pissed to remember the exact etiquette with 'buy backs' but I figure like everything in this city, it just involves a lot of tipping. So when we leave we put so much cash on the bar, it could have simply bought us another round. Which leads me back to the beginning of this paragraph and there being no catch. The lack of logic in the whole process can really do you in when you've been drinking. Probably why 'buy backs' work so well.

When I get back to the ever glamorous Queens I trip out of the subway and spot a pair of $20 cowboy boots in a Thrift store. I Insist they get them out of the window and drunkenly try and pull them on, while still standing on one foot. I sway a little to the left and then a little to the right. They won't budge, so I yank some more and nearly topple over before conceding that they don't fit. The woman behind the counter rolls her eyes. In New York even the volunteer at a thrift store in Astoria has attitude.

I leave the store smiling and trip down the street blinking against the lights. I feel for my engagement ring, a nervous habit I have developed since The American put it on my finger. I remember I have a knuckle, so It can't just fall off.

The smell of the kebab stall wafts down Steinway and music is blasting from the Brazillian bar. I can still taste the rocket fuel cosmos. It's ok. New York can assault my senses today.

I will find my place here.

I will find my New York.