I had a bottle of "Mike's Hard Lemonade" on the train on my way home from the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine (which houses -- among a lot of old books -- the world's biggest hairball, George Washington's upper dentures and ancient egyptian hierogylphics about construction accidents, many of them presumably involving large blocks of stone).
That was when I felt a hand on my shoulder and as I looked up, there was a cop who said "No drinking on the train." I confirmed his statement by repeating it and said "No drinking on the train." He looked at me, the paper I was reading (a copy of a copy of a discussion on the behavior of flies with amputated wings from 1874), and the "Mike's Hard Lemonade" bottle. Then he walked away.
Later I was sitting in class next to an Italian girl. The guy sitting next to her on the other side passed her a sheet of paper that said "Can I please have your email address?." She wrote her address down and passed the sheet on to me, thinking he wanted all of his classmates' email addresses. As I was writing mine down he bent over and took the sheet away saying "I don't want yours!" The girl felt sorry for me and offered me a separate sheet of paper to write down my email address. Sweet pity.
Tomorrow I'll work from home.
(If this inspires you to go to the NYAM library to see the hairball, please pretend to be interested in the books. It breaks the librarian's heart when people come just for the hairball.)
3 comments:
Man. Today I found a little arm on the sidewalk. A little brass arm broken off from a statue. It is hollow and smells old like cracking, yellowed library book pages.
When I cam home yesterday the trash bin in front of my building was swarmed by discarded furniture, as if someone had thrown out their entire apartment. On top of a mangled dresser was a large tome, the dull blue cover of which was marked only "Constitutional Law."
Today this woman rushed into the train; barely making it through the doors. She threw her bags down on the floor and slid down on the bench towards a woman reading a prayer book. She asked the woman to unhook her necklace. The necklace was silver with a key on it. There must not be anyone at home to unhook her necklace and she decided that some stranger on the train would do it for her.
What bothers me the most is that the necklace had a key charm on it not a lock(et) and yet here she was, unable to unhook herself. I thought this image was cruel.
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