In the park: True love’s true meaning

You know how in the Kama Sutra there are certain, how shall we say, suggestions that are hard to visualize? Well, wait until you hear this one.

Last week, two lovers climbed a tree in Central Park and, standing on a limb, began fervidly expressing their affection as a crowd gathered beneath. One was 17, of the Bronx, a male; the other was 32, also of the Bronx and a preoperative transsexual. They were half naked by the time the NYPD arrived. Two officers climbed after them, but when the lovers scampered higher, a hostage negotiation team was called in along with two cherry picker trucks, the kind first ladies use to light the national Christmas tree.

It took four hours of cajoling, but eventually the couple descended. They were arrested, charged with -- among other violations -- criminal mischief and taken to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation.

When I asked Det. John Sweeney, who was on the scene, what seemed to be the couple’s motive, he gave me the story, completely deadpan: “They’re supposedly in love, you see. The 32-year-old told the 17-year-old he had to tell his mother about him. They did and she said, ‘No, no, no, I’m not having this.’ Then, the older one assaulted the mother, and they said they were going to the Empire State Building to jump off but ended up naked in the tree.”

The two certainly picked a very public spot between the carousel and Wollman Rink on the southern end of the park. Their performance ultimately drew about 150 onlookers and a fleet of TV trucks. The older lover blared that he didn’t like the way the media portrayed transsexuals. He also hollered that he wanted a vanilla Pepsi, and when the cops brought him a plain Pepsi he threw it at them; the teenager shrieked that he hated his mother and his psychologist.

Throughout, the cops remained courteous to the lovers and kept gawkers, some of whom set up lawn chairs, at bay. Said Sweeney: “Our attitude was get ‘em down safely, get ‘em to the hospital and get ‘em tucked in.”

Naturally, the story was picked up in the national and international media because it validated many stereotypes about New Yorkers: that we’re a bunch of tree-hugging wackos who like to have sex in public and whine about how much we hate our mothers and our shrinks. Sweeney, a Brooklyn native, had a more sanguine interpretation: “Them guys -- or whatever they are -- they’re as much about New York as anybody.”

I don’t think so, and here is where I part ways with the good officer.

On any given Sunday, Monday or Tuesday, beneath the boughs elsewhere in Central Park, there are couples publicly proclaiming their love, and they tell you a lot more about this city and its diversity, its sense of free expression and assorted rituals than the nutty lovers on a limb.

It has become custom among New York’s Chinese immigrants-in-love to use their minimal time off to get married. Year-round, even in the snow, the young couples come to Central Park in white stretch limousines that let them off at 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue. They start out early in the morning at Chinatown’s dozens of bridal and photography studios, where they get dressed up, head to toe, in rented wedding gear. The women wear puffy white dresses and elaborate veils dripping with pearls. The guys rent ill-fitting tuxedos reminiscent of prom night, but they add personal touches like rainbow hair glitter and elaborate boutonnieres with red ribbons.

With entourages of family and friends, the couples pose in front of iconic park sites for a still photographer and a video camera. These sessions last hours and take them all over the park. The videos are usually sent back home to China, where their families can view the happy couple in America. Later, the wedding parties return to Chinatown for brief ceremonies and modest banquets.

On Tuesday afternoon, a sunny spring day that the Chinese calendar apparently said was lucky, I came upon at least a dozen couples in their frothy outfits posing in different spots: under the cherry trees that are in full bloom, near the Conservatory boat pond, in front of a bronze statue of Hans Christian Andersen feeding the birds.

At one point, several wedding groups collided at Andersen’s statue. As they waited for their turn to sit in Andersen’s lap, a bride pulled a plain white roll out of a plastic bag and fed her groom.

Raymond Chen, a cook, and Amy Xiao, a waitress, had driven early Tuesday from suburban Philadelphia to a wedding studio in Chinatown. They’ve been in America less than four years and had met working at a restaurant in North Carolina. After the 30-year-olds managed to get jobs working together at a Chinese restaurant in Pennsylvania, they decided to get married.

The whole package -- from Amy’s rented tulle slip to the Chinese banquet they would have that night on Mott Street -- will cost several thousand dollars. They’ve saved, they’ve borrowed, they will be in debt.

But even after two hours of walking around the park and being instructed on how to look in love in various positions, they still looked in love.

At one point, Raymond offered me a bottle of water from a cache his friends had bought from a hot-dog vendor. Raymond didn’t speak much English, but when I declined the drink, he smiled and simply said, “Lucky day.”

The couples running around Central Park in their wedding gear on a Tuesday were certainly an eye-catching curiosity. Yet the joggers and doormen in the elegant Fifth Avenue buildings barely noticed them.

These striving, decent couples will never make the evening news. No one has enough time to stop and notice their rituals and energetic dreams even though they are more important to this city and its future than its tall buildings and unforgiving pace.

As for the odd couple in the tree, the 32-year-old from the Bronx was, when I last checked, still being evaluated in the hospital, and the teenager was back with his mother, who was trying to get him to move to Wisconsin. Maybe the phrase “to each his own” was invented for New York.