Disappearing Acts (the last post)

So this was set to be the opening to my next post...three days ago.  I was made impotent by what exactly was to follow...I guess i decided it wasn't a good idea to share. At least not publicly. If you ask me, i'll tell you.  The blog was meant to be a statement (however self-important that may sound) to claim my freedom to write the truth, proving the worth greater than the expense. Sort of an extreme vehicle of autonomy. And this post would have proven that...or it would have disproved my point. It would have been really funny though.  Sorry that I can't finish.

I'll do something else. This is much, I think, even though that was the point.

Auf VEDER ZANE for now

P.s. Ironically, "Disappearing Acts" was the title of the original post that I drafted, but it worked here too, so I kept it.
Written 5/5:
I didn't write yesterday...but not because I had writer's block, and I wasn't being lazy, tired, or otherwise distracted. I wasn't sure if I could live up to the parameters--no, better yet, the needs of the blog I had created (it's important...I already have, like, 200 page views).  I had to ask myself, how far is too far? How much embarrassment can I admit to the public at large (200 people, remember? Relax, I'm a fucking celebrity)?  The answer is that I will go far, very far...maybe too far to fulfill my promise. It comes down to integrity in the end.

That being said, I have somewhat of a disclaimer that i'd like you to read through very carefully:

You probably shouldn't go on with this page if you are my mother, father, or brother...definitely not my Grandma...or really anyone related to me in any way...employer...friend...

...actually, nobody should read this.

So after being recently singlified (I can make up words, I'm famous) I decided to start dating rather quickly.  You have to understand that I was

The Book of Mormon with Guest Star, Julia Child

So since today was a slow day for embarrassment, my entry will be from a past experience:

It was a long time coming that I had been excited to attend the Book of Mormon on Broadway. I don't generally enjoy Broadway shows because of my infinitesimally short attention span mixed with the constant desire to smoke a cigarette after my first glass of wine.  Wicked: snore.  Chicago: bore.  Sweeney Todd w/ Patti LuPone: old whore. This time turned out to be no different than the many before it.

I had gotten tickets for a friend's Christmas present because we were a) dating at the time and b) both loved South Park with great passion.  My friend is not the smallest of people so, naturally, he got to sit closer to the aisle and I was left to play audience roulette with whomever sat down next to me on the other side.

Along comes a family of five or six led by an elderly lady (most likely the grandmother) who flops into the seat next to me. This old woman happened to have a bit of a weight problem, and it was all I could do to ignore the fact that she was spilling over into my seat through the armrest, poking through the space underneath and slumped over the top.  Imagine sitting next to a jumbo trash bag filled with water...that's what it was like.  Sweaty condensation and all.

Anyway the show began, and as you can probably guess, I was already annoyed. Luckily I had my tumbler filled with wine (see ridiculous photo at top) to quell my unrest.  Then the music started...

When the songs began, I noticed that this old bag was dancing in her seat along with the music. I was so annoyed at this woman as she shook her knee and swung her arm to the beat of the band.  It was just not cute for someone of her size and sweatiness to be moving so much while squeezed in tight next to another human of normal to slightly above average proportions (me).  I leaned into my friend and told him, "This bitch needs to sit next to someone who loves her!"

Perhaps not the nicest thing I could have said, but given the circumstances, who could blame me... I don't think that she heard me. She was, however, definitely starting to notice that i was purposefully pulling my knee away from hers and leaning into my friend to avoid her strange seat-dance.  Then a funny thing happened: the music stopped...and she kept dancing...and I realized that she hadn't been dancing at all.

She had Parkinson's and was doing all she could to suppress the jitters. Luckily by the time i realized this, it was intermission.  I made my friend sit next to her when the curtains rose for the second time...The hell sequence that followed the intermission was slightly more poignant, i think, given the course of the night.

