Reality Check

FROM June 27, 2006

This is fucking New York and there are some truly crazy people here. I'd forgotten that, because at some point (two months into working in Times Square, maybe) I became city-jaded and everyone just started blending into one another, dots of flesh like a Chuck Close up close. The upside is that I no longer feel terrifically lonely among millions of strangers. The downside is that I forget sometimes crazy people have no respect for personal boundary and will get all up in your face and, perhaps, shove their finger in your skull like a gun, execution style, whilst screaming "bitch" for no apparent reason other than your continued existence.

On one hand I can relate. I feel generally hostile a goodly amount of the time I am seeking a navigable path through throngs. On the other hand: what the fuck. My fight reflexes kicked in but so did logic, luckily, and rather than punch her off I kick-pushed, admonished "Don't EVEN be touching me," in ninth grade hallway brawl parlance, without even thinking of it. Later I felt proud for still having default fight slang collected in my mind's recesses but at that moment I rounded the corner, from 11th onto University, and burst into tears. Not from fear, exactly, though it did remind me how quickly shit can get ugly. I wept more from anger and the spontaneous arrest of control. I felt unsettled the rest of the night, after the peeping tom across the courtyard caught me with shades up and watering my herb garden. My sleep ripped open with dreams of him or others leering into the window from the fire escape.

That, and I fucking left my apartment keys at the Crunch, but can defend myself if necessary, because I am presently ripped.