Had I no filter, or had I Tourette’s
The first thoughts may well be: “Wait, you mean you HAVE a filter? You DON’T have Tourette’s?” To which my response would be: believe it or not, I do filter myself. Just imagine what I’d say if I didn’t. Sometimes I wish I had Tourette’s just to have an excuse to blurt out what I’m feeling / thinking.
Yesterday:
I had a duffel in which I’d brought both my pairs of hockey skates to be sharpened. After dropping them off, I had a more-or-less empty duffel. While walking down Nostrand Avenue, two middle-aged dudes in conversation stopped talking as I passed. I noticed one of them sizing me up, his jaundiced eyes standing starkly out against his Special Dark complexion … and I laughed.
Neither one of them said a word to me. Maybe they were put off by my laughter; it was of the mildly insane variety. Mirth did not inspire it, rather the recognition of absurdity and a general sense of just not caring.
I imagined what they might have said, and my responses, and the conversation as it played out in my head is what caused the outburst.
Dude: “Yo, whitey, what’s in the bag?”
Me: “Nothing you’d want.”
Dude: “How would you know?”
Me: “Because I seriously doubt anyone would want a used stick of deodorant, a never-washed wool scarf and a hoodie in desperate need of washing.”
***
Today, my morning still very young, I had the great misfortune to sit next to a lummox with serious post-nasal drip. I wanted to collapse his runny skull every time he snorted down a viscous dram of snot. You know the sound. Every fucking few seconds. Absolutely brutal.
Worse yet, the train was so quiet … so peaceful aside from the rumbling noise of vibrating tonsils / adenoids / whatever-the-hell else.
I didn’t want to turn on my iPod, but I had no choice. It was either say something regrettable to a guy that Diane Fossey might have studied, or blot him out. So, I listened to my music and it was more or less fine — except that he seemed to know to snort every time there was a lull or a track ended — but I kept ignoring him, and eventually I stopped noticing.
And then he breathed on me.
He breathed and it was like being smacked in the face by a tsunami of shit and dead bodies; the foul sewer that spewed forth from his rank maw was an affront to all of mankind and I was right there on the front line.
I wanted to say: “Could you, maybe, not breathe in my face since it smells like you got your asshole confused with your mouth?”
***
And finally, while walking through the rainy, depressing expanse of red-painted asphalt and shimmering bullshit that is Times Square, I was joined in my stroll at 45th Street by some singing jackass. Maybe he got the cold effusion from the sky confused with his shower at home.
He was atonal and, even if he were not, his choice of tune — whatever it was (rendered unrecognizable, had it even been, by his tunelessness) — was awful.
I wanted to say: “Hey! Spare me the fucking serenade!”
***
The only thing I said to anyone this morning was to a cabbie blocking the box at 46th Street, who wanted so desperately to continue on his way he looked poised to mow down all pedestrians, despite their right of way. So I stopped, to avoid winding up in his path … and he wouldn’t go.
His windows were up, but I still said: “Well, are you going to go or what?”
He waved at me.
Tags: Diane Fossey, Flatbush, halitosis, Nostrand Avenue, Times Square, Tourette's Syndrome, tunelessness
April 8th, 2010 at 5:43 PM
You are something else.
If I saw you with that duffel bag I would’ve stared (sideways, of course) at you too. LOL Especailly on some damn Nostrand!
I read you’re posts every once in a while. Like the shitty day post. That was a real shitty day. I remember the rain. Not a taxi in sight, no buses, train late, got drenched cause my umbrella died. Yea, I remember.