Pillow fight and Puff Dumpling

New York is not a home. It doesn't seem to be a place of permanence. Everyone here is here for a reason; it's a jumping-off point, a place to start a career, a family, a new life. Those who have lived here all their lives speak dreamily of living elsewhere someday, but most people who live in the City, Manhattan or Queens, come from other places and these other places define them. They come here to see if they can do this one thing. It's a conquering place, a dreaming place, certainly a place for adventurers. New Yorkers seem to know this. They are constantly challenging each other to accomplish something unreal.

Like the pillow fight in Union Square.

It was just an email, floating around. The sort of thing I likely would have ignored in my other cities, in any of my other lives. A pillow fight in Union Square. 2:00. Costumes welcomed. Jojo and I arrive in pajamas and boots and wool hats with ears knitted onto them. We look like wandering mercenary cats, like Puss in Boots. There are camera people and photographers everywhere; we don't know if we should pretend we can't see them or look directly at them, and so we do both, but hardly ever at the same time. We see a girl in a pink tutu holding a plush hot pink pillow. Several young men wearing black ski masks who stuffed their pillows into T-shirts with skulls on them, being interviewed for a local TV channel. A tall Asian kid dressed as William Wallace, blue clay on his face and a teddy bear for a shield. We see an older couple wearing hats similar to ours, though theirs are bright blue and purple and shaggy. We hail them as our mercenary-cat brethren from the north. One woman has a glorious hat. A long, drooping leather hat trimmed in fur. For the most part, though, the crowd is nicely dressed, in good coats and nice shoes, expensive scarves. New Yorkers are wonderful dressers but there is a place for costumes and this is it.

The fight begins without any warning. I imagine someone whacked someone else at the far end and it spread like a contagion, quickly, through the crowd, and suddenly everyone is hitting everyone else with pillows, fairly gently, and laughing. The laughter is amazing. A few screams and squeals, but mostly two hundred people having a pillow fight of epic proportions, grown adults who haven't played this game for years, and laughing and laughing. There is hardly any talking, except the occasional "Get the panda!" or "Get the Scotsman!" whereupon those individuals are barraged, disappearing under multicolored pillows. And laughing.

Jojo and I find each other before the greater part of the fray is finished. She tells me she met Batman in the midst of a crowd, and he screamed "Catwoman!" and she screamed "My nemesis!" and bopped him on his bat-ears. We go to get frozen yogurt, kicking back in our chairs, exhilarated, sweaty, our pillows piled on the table next to us. People keep looking in the window with questioning eyes. We smile and recount our battle.

We go to the cat shelters after this, where we finally fall for a small white cat called Snowbella, which we will not permit her to be called again. At the moment, she rejoices in the name of Puff Dumpling, which we may translate to Chinese so that it will be less offensive. We pick up Brent on the way home, and I cook chicken marsala while they settle Puff Dumpling into her new home. She seems so content here, exploring easily, begging attention. She's so lovely. She's Jojo's cat really, but I will be happy to live with her. Cats are always third roommates.

Pillow fights in New York. Wonderful.