by Harry Goldstein Published May 5, 1997 Previous columns by Harry Goldstein	Lunch: the big black hole around noontime that sucks you towards it all morning and spits you out in the middle of the afternoon to face the remains of the day. I work in midtown Manhattan, so my choices for lunch venues are numerous: parks along the East River, near the UN, or nestled between buildings; little brick oases with trickling waterfalls and wire chairs; public plazas around tall buildings. My choices for food are infinite — Chinese noodle shops, Mongolian grills, Indian buffets, Irish pubs, greasy spoons, pizza shops, street vendors selling hot dogs, knishes, kebabs, falafel, soups, bagels, muffins, stuffed baked potatoes. Every craving foreseen and satisfied, for a price. You'd think I'd take advantage of all that variety. But food is my special weakness and if I gave in to temptation everyday, I'd bloat my way into a whole new wardrobe courtesy of American Tent and Awning. So my most common lunchtime scenario is a game of basketball at the YMCA down the street and a grilled cheese sandwich from the cafeteria in the basement of my building, which I smother in ketchup and greedily devour at my desk.
	Before I started going to the Y at lunch on a regular basis, I could never understand why people would want to get all sweaty in the middle of the day. What a hassle, I thought, to have to put on stinky gym clothes, work out, peel off even stinkier clothes, shower, dry off, get dressed and then forage for food. But I got used to the routine, and now I have all the machinations down to a science. I can do everything I need to do in my alloted hour, give or take a couple of minutes. I find that I'm less tense when I'm back at work, having had time to meditate, stretch out muscles that have been crammed in a chair for four hours, get the blood that has been pooling in my butt pumping back up to my brain — in short energize my body and soul. Days when I'm not at the gym, I'm usually running errands or watching boats ply the East River from a bench located on a quay just the otherside of FDR Drive.
here	Lunch was not always thus. When I was a temp, I usually had no choice but to wander around aimlessly for 45 minutes gnawing a street-vended hot dog or chain smoking till I felt sick enough to crawl back for more data entry torture. I spent that time cursing my lot in life and plotting how I might extricate myself from the temp cycle. When I finally landed a full-time job, I found a daily lunch partner who sort of came as part of the deal. Andy and I would go to lunch together just about everyday, grabbing a sandwich from the deli across the street from the publishing house where we worked, he as the subsidiary rights assistant and me as the trade sales assistant. Neither of us liked being secretaries, and we'd commiserate together for our strictly-timed 45 minutes, sitting in Madison Square Park beneath the towering sycamores and talking about our futures. As it happens, the next move for both of us after that job was momentus in its own way. Andy went into an intensive film program and ended up pursuing his dream (to be a film editor) out to LA, where he now works on a syndicated television show. I took a wrong turn down my career path and ended up at IMPROVE, where I was pursued by my worst nightmare. Lunchtime at IMPROVE was pure escape, the only portion of the day I could stomach. Between noon and 1 p.m. I'd disappear into the back alleys of Chinatown or Tribeca or Soho and lose myself in the intrigues of daily life. I'd duck into Chinese butcher shops to ponder strange meat or mill about Chinese apothecaries asking about the dozens of different roots, powders, and teas for sale. In Tribeca, I'd check out the menus at restaurants where I could never afford an appetizer, much less a whole meal. Wandering amongst the warehouses, I kept my eyes peeled for a glimpse of the rich and famous, maybe Robert DeNiro coming around the corner or JFK Junior crossing the street.
here	SoHo had some of my favorite bookstores, where I could browse away my entire lunch. On my way back to work I'd usually slow up, wanting to delay my inevitable return a bit longer and to see if I'd catch one of my bosses, perhaps Development Director Charles, coming out of the Peep Show on the corner of West Broadway and Canal Street, maybe carrying a brown bag stuffed with some video cheesecake to accompany his ham on rye. Every craving foreseen and satisfied, for a price. We polled Tripod members to find others spend their lunch hour — check out their answers in this special edition of Survey Sez. Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in Utne Reader, American Book Review, Promethean, AltX, word.com, and other periodicals. ©; 1997 Harry Goldstein, all rights reserved.