18th Street between 10th Avenue and the West Side Highway

Bus driver with reading glasses and Yankee cap, addressing the smattering of passengers on his M14D bus over his shoulder and through his rearview mirror.

Bus Driver: I always say, This is not Planet Earth, it’s Planet Dirt.  And everything on this planet is made of dirt.  And everything sooner or later returns to dirt.  And what goes up?  Sooner or later must get torn down.  This?  This?  (He gestures to the buildings out the bus windows.) All torn down.  So I say to you all, Welcome.  Welcome to Planet Dirt!

Q train over the Manhattan Bridge

Nebbishy dad–gray beard, jacket over hoodie over sweater, wearing both his and his kid’s backpacks–and painfully dorky eight-year-old boy–adenoidal, sticky, tiny, pre-orthodontia–riding home on the Q.  Kid sitting, dad standing.

Dad: So how was the rest of your day?

Kid: Ummmm.  B+.  We did family tree stuff.  We were allowed to include whatever kinds of beasts or creatures we wanted, even imaginary.  Rachel did the whole Simpsons.  She had some really obscure Simpsons characters like Herb Powell, remember him he’s Homer’s long-lost brother, but she forgot Maggie.  The smartest member of the Simpsons family.  Maggie’s even smarter than Lisa because Lisa has an attitude.

Dad: Attitude doesn’t have anything to do with intelligence.  Although a bad attitude is sometimes a byproduct of having too much confidence in your intelligence.

Dad takes out his iPhone.

Kid:  Right.  I think all the characters on the Simpsons are pretty solid.  (gesturing to a bag of barbeuce potato chips inside a Gristede’s bag his dad’s holding) Can I have some more?

Dad: (absent, on his iPhone) Yes.

Kid: Why don’t I hold them, that way I can have them whenever I want them.

Dad: (distracted) Okay.

Dad hands Kid the Gristede’s bag.

Kid: You do what you need to do, and I’ll do what I need to do.

Kid eats chips by the handful for a while, breathing noisily through his nose, pausing sometimes to make quiet robot fighting noises and explosion noises to himself.

Kid: (thoughtful) I think that organized crime family should watch a few episodes of the Simpsons.  I think that would be a good idea for them.

He chortles sardonically to himself: “Good one.”

Kid: I almost cried because these are so spicy.

Dad: Hey how many of those have you eaten?  Now you’re going to be extremely thirsty, what are you going to do about that?  Do you have water in your bag because I don’t.

Kid: No.

Dad: What are you going to do when you’re so thirsty you can’t stand it anymore?

Kid: Suffer!

Bowery and Bleecker

Sweet-voiced, sweet-faced 21-year-old boy and sharp-voiced, sharp-faced 21-year-old girl doctoring their coffees.

Boy: You know why human beings survive?  And prosper?  Running.  It’s the truth.  There are other animals that can run faster but none that can run for a longer period of time.

Girl: This doesn’t look good, what I’ve done.

Boy: Why?  What happened?

Girl: Too much milk.

Boy: That’s how we conquered them.  Animals would run away and we would chase them, run away and we would chase them, and eventually they’d get tired and we’d spear them.

Girl: That’s not true.

Boy: I know, I was surprised that we could outlast like a cheetah.

Girl: We don’t eat cheetah.

Boy: We eat wild boar.

Girl: You don’t chase down a wild boar.

Boy: You could.  Or a cow.

Girl: Cows don’t run at all.

Boy: Chickens–I mean turkeys, turkeys have a very high capacity to run away.  Every time I eat one of them I think, my goodness, long ago we would really have had to work to get our hands on this guy.

She shakes her sugar packet up by her ear, tears into it.

Boy: The music of the sugar packet.  Not to be confused with the racket of the tea bag.  (sighs) So yeah, I’m turned on by theater.  Theater, what’s so hard about that?

They go.

36 Bus, N Broadway and Addison, Chicago

Halloween night, 10:30 p.m.

Three dudes, all friends, get on the bus: a corporate zombie, a corporate slasher victim, and a corporate robot with futuristic helmet pushed back on top of his head.  All in business suits.

First two dudes tap their cards uneventfully on the scanner.  Corporate Robot Dude can’t make his card read in the machine.  He dips the card once, twice, then loses it in the machine.  Corporate Robot Dude pitches a little fit and the driver waves him through.  He sits down across the aisle from his friends, agitated.

Corporate Robot Dude: Did you see that?  I just put five bucks on that thing like, recently.

Corporate Zombie Dude: You got a misread.  Sometimes you get a misread.  You gotta be ready to reswipe.

Corporate Robot Dude: I couldn’t reswipe, man, it ate my card.

Corporate Zombie Dude: It kept it?

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: What’s he saying?

Corporate Zombie Dude: He says it ate his card that had five bucks on it.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: That’s bullshit.  He’s lying.  We should tell the driver on him.  He looks suspicious to me.

Corporate Zombie Dude: He does.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: I’m pretty much suspicious of everyone on this bus right now,  but especially this guy.  What’s he supposed to be, a robot?

