pulled my fingers outta my ass...

... and it made a funny, musical "pop!" and then at last I updated the sidebar

Made a fool of myself in public (again)

On the way home, every night, there are two necessary stops. One, I guess you could call it the Burger Stop. The other, the Coca-Cola stop. Usually, the most interesting and unexpected things tend to happen at the Burger stop. Quite often, it takes the form of a black guy in various state of drunkenness or stoniness asking me for money.

But not tonight.

Tonight, the interesting thing happened quite unexpectedly at the Coca stop. There, I was number two waiting to be served at the little window of the deli. You know, the kind of bullet-proof double glass panels set in such a manner that the inside and outside windows do not face so that you cannot put the killing end of a shotgun under the nose of the deli guy.

So, I was number two. Number one was a black guy in jeans and hoody and probably Timberlands. Very loud on the CD player was a live of Uncommonmenfrommars. Then another black guy came. He was about the same size of Black Guy #1, but way more heavily set. Really. Like, you put him next to a rhino at a police line up, and it'd take you a while to tell which is which. Unlike Guy #1, he wears a cap and has his hoody on his head, so I don't see much of his face at first. That's why I didn't realize immediately there was something wrong. That, and the music.

When Rhino started to grab Guy #1 by the collar, I thought of turning off the music to assess the level of shit threat. Guy #1 had been smiling to Rhino during the previous seconds and I had assumed that they were friends or at least acquaintances. But now, although Guy #1 was still smiling, he was cornered by Rhino holding his collar, the deli wall and the pay phone on his left. He was holding a couple of bucks in his left hand.

When I saw the black girl who had just arrived hung up on someone on her cell phone and dial again, I assumed maybe she was calling 911 or something and I decided it was time for me to find out whether I should consider going to another 24-hour deli. So I turn off the music.

It turns out everything was fine. Rhino was all like, You still owe us some fucking money, nigga. While Guy #1 was all like, I told you this ain't my money, my check hasn't arrived yet, I'm telling you, that's my mother's money.

Nothing new under the sun.

So, Rhino starts pulling Guy #1 away from the deli window, shaking him, because he knows that you always have an advantage on someone in a fight if you're the one doing all the shaking; while, Guy #1 worries about keeping his balance by fighting back but not too much, I step to the window, knock on the bullet proof counter in the tunnel created by the bullet proof windows. The Hispanic guy reappear. He is new. Much older than the guy before. I don't know what happened to him. One night he was there, pretending my accent's so bad he thought I wanted a Vanilla coke, his eyes all red (probably from watching too much TV, what else?) the next night there was this older guy instead. After a couple days, he got the routine and I only order for protocols. When he sees me, he knows he'll be headed to the Coke section of the fridge in the coming seconds. I say hello, order my Coke. When he comes back, I take the change, say thank you and goodbye and start walking home. Behind me there's still talk of money and someone's mother.

That's when it happens. The thing I'm talking about in the title. The girl with the cell phone, I hear her call me. Something about a bag. So I turn around and I see her holding the black plastic bag with my 2-liter Coke in it that I had forgotten on the counter. There's no more money talk. I walk back towards the girl, trying to stay cool. Rhino is laughing is fucking ass off, He forgot his bag! ha ha!

Then I realized there are more guys around Guy #1 but right now, they're only laughing at me, and even Guy #1 is smiling/laughing in a fake way. Rhino comes close to me as I take my bag from the girl's hand, he's still laughing, he's huge hand in front of his mouth like kids do. He really thinks it's funny as hell. His eyes are sparkling. A few minutes before, his whole face was tensed and ominous. Someone arrives now, he would never suspect what was going on just a minute before.

So I tell him, Man, it's been a long day, okay! I try to be as convincing as possible but they keep laughing laughing and laughing so I just back up with a big smile and walk away and put the music back on.

Grand Central

That was a while ago now. Maybe a month. Maybe more. After they’ve finally uninstalled all the scaffoldings surrounding Grand Central Station. The magnificent front is back, for all to see, its stones whiter than ever. I want to think it looked exactly like that when it was built. Only the people swarming inside its proud marble walls were looking different. Having to walk through Grand Central every day makes my day worth all the shit I have to take. The motherfuckers who decided it’d be cool and profitable to tear down the original Pennsylvania Station are on my list of people to Kill In A Slow, Painful yet Entertaining Manner.