Jonathan | Morning In Soho | A loft in Soho, Manhattan, NYC, USA
Morning In Soho
It's summer. I'm in Princeton, NJ, on a business trip. Again. I'm missing a great summer at home in Austin for this.

The Princeton office has one redeeming factor, in the presence of a genuinely friendly, intelligent and creative fellow named Cris. He must come from the moon -- they don't make people like this in corporate America anymore.

Cris is an ex-NSA spook, former police offer, and now a self-employed consultant with a model girlfriend. Everything you expect him to be from that description is wrong. He has a sort of unshakeable Taoist master happiness in all situations that you would not anticipate. He's kind.

He invites me along for a night out in Manhattan with his girlfriend April and several of her modeling-industry friends.

A long night ensues, in which I discover a lot of these modeling-industry people are also not what people would expect them to be. These people, at least are genuine, friendly, and spirited.

After a lengthy sojourn at a private party at a club on Park, we adjourn at closing time to the Soho loft of a couple of the remaining partiers. More drinking, more talk, more happy energy.

Cris and April decide to depart for their hotel room near the Garden. It's late, I don't have a hotel room, and the next train to Princeton is three hours in the future. The complete strangers whose loft this is offer me space to crash for the night.

Morning in Soho. Or more accurately, afternoon, as it is 12:30 when I finally awake in the clothes I went out in. The loft is quiet. Sun streams into the room from the big windows overlooking the street. I stumble, bleary-eyed, to the bathroom.

I am suddenly bowled over by the mirrors fully surrounding the sink. I step in to wash my face, and a hundred versions of my strung-out sleep-mussed self are watching me. And it hits me -- I have been to New York before on day trips, but this is the first time I woke up here.

I feel big. I feel infinite. Groggy, but infinite. My toes tingle.

I grab the camera. This will only happen once.
09 2002
  previous 10
« 9182 Jonathan
  9183 Samantha
  9184 Craig Parshall
  9185 Henrique Cabral
  9186 Will Fitzgerald
  9187 amanda
  9189 Diane Grust
  9190 Diane Grust
  9191 Chui Sim
  9192 nic ruffy
  next 10

⇦ go back to that other thing | surprise me | tell me more ⇨