Corporate Robot Dude pulls his helmet down over his face.  It has a voice altering microphone that makes him sound like a futuristic robot when he talks.

Corporate Robot Dude: (robot voice) Fuck you man, I’m a robot.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: Hey buddy leave us alone.

Corporate Zombie Dude: Stop harrassing us.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: No man, you can’t borrow my cell phone.  Back off.

Pause.

Corporate Robot Dude: (robot voice) It’s a local call.

Behind them a guy in a black unitard and black stocking cap with four limp black balloons stuck to his head stands up, catches Corporate Slasher Victim Dude’s attention.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: (to Black Balloon-Head Guy) Sir, are you currants?

Black Balloon-Head Guy: What?

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: Are you black currants?

Black Balloon-Head Guy: No, I’m postmodern expressionism.

Corporate Slasher Victim Dude: Word.

See?

Waverly Place and Mercer Street

Two NYU juniors.  He: skinny jeans, thin cotton hoodie (hood up), hands shoved in pockets.  She: skinny jeans, two layered T-shirts, silver ballet flats, oversized sunglasses.

NYU Girl: No this whole place is unrecognizable.  The new freshmen come in and they’re like, You used to live in Hayden, where is there to go around here? and I’m like, Honestly?  I have no idea.  This whole place is completely different.

NYU Boy: Pizza Mercato’s still here.

NYU Girl: Yeah but that’s the only thing.

NYU Boy: I know, even St. Marks.

NYU Girl: Totally!

NYU Boy: It’s like St. Marks got bought out by a major label.

NYU Girl: God, I know.

NYU Boy: I mean, I guess if you like Japanese food…

NYU Girl: Yeah but if you don’t.

NYU Boy: St. Marks went from like gutter punk to like, Asian fusion in the past two years.

NYU Girl: I know.  It’s so sad.

Lafayette and Broome; 5th and A; Trader Joe’s on 14th and 3rd

Three unrelated fragments from the past 48 hours.

1.

Behind me, unseen, guy and girl walking.

Girl: Why are you walking so far ahead?

Guy: (icy) Because I’m upset.  And yes my knee is better, thank you for asking.

2.

Fiftysomething dude, sun-leathered, in twentysomething surferwear and shades, on his cellphone, one foot on the curb and one in the gutter.

Surfer Dude: Nothing.  Chilling.  Oh that girl I lent money to ten years ago called me from Spain.  She was like, Are you still mad at me?  I was like, I’m not mad at you, I just lost all respect for you.  She was like, Cool.  So that.  Otherwise nothing.

3.

Shaved-head guy with tiny gold hoop earrings behind me in line at the Trader Joe’s.   Picks up a can of Chunky Minestrone soup.

Shaved-Head Guy: (in disbelief) Chunky Milestone Soup?

He holds the can at arm’s length to squint at it–his forearm is ribboned with long, blurry tattoos of naked ladies.  Shakes his head in resignation, replaces the can on the shelf.

Shaved-Head Guy: Chunky Milestone Soup.

6th Street and 1st Avenue

Tree downed by the thunderstorm completely blocking the intersection–cop car, police tape, small crowd of onlookers.

Tall wiry guy standing next to me, loose lime green polo, wavy cartoon-electric-shock-victim gray hair, cigarette.  Jerks his head to get my attention.

Wiry guy: “Hey.”

Me: “Hey.”

Wiry guy: “I did that.” (takes a drag on his cigarette) “With my mind.”

Tompkins Square Park, Southwest Entrance

Fourth of July, midday.

Tall skinny guy in a straw fedora and sandals crouched on the pavement by the park entrance, repeating to everyone who passes him by:

“You wasn’t born a monster, but somehow you got vexed, and you turned into one.  You wasn’t born a monster, but somehow you got vexed, and you turned into one.  You wasn’t born a monster, but somehow you got vexed, and you turned into one.  You wasn’t born a monster…”

Whole Foods, East Houston between Bowery and Chrystie

Damp-haired guy, just off work in a trench coat, button-down, and tie.  On his cell phone in the express check-out line carrying a basket full of groceries.

Guy: (serious, sotto voce) Just tell me what’s wrong.

(pause)

Are you mad at me for getting the sea bass?

(pause)

You’re not going to eat it, are you.

(pause)

I can tell that you’re not.

(pause)

What are you going to do to me, then?

(pause)

(pause)

Fine.  I’ll find out when I get home.

And he snaps his phone shut.

55th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues

Grizzled middle-aged guy in two winter jackets and a ski hat falls in step with me as I’m walking through the rain.

Guy: (low, sonorous) Hey there.  I’m trying to get a cup of soup.  Can you help me get a cup of soup?

Me: Oh I’m sorry, man, I wish I could.

Guy: And I wish I could take you to Sicily.

Me: Sicily?

Guy: If you woke up with me tomorrow morning in Sicily we could have breakfast together.

Me: Actually, that sounds pretty nice.

Guy: You know it would be.