Today’s soundtrack:
they lived and they died
they prayed to their gods
but the stone gods did not make a sound.
Today at 8:02pm: Receiving a fortuitous cell phone call: Come home, roommate and his girlfriend are cooking pork chops.


I don’t mind walking down to 33rd Street to catch the train home. It’s only sixteen blocks from the office and it takes sixteen minutes. At 5pm it’s not like I’m missing anything anyway. Except maybe the chance to hear someone scream “Allahu Akbar” at Grand Central seconds before I am engulfed in angry flames.

Walking up- or downtown you average about a block a minute with the stoplights and occasional tourist asking for directions. I always thought I looked unfriendly and unapproachable--my friends have reported I’m everything from “stand-offish” to “sour”--yet people ask me for directions like there’s a GPS sign hanging above my head.

I’ve noticed tourists/non-New-Yorkers seem to be accustomed to a higher level of interaction in the street. A typical answer from me is that I’ll point in the right direction and say “Go two blocks, make a right” and keep walking, but the tourist seems to need more than this because they keep talking to me.

“So I just go two blocks and make a right?” they ask. They need affirmation and reiteration. What am I supposed to do, say it slower? Louder? Sing it? Launch the words into the sky with fireworks?

I got no patience; I’d make a terrible tour guide.


ME: And here on the left is the house where George Washington grew up.

RUBE: Where? On the left?

ME: No, it’s on the right, I just said “left” to fuck with you.

RUBE: What?

ME: It’s on the left.

RUBE: Well you don’t have to be so--

ME: That’s right ladies and gentlemen, the house he grew up in, there it is. I should probably add that not only was George Washington our nation’s first president, he also had a remarkable ability to understand fucking directions.

RUBE: Our tourguide seems to have an attitude problem.

ME: Many people say it was Washington’s ability to distinguish between left and right that won us the fucking Revolutionary War.

RUBE: I hate you.

ME: Well, both me and George Washington’s ghost hate you. Get off my bus.

I don’t mind giving you directions, but the thought of having more than ten seconds of repetitive conversation with a stranger in the street could not possibly appeal to me less. So I like to keep my responses as terse as possible. I substitute pointing for potentially wasted words and am very clear about block numbers.

My favorite was when this guy asked me where Bleecker Street was. I didn’t have to say anything, I just pointed above his head. He was standing under the sign that said “Bleecker Street.” If it was socially acceptable to slap people I would have walked away from the encounter with red hands.