The beautiful thing is that you just never know, like, you just don’t, you are getting dressed in the morning and feeling very strongly the privacy of your space. Your apartment is your cocoon and never mind the other eight million people in the city who may also be getting up, trying on a shirt, buttoning it the wrong way and throwing it on the floor. Never mind the million other cups of coffee getting splashed on a skirt, never mind the million frantic watch-glances, just around the middle of eight o’clock AM.

I need to leave my house at precisely 8:23 or else everything falls apart. I need to have a cup of coffee and get my tights on and leave at that exact time, allowing for the broken door handle, the depth of my handbag and the inevitable dig for the spiky key cluster, the potential for ice on the sidewalk, the height of a heel, the geometry of walking.

At 8:21 the other morning, my private reverie, my somnambulant choreography was jolted out of sync by a mysterious cry from outside. Whatever it was, it was hysterical, loud, and unceasing. Stamping my foot in consternation I ran to the window and threw up the sash. There she was, squatting at my gate. Squatting, in cartoon print pajamas, arms to God, wailing:

“IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII JUUUUUUUUUUST WAAAAAANT TO DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE!”

“The lesbians are at it again,” I yelled up the stairs to my roommate, who I could hear shuffling about at the uproar.

If I leaned into my bookshelf and squinted, I was able to see the partner in crime; a squat woman in a leather jacket. She stood, helpless, hands at her sides. The time was now 8:22. The pivotal minute. “I’m going to be late,” I muttered. It is, however, a personal policy of mine not to place myself physically between a woman with a death wish and her erstwhile lover.  Our little local Lindsay Lohan & Sam Ronson, not to pigeon hole all on-again off-again drug addicted female lovers, but, there you have it.

My cousin once lived across the street from a purported methamphetamine lab. Sure enough, one day, it blew up, and a Hazmat team was called to clean up the wreckage. My cousin, just as curious as me – but more intrepid- approached a Hazmat worker and told a little lie. She told him that she had given these neighbors a spare key, and could she possibly go inside and retrieve it? Well, as you may or may not know, you require a Hazmat suit to enter an exploded methamphetamine lab so she was denied access; but the friendly worker, plastic mask and all, offered juicy details about the interior of the house: burned spoons, etc.

With my cousin’s love of underbelly, I alerted her to the presence of the warring lovers.

“I wonder where they live,” I said.

“Follow them,” she replied.

It turns out they live about four or five houses down from me, in a mysterious living arrangement with a third party male. One night, coming home from work, I noticed the three of them turning the corner just behind me. It is difficult to follow someone from ahead, but I slowed my pace to eavesdrop into their grunted conversation. I regret to inform you that it was the least intelligible human communication I have ever witnessed. What was not unintelligible, however, was the depth of the pajama woman’s despair, and so, we return to our scene.

Fortunately for my job security, she managed to pick herself up from the low squat that blocked my exit. Down the block she went, lover in tow, wailing all the way.  I tiptoed down the front stairs, opening the door gingerly, locking it with careful intention. Looking over my shoulder all the while, but subtly, so they would not notice me, noticing them.  They stood at the end of the block, silently, staring off into space when I finally walked past, feigning disinterest. Then it occurred to me: they had no inclination that their little show was the morning pay-per-view special for the entire block. They had no concept of the echo chamber effect of a double-brownstone street. And as far as I could tell, they had no weapons, save for a huge dose of shamelessness and a powerful set of vocal chords.

Until next time,

Horrible tale of street-side interrogation? Disgusting unwanted public conversation? Also does anyone know if that red headed woman on the other side of the streets is, in fact, a prostitute, former or current?  If not, then why does she keep using the pay phone?

Email me at: spectacle@glassesglasses.org