Monday, July 27, 2015

Crowded Sidewalks and Naked People

Meeting up with S in the city means either torrential downpour or super heat.  This time, it was super heat, but that wasn't a big deal because we spent the bulk of our time in a movie theater, watching Trainwreck.  The movie is really funny.  We first swung by the AMNH really quickly with R where we found semi-supervised children running around near the pigeons, several of which flew away in the direction of my head.  Good times.  We walked over to the theater near Lincoln Center and after we got our tickets and visited with the Peanuts gang, I climbed up to the mezzanine, very excited as it was my first time up there. 



Coming back out of the movie was when things got interesting.  We stopped off at the bathroom before leaving the building, and outside the bathroom some older woman yelled at some other young women in the lobby that they were very stupid.  Another woman who may or may not have known either party told the older woman that what she said was not nice.  We are not sure what happened after that as we went into the bathroom, but when we were walking down the street a few minutes later, S was like, There's the woman who yelled.  I was like, let's get away from her quickly.

We were going down 8th for a while and then walked over to 7th since S had to go to 6th.  I shouldn't use "walk."  I should use "managed to squeeze through" or "zigzagged around."  The city was beyond packed.  In addition to the annoying characters--I saw some Frozen characters who I haven't seen before--there were lots of people carrying signs.  Bus tours.  Comedy shows.  Strip clubs.  These sign people are always there, but on this night, there were more of them.  For the first time, I saw the naked-painted people up close.  I pointed one out, saying, And she's naked.  And S replied, Oh, yeah, there are a ton of them around.  It's the new thing.  I suppose we can thank Rebecca Romijn and RuPaul for that.

Then we got to the heart of Times Square and bam! Gates! Crowds! Someone on a megaphone!  More people with more signs but these signs were about nukes.  Man, this was bad timing.  We split there, S heading over and me heading back to 8th again.  Neither one of us was about to navigate through gated ralliers and police officers. 

I was one big sweat ball when I got to Penn and onto a train.  I sat with a sigh, thankful for the air conditioning.  The day had cooled a little into night, but not by much.  I cracked open my book and dove in.  Someone sat next to me.  I shimmied closer to the window. 

Then I heard, Excuse me?

I ignored it.

Um, excuse me???

My head was in a book.  I was leaning far to the side.  This interruption clearly was one of importance considering I was so clearly not in the chatty mood.  I figured that whoever it was probably needed to ask something about the train we were on, so I turned a bit and said, Yes?

The man next to me--a very tall, somewhat large man in a baby blue seersucker suit-- held out the back of his hand in front of both of us, fingers splayed out.  He asked, Now this is kind of random, but what do you think of people you just meet who bite their nails?

Okay, so this interruption was not of any importance at all and had nothing to do with the train and everything to do with being weird.

I answered, Huh, er, I really don't know.  I turned back to my book as he murmured something about randomness. 

When the train was pulling into my station, I closed my book, packed it up, and took my phone out of my bag to call my ride.  I moved towards the front of my seat and looked around to make sure I wasn't missing anything.  I stood as the train came into the station.

Now I was going to say, Excuse me, to get through.  However, you'd think that someone not sleeping who is on the aisle seat might notice the person next to him going through the motions that indicate she's getting off the train.  However, nothing was quite clear to Seersucker.  As I was forming the words, he suddenly looked up and was like, Oh, you're getting off now?

Ah, Lady Sarcasm, you used to live through me for a long, long time.  I've mellowed out quite a bit, but in this instance, it took all my willpower to not say something like, Nope I just wanted to pack up my stuff and stand over you for the duration of the ride.

He did get out of my way and I thanked him for doing so and he called after me to enjoy the rest of my night.  And I did.

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