Strangers on a Train

For my first story, I have quite a doozie...  One thing that you must get clear is that to a New Yorker, time isn't our motivating factor for being in a rush....being in a rush is.  And so when some tourist from North Dakota or some other bumblefuck state stops to look up at the tall buildings, walks four-wide across the sidewalk with his family of obesity statistics, or the worst, leisurely walks at a slow pace for the sake of enjoying the walk, we get quite upset...or at least I do.

This wasn't a tourist, but having had these experiences and as my motto towards dawdling is: "If you don't know, I'll tell you!" this fits into the same category.  And so here goes...

For no real reason, I was in quite a hurry to get home. After a long day, I am always agitated by the tiresome commute from Stamford Connecticut to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The sooner I can get home and away from the dealings of the city, the better I feel.  

My commute is probably something that needs to be laid out here. It is about an hour and a half, and while definitely not the worst commute in the world, it is certainly a major pain in the ass...specifically my ass.  Every day I have to take a train or cab to 125th street (20-30 mins), take the Metro-North New Haven line express or local to Stamford (40-60 mins), then wait for a shuttle to bring me to what is probably one of the farthest points from the train station in Stamford (20 mins).  And I have to coordinate the schedules between the three modes to get anywhere on time.  This is the same in reverse on the way home. If it was as exhausting to read as it was to do, then you feel my pain, and somehow i feel a little bit better about the whole thing.

So as you can imagine, the day had been long and I was ready to retreat to my cave in my 4th story walk up in the East 80's.  I was running down to the subway at 125th street and everything was going quite smoothly: the bottleneck from the train trying to exit the platcform was avoided because I was let out right next to the stiars, there were no crazies threatening to spit on me or otherwise causing nuisance on 125th street, and I had done that thing where you take the metro card out with time to spare so you can swipe and walk through the turnstyle with one continuous motion.  

I had made it down the first flight of stairs to the first landing without a hitch, and then it happened.  The right side of the staircase was completely full with people that were coming off a train that I wanted to be on, and the left side of the staircase was almost empty save a few people walking up and one unfortunate woman moving slowly into position to get a verbal beating from an impatient and otherwise cranky New Yorker, namely: me.  I stopped at the top of the stiars behind this woman, who from behind looked like a short Latina who should otherwise know better than to stand defiantly at the top of a staircase as a train that people are trying to catch is getting ready to leave.  I danced around her, but it seemed that the few people on our left, walking up the stairs were too frequent to be able to pass the lady...Then I noticed she was stalling because she was putting something into her backpack...This set me off. There wasn't anywhere else that she thought she could have done this...HELLO???  Are you stupid? Did you just get to New York? Shouldn't you know better??

I yelled as loud as i could, pretty much, "Move It!!"

This was about the time that I realized what the woman was putting into her backpack: A Hershey's bar.  Then as she slowly turned with a look of absolute terror, I realized that she was, in fact, not a woman. She was probably an eleven-year-old girl. I could see that she had forgotten to breathe out of fear. Then as soon as she saw who was behind her, I guess all fears were confirmed and she bolted down the steps, looking back the entire time like a bimbo in a horror flick. As she landed on the first platform with trains going northbound, she had not paid attention to the step down and tripped onto one knee. Mind you, she was still staring at me with that same look of horror. She then stumbled onto the train, safe at last.  

It was the second time that week that I had managed to accidentally put the fear of God into a small child...

Now was my turn to run down the stairs in fear. This was a much stronger fear. It was that of the possibility that anybody had seen my horrendous exchange.  I quickly made it down the now unclogged stairwell and walked all the way to the end of the platform so as to avoid any judgmental glares.  Not that I didn't deserve them at the time. 

So I said I was going to write a book...

I have always felt that I am an exceptionally clumsy, awkward, and embarrassment prone individual...I think so much so that others might want to hear about it.  Therefore, I have started this blog as a record to document all my most embarrassing adventures as they happen, as close to real time as possible...you will be surprised at how quickly this page reaches maximum bandwidth capacity.  Enjoy...or cringe uncomfortably...