Hello readers, welcome back to Spectacle, the weekly pseudo-advice column dedicated to Unwanted Public Conversation & Street-side Interrogation.
This week, we head East, to another major city full of pride and lore: Boston. But it doesn’t really matter where we “are,” does it? Urban spaces everywhere host their share of the unexpected. In the wilderness I’m sure there is always the danger of an startling encounter with an animal, but at least you know what the animal wants: food. Get out of its way, if you are in the way of its food, or get out of the way, if you might become its food. Simple.
Animals can’t speak, so you are saved the verbal synapse firings necessary to connect language and motion:
“I don’t want anything to do with this tasty hamburger, I just want to get in the front door of my ridiculously isolated log cabin!”
No – just run. Not that I have never run from a human individual, in the wilds of the city. I have. People are crazy. I won’t pretend to be an expert on rabies, which I guess could be considered the animal equivalent of mental illness. I am not interested in writing about frothy mouthed dogs. Boooring. I am interested in urban survivalist methods: expecting the unexpected at all times. One can never assume that someone on the street will behave in any particular way. One must always be prepared with efficient methods of communication acceptable for metropolitan usage: no smoke signals or flare guns are safe for use inside of a convenience store.
So I am in Boston, and I am working at the box office of a theater. We box-officers were relegated to the basement, beneath the ticket counter, which was damp and cold as basements are wont to be. To ward off the chill, many days I would take a trip across the street to get a snack and a hot tea. It was a busy street to cross: two-way traffic and a middle barrier to get from the North side to the South. The berth functioned as a sort of moat, which allowed the disparate sides to blossom into their own habitats.
The theater side of the street boasted a pan-Latino-fusion-Asian-retro-restaurant on it, delicious fried plantains, won ton soup. The other side of the street had: a scratched and greasy looking bus shelter, a Dunkin Donuts, a 7-11, and a few other establishments of the neon-lit, chain variety.
I don’t know what my particular attraction to the 7-11 was, besides proximity, but I know I liked the fact that you were allowed to build your own cup of tea, that is, make a proper cup. Water temperature, length of steep, timing on the addition of milk or cream – these are not things to be scoffed at, these are the things that bridge the gap between a mouthful of scalding brown water and the immense satisfaction of a job well-done.
Reaching the foreign side of the street, I was ushered into the store, in the usual way, by an enterprising man working as part-time panhandler, part-time self appointed concierge. In the underground economy, a prevailing notion is to provide an unwanted service and then demand money from the beneficiary. Thank you, sir, I am quite capable of opening a door, and no, unfortunately you cannot expect financial reimbursement for your ill-rendered services, though I appreciate that you have an inkling it is a chivalrous gesture.
Once inside, I noticed that the tea-preparation and condiments area was fully occupied by a man, a man with many plastic bags surrounding his person, like an overblown Bjork tutu, like a cloud of illustrated Pig-Pen dust, bustling about discussing certain things with himself, mostly:
“I am my OWN MAN. I stand ALONE. I stand ALONE I don’t need no ONE. NO. No sir. No no no.”
For some reason, oh, I don’t know, my history riding the public bus in Albany, perhaps, this scene struck me as somewhere on the scale of One to Normal, somewhere where other people probably rate “socks” and/or “sunshine.” Ignoring his ranting, and giving him time to finish I made my way towards the back of the store to find a suitable snack.
After what seemed like the proper amount of time for this man to finish his business, which I assumed, and here we have my fundamental first mistake, assumption: I assumed he was busy pocketing ketchup packets, relish packets, sugar packets and the like, as a technically free service provided by the kindly people at 7-11. I began to grown anxious about the state of my future cup of tea. Recommended steep time for a basic cup of Earl Grey is about two minutes, which is, in fact, a long time to stand inside of a convenience store.
Deciding to cease being so accommodating, after all, this is a public place, I have my right to equal share in the packets, I approached the gentleman warily. I was just taking the first dunk of my tea bag into the steamy paper cup when… fear gripped my (sinking) heart as I saw what was happening: the man was removing his outfit of plastic bags and stuffing them into the community microwave. Now. I understand the desire to warm things up. Especially if you live outside. However, what this man might not have taken into consideration was the fact that he was effectively about to build a giant bomb, the combination of plastic bag + microwave, as any scientist will tell you, creating the basic chemical reaction of FIRE.
He slammed the microwave door with resolution and proceeded to set the timer at about fifty minutes, twenty seconds, or, digitally, for illustration purposes: 50:27. Nearly instantaneously, flames began to lick up out of the melting black plastic.
“Fire” I choked to myself, paralyzed with disbelief. “Fire.”
Managing to tear my eyes away from the nuclear reactor, I backed up and turned find someone to alert.
In the back, near the Slurpee machine, was a tall, calm looking man, of undetermined Middle Eastern descent, as is to be expected from Stereotyping. I tried to calmly explain the situation, clearly and rationally:
“Excuse me, sir, there is a man over there, you see, and he is taking his plastic bags – he has a lot of them- in fact, he is dressed in them, and he is placing them in your the microwave? Yes, inside the microwave, and he has set the timer at…”
Seeing the glazed, disinterested look in his eyes I realized that now was not the time for details and/or explanation.
“FIRE!!!!” I yelled, in his face, causing his eyes to bulge and his legs to move, rapidly, towards the scene of the crime.
The argument that ensued once the immediate threat had been resolved went a little something like this:
Store Manager: “You mutha fuckah! Why you burn my store? Why? What are you do?”
Mr Bag: I am my OWN man! I stand ALONE!
And so on and so on, almost as though… almost as though they had gone over this at least once before.
It was very much time for me to be back at work, so with tea all improperly brewed, I stood in line to pay. What an event! I was excited to parlay my tale of heroics to my co-workers, when, oh, what now? A woman, hazy eyed and wearing a pair of ill-fitting, acid-washed jeans, cut in front of me in line, only to then turn and ask me:
“Excuse me miss….. do you have change for a quarter?”
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We’re almost out of time here, readers, but I didn’t want to leave off without a little advice-column style postulation:
Q: Name absolutely any circumstance in your entire life when you would need change for a quarter.
A: Zero. There are zero.
If you can think of one, please email me at:
Please stay tuned because next week, we’re back to the street with more cat-calls and inappropriate gestures!
