Gender at a Street Corner

I think I'll begin this entry with a little story about the world and the poisonous society it breeds. I was tootin' along in the rain last Thursday, excited about the evening I was to have (a story I will get to shortly).

I was coming from the South Street Seaport where I had purchased tickets to Cabaret and had just gotten of the train. Standing on the northwest corner of Union Square in khaki shorts, a black t-shirt, brown shoes, and my Spurs hat facing front to protect my face from the rain, I was waiting to cross the street. Just then, I noticed this guy.

He was black, somewhere between the ages of 38 and 43, had a bit of a belly, and overall just wasn't very attractive. Well, he was also waiting to cross but had just come from the other side so he walked in front of me. That is when I noticed him. I locked on his eyes, which were in the process of scanning me from bottom to top and back down to the bottom.

They moved slowly, not particularly stopping at any particular point of my body. His eyes weren't all I noticed. His mouth was quite noticeable, as his upper lip did an Elvis Presley/Billy Idol thing of disgust. They eyebrow closest to me was raised in disdain. As he crossed in front of me, he caught me looking at him. He never softened his face; instead, he took his eyes from me and proceeded to shake his head from side to side. I watched him the whole time and managed to put a smile on my face. It wasn't a smile of defiance; it was more like a smile in response to the gall the mother fucker had to express his hatred for me so emphatically. He wasn't finished looking.

Apparently, he couldn't get enough. With the same look on his face, he again looked me up and down. He waited to shake his head, though, until we were staring at one another. I was still smiling, and he was still glaring. It was a showdown. I took out my phone to make a call. I also wanted to walk behind him.

For some reason, I didn't want to lose sight of him or allow him to walk behind me. I made sure he saw me look at him again. Make him know that I knew how he felt about me. Make him see that I was unafraid and unaffected by his contempt. He didn't need to know that I allowed it to get to me for a split second. Tears of anger did well up in my eyes as I reflected on my existence in this world. I clenched my fist in order to take my attention off of that encounter and put it on the pain I was inflicting on the palm of my hand. Unfortunately, that only worked to remind me of my anger.These feelings went away quickly as I began to put the issue back onto him. It's not my problem he hates me. It's not my problem that he's threatened by me. It's also not my problem he has such a small dick -- probably an infected one at that. So he can take his anger out on me. Whatever. He wasn't going to see Cabaret that night with the woman I was going with, and that was that. Too bad for him. I finally made it home in time to meet the UPS guy at the door. He had a desk for me. Finally, the desk I had been searching for for weeks had arrived. I ran upstairs -- well, I walked slowly upstairs, because the damn thing was heavy -- and immediately began putting it together. I laid out all the pieces, opened the box that the screws were in and made sure I had everything within arms reach. I've had too much experience putting these together and I knew that it was a pain in the ass. I had no idea. It began innocently enough. I figured four hours was plenty of time in which to put this thing together, which would give me ample time to prepare for my date. So with screwdriver in hand, I went to work. It was tedious enough but I was having no problems. Things were going along fine until it came time to attach the desktop to the sides. That's when I noticed the damage to the back-right corner. I was not happy. With a thin layer of sweat forming on my face, I chose to overlook that blemish, hoping that, in the end, it would not impact the overall aesthetics or construction of the desk. With the desktop in my hand, and faced with the task of screwing it to the sides, I soon found myself in a bit of a quandry. How was I to suspend this thing in mid-air while I attached it. Nowhere in the instructions did it say I was to have another person. It also wasn't something I could achieve by putting it on with the sides upside down. It had to go in directly. That's when I realized that my head was at a decent enough height. So I did something that would probably have been ill-advised by the makers of the piece of shit. I sat in between the sides and, with the desktop balanced carefully on my head (yes, on my head) I proceeded to screw it in. I attempted to screw it in. It didn't work. Occasional bursts containing various epithets came from my mouth. I was so pissed off and, yet, there was nothing else I could do. Until I realized that if I attached the center piece first, that would be an ample balancing surface on which to rest the desktop. And, alas, it worked. Problem solved. I put a little bit more of it together, but by this time, I had a couple of blisters on my hands, I was tired of fighting with it, and time was running out. I had to get ready for my date. So I stopped, unable to imagine wanting to go back to it anytime soon. And there it sat, unfinished, against my wall. Fucking thing.