Going to the store

Okay, positive energy. I can try that.

Spring Street, between 4th and 5th. Two women and a stroller, behind me. One of them is speaking passionately and mangling any quotation her sentences stumble across. I don't care, she's energetic. She's the real deal. She's a far cry from beautiful, but I'd take her over a lot of these plastic Wilmas because she's just awesome. In a city where people obfuscate normality by just picking three character tweaks, somebody at least wants something.

It occurs to me that this is where, not three weeks ago, the cops swerved up to the curb right next to me one night and came running at me. I thought I was going to get it. Instead they tackled a black guy on a bike who was passing right next to me.

Seventh Street. A hobo wearing a towel where there's usually a shirt panhandles me. Drops the towel to make his point, revealing too-large pants that hang so far down that they expose his unkempt bush to the entire block. I tell him I never carry cash. He laughs and pats me down gently, jokingly. Then he pats my cock before quickly moving away. I yell "Whoa, buddy!" but I'm laughing. I'm way past giving a shit and so is he, with eyes redder than they are white and a wasted body.

The next corner sees a beautiful Asian girl in a designer coat that probably costs more than all my clothes put together, no hyperbole. She's on the phone and using the word "like" the same way old telegrams used "stop". There's a kind of poetry to Valley Girl when you hear it enough.

So like he's been really great
This has been like the worst week of my life
and he's like been there for me

It sounds like she's trying to make a case for the underdog to a skeptical friend, or maybe that's just what I want to believe, and I don't begrudge her a damn thing but I do have to wonder how the worst week of her life stacks up to that last guy's best.

A quick stop at the library. Not a week ago I taught Sota, now fifteen, the same thing my buddy Casim showed me when I was that age; take a well-read book from the girly porn or "Romance" section and hold it by the spine. Let it fall open. Sex scene, every damn time. Amaze your friends with this tested and true trick.

Reading the script to Apocalypse Now on the sky bridge, dwelling on the themes that tend to flit by when you're watching it, and some guy is using the place the same way a coyote uses a row of houses with chained up dogs. Scan the tables, pick the babe, start chatting. Loud. I switch the music piping through my headphones to from Sarah Blasko to Slayer and crank it up. When he finds that husk dried up and only as responsive as the social contract compels her to be he moves on. I hear him barking at others for five minutes and then he leaves. No books. Probably the vaguest awareness that they're even there.

I glance over my shoulder at the woman after he's gone. She throws me a look that may or not say "Eat shit." I'm fine with either interpretation.