My first day back at work. What a day. Whenever you come back from a trip abroad everyone wants to hear about it. Even people who didn't know you were going away before you left. Like the ones who didn't notice you were away until a day before you returned.
The good news: Two work nemeses are gone. One was gone before I returned. No two-week notice. Very dramatic. Like an episode of Medea: The Series. Another left today. If I had to do a movie about her disastrous six-month tenure, it would be Two or Three Things I Don't Like About Her.
The bad omen: A rock-star-style bus caught fire in the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 23rd Street. Smoke billowed. People gawked despite the speculation that the gas tank might blow. The good bit: A lot of people crowded into my office to see the spectacle, and the very tall, goodlooking temp was on the empty desk watching along with everyone else. He bent over the window ledge for a better view. He squatted on the desk. He loitered around in his Italian-born, large-veins-on-the-hand-I-have-no-idea-you-are-practically-cruising-me-right -here-in-the-office kind of way. I had to leave my own office to splash some spring water on my face, since tap water has trace elements of lead, nickel, and plutonium. I felt like I was a character in "that book by Nabakov." Don't stand, don't bend, don't squat so close to me.
After work I headed down to Astor Place for a much-needed haircut, and then I headed home. As I passed Cooper Union to the bus stop, I heard a woman with a loud, piercing voice yell, "Animal RIGHTS!" She held up a large photo of a mangled pussycat. This is the infamous sour-faced "Sign the Petition" woman. She used to have an anti-pornography movement and would scream "Sign the Petition!" while holding up a photo of another mangled pussy: The infamous Hustler magazine cover of the woman's body being put through a meat grinder.
Okay, that's a crude joke, but I couldn't resist.
Anyway, after about ten years of failing to get a real anti-porn movement started here in NYC, she's switched to animal rights. Something involving the horrible animal shelter here. A few months ago I figured "I love kitties" and I sussed it out.
She wanted $5 to sign the petition. Not an ounce of salesmanship. When I asked about signing it, she just barked "Five dollars!" When I balked, she launched into a tirade about the cost of her efforts, and I figured, if she perhaps had a petition and a bonafide collection to have her committed to Bellevue's psychiatric ward, I would happily give up to $25.
A few years ago I got into a tussle with her in the subway. I was reading the information about Peter Cooper in the Astor Place IRT station, and she suddenly yelled at me, "Don't step on my magazines!" I didn't notice they were on the floor. I mentioned that, and she barked, "I haven't bought them yet. Don't step on my magazines!" So I told her not to buy stolen goods. This was when the East Village was rife with crack addicts who broke into apartments and stole whole wardrobes of clothes and years of magazines and entire ABBA collections. She barked back, "They're not stolen, they find it in the garbage." She barks a lot.
So when I heard her yelling "Animal RIGHTS!" tonight, I couldn't contain my laughter. While she probably swallowed her cigarette butt whole, in anger, I rushed into McDonald's. I haven't had a good cheeseburger for weeks, and all that animal rights talk made me very hungry.
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