Blue Sky

New York happened again for me today. (See this previous entry about another New York moment I had back in May, if you're curious.)

I decided to lie in the sun this afternoon. The Boyf has a very nice roof deck, and thank goodness I'm allowed to use it. If I tried to climb on top of my five-floor walkup and lie out on the tar, I'd probably either crash through it into a fifth-floor tenant's living room or roll off into midtown traffic because of the 35-degree slant and no railing.

So, yes, I went up today to give my pasty-white skin a nice cherry sheen, and I looked around at all the buildings and the East River and the trees around the park below and thought, "I am lucky. This is beautiful." And all of the capitalism and inequalities and money-grubbing and posing that Manhattan is rife with sort of melted away, and it was just me and the blue sky.

But wait.

I happened to look up, and there were several jets doing skywriting. I was excited. I hoped it was a marriage proposal. Or maybe an eccentric Upper East Side millionaire putting Beatles lyrics up above just because he got his tax return back and figured what the hell. I waited for the jets to shoot out more letters, and then the cryptic message was revealed:

NEW HEINEKEN LIGHT

Sigh.

In two minutes, the letters had vanished, leaving a wispy, smoky arc in the otherwise cloudless sky.