Posts tagged ‘manhattan’
at the time, i was working for a small graphic design company on twenty-third street. i wasn’t making a lot of money but at least i was getting experience. i started out in traffic and then after about a year or so i was on the branding team. not bad for a kid out of cleveland going to public schools. then things changed when i met mother. she was maybe about fifty-five, and looked like a cross between the lady from murder she wrote and meryl streep, but her skin wasn’t as smooth. i was at a grey’s papaya munching on a hotdog and she asked me for a fifty cents for the subway. i gave her fifty cents and then went i went to my apartment that i shared with my old college buddy lester, she was there in the hallway, along with three guys in suits. i thought it was going to be a shakedown but then she said it. she kept saying sergeant hectorish lee over and over and over again. by maybe the twentieth time she said it, and at that point i was tied to a chair, things started to make sense, a lot of sense.
when i got out the bus, we were somewhere in lower manhattan. i could tell because all the streets had names and shit and it was narrow and there were bricks everywhere and the girls were all walking alone in their thousand dollar pea coats instead of numbers and avenues and straight lines and suits and fat midwestern tourists in nylon jumps and white sneakers. i thought we were supposed to be going to a pumpkin patch but then it hit me that halloween was already past. when i asked the bus driver what we were doing here he looked at me all strange in that “you’re the boss so why you asking me asshole” kind of look. i didn’t say anything because i didn’t really feel like arguing and i hadn’t eaten my breakfast yet. i usually have oatmeal, you know bob’s high fiber natural oatmeal. i add some flax seeds in there and agave syrup because it’s sweet but doesn’t have the same sugar crash as sugar or honey or even maple syrup.
me and my girlfriends are tight. we grew up together in fallanton. that’s about seven miles from the ohio state university. we all went there. nancy, the one with the reddish hair in the front, she’s a nurse at mercy med. jen, the one out in the back, she’s a housewife with four amazing kids. and for me i’m a systems analyst for facebook. don’t tell anyone this but i can see all your profiles and pictures even the ones that are private. if you press “$” and hold down the control key (or the command key if you have a mac) when you log on, you have super facebook powers, kind of like when you have double or triple stacks in checkers and you can jump over like four or five pieces. i once viewed chris lagorga’s profile. i went to high school with him and i had such a crush on him but he didn’t really look at me much because he was one of those football player guys. he went on to play for duke or something but anyway i kept trying to friend him on facebook but he kept ignoring me. i got sick and tired of it, because i helped him with his homework. without me he wouldn’t have graduated. so i used my special facebook powers and boom, i’m his friend. i think he’s tried to unfriend me like seven times but i keep adding myself. i’m thinking of adding a picture of myself on his wall or something. i can’t wait to see what he says.
it was a thursday afternoon at about 3:41 p.m. when elmo just got tired fucking around on sesame street.
i guess i first justified it in my head as her being “just different,” you know, clothes bought from the second hand stores, hates her parents, believes that neocapitalism is the root of all oppression. i didn’t notice really that she drooled a lot when she ate until my buddy dean said it to me a few weeks ago. i swear, man, i woke up a few days ago and jesus, i was sweating all over the damn place because i just realized that she had asked to take a pint of my blood the other day for some emergency blood donation drive at the blood bank. but she did the procedure herself in my bathroom and you know for the record i did not feel too comfortable when all was said and done. you should see my friggin’ arm. and then came the kicker just yesterday. she was talking to me about the biography of thomas dewey and then all of a sudden she started to take off her face. no joke man. her face.
¿dónde está el museo? me puede decir donde está el museo?
me gustaria saber porque tengo amigos allí que poco encanta el helado y los tigres y las burbujas y la comida china. quiero volar con ellos un día en un gran globo.
if someone offered you a new life for twenty-five bucks, would you do it?
she was on top of her game, just as her parents always said. she was naturally good and practiced a lot to ensure she stayed good. but the one weakness she always had as a kid came back to haunt her that one day in September, as the summer and fall gave hugs to one another.
so, mr. smith, let’s just say you’re on a deserted island . . .
it all started with an ad in the sunday paper job section. it read, “tomorrow the sea moves east on a small boat.” he replied the following sunday, “workers needed for short-term labor job in long island.” we’ve been going on for months now, just like this. yesterday, he said, “make money from home.” so today, we are planning to meet for lunch at our favorite place on the upper west. i think i’ll have an iced tea and the soup of the day. i suspect he’ll have salad with croutons.
e v e r y d a y aperture 