To Yourself Please
Today I ate in a restaurant. To begin with I had only set out to find a place to shelter me from the cold, but the library by the park had proved unacceptable and so I kept walking, west, with a wool cap pulled over my ears and my hands warm inside the pockets of my down-filled vest. The wind would kick up now and again and when it did I could almost immediately feel a throbbing in the exposed tips of my ear lobes. And without warning my eyes would tear up and I would turn my head so fellow pedestrians would not see me as someone who cried at the least little thing. Sure, as if they give a damn, but how do you not see yourself as a public figure when out in public? We are not invisible are we? Are not our fellow pedestrians hungry for diversion? Interested in anything that allows them brief respite from their own routine?
Overall though, despite my occasionally teary appearance, I was in a good mood and felt especially happy when the tall buildings would allow passage of a sunny ray onto the sidewalk or the building fronts. The cruddy sidewalks, recording as they do, and sometimes in graphic fashion, our tendency to expel what we no longer need or want, are easier to forgive when bathed in golden sunlight, and as I crossed from the shaded gray of tainted paths into the diagonal bands of bright light, and back again, I could feel my mood lighten or darken accordingly. Also a good hard snow, fresh and without footprint beyond your own, could make the forgetting easier, or at least the details (where God may or may not reside) less noticeable--the etched pentagrams, the bittersweet fact that Roy once loved Lilly, that gum turns black when spit out and stepped on and allowed to absorb everything else that exists, that spit, big giant gobs of it or tiny flecks of it is really simply disgusting, and as this appears to be something of a list I would in fact be remiss for not mentioning the vomit and the dog shit, which if you are lucky you can avoid its conjoining with your shoe bottom, but only if you are not one of those types with your head in the clouds, dreaming some happy blissful dream, and unaware of what actually surrounds you. I will spare a person my inner self when I can. As example I will not lay before you the suggestion of vomit on the sidewalk being like an ill-conceived omelet, or I mean, at least I won't go on and on about it, expanding on the theme with details riffing one into the other, until it is the only omelet you will ever think of. The ill-conceived vomit omelet is the specialty at Ralph's. And in any case, we must be stronger than that, not allowing the glancing thought to take root and rule the day. We must move on and be happy. Think of all the good things you find on a sidewalk. But to yourself please, not out loud.
Then I'm in the restaurant, across from the park, where I eat occasionally because despite ownership and menu changes and some expansion, it is still there under the same name and it reminds me, for better or worse, of thirty years ago when I would visit the city and was seeking out those places that laid out large plates of food for little money. Sometimes for me it is comforting just to think that there is even such a thing as thirty years ago. Or if I'm looking for a pep talk that can be contained in a single thought I might look back 45 years and be comforted by the image of all us kids doing that duck and cover drill at school, which was intended to save us from nuclear attack. I mean really, all that is implied in the duck and cover maneuver, that's the kind of blind optimism you need to survive in this world.
I ordered the meatloaf which comes in at just under ten dollars and includes more meat than you really need and mashed potatoes made from real potatoes and a salad and a soup. And I had a coke, which I really only drink at restaurants. I tried to read some, a lesbian romance, by Patricia Highsmith, on one of those electronic devices, and had some success with it which is remarkable for me because I am usually highly distracted by the sound and subject matter of people talking around me, like against all evidence to the contrary, hundreds and hundreds of hours of it, I think I am going to hear something that is going to change my life, make all the eavesdropping worthwhile.
I haven't been in this restaurant but twice since moving here in November so I am not all that in tune with what may be the restaurant's protocol regarding panhandling inside the establishment. If I was a proprietor I think I would generally discourage it. You see it occasionally in the city and someone on staff usually deals with it very politely, telling the panhandler that it is better to conduct his or her affairs on the public sidewalk. So when this guy comes in and stands mostly right in front of me but to play for better odds addresses pretty much everyone in the section, I wait for a waiter, or the manager to deal with it. When no such action is forthcoming I say what the hell and begin reaching into my front pocket. The crazy thing is I had before leaving the house actually removed from the substantial weight of my change cup a dozen quarters, thinking I would be prepared for a soul in need (I carry a wallet and don't feel right taking it out on the street and rifling through twenties in search of a single, and if that is the only option most often I will not give.) But when the guys sees me going into my front pocket he interrupts me, somewhat belligerently at that, and says, no that's no good, I'm going to need a couple of dollars, I am needing something to eat. I apologize to my departed mother who raised me better but my first response, just inside my head, was to tell the guy to fuck off. Instead though, in some ways worse, I just shook my head and flicked my empty hands toward him like he a fly and I wanted him to shoo away from me. When he kept on with his belligerent stance and somewhat whiningly said, man, you making it hard on me I lost my cool and it was then that I said, man fuck you, you making it hard on yourself. And I was suddenly very mad and stared hotly at my mashed potatoes, which were themselves now cold. A fellow at a nearby booth who had just devoured a burger and fries and who had been before, during and after talking non stop into the air via blue tooth, conducting business of some kind, and who had that accent that says Bronx or Queens, took control of the matter and firmly but politely told the guy he was being a bit of an ass and this was not the way to go about things and if he went outside people who could afford to give him something would give him something. It was cold as hell that day. I don't begrudge the guy his one try at indoor panhandling but his lack of manners, boy that really got me hot under the collar. It's true though, I was only going to give him fifty cents.
While I was finishing this piece yesterday I remember wanting to express that I would hope to do better, that I would try to act better the next time this happened. As it turned out only a few hours later having dinner in the neighborhood with Bill Macy, and Bernadette, at a different restaurant, and a panhandler, thankfully one with distinctly better manners than the one I ran into a few days previous but only got around to writing about yesterday, came into the restaurant's vestibule and poked his head through the curtain so he could address, well, it seemed like specifically me, but I'm sure he would have accepted anyone's offering. It flustered me for a moment because it seemed so surreal, writing about this very thing and then having it play out again so soon after. Perhaps what is happening is that the trickle down theory is finally working and what with everyone tightening their belts it is getting harder on the street for panhandlers. So they are coming inside and approaching the comfortable diner. I don't think I can support this tactic, and I tried to express to the guy last night--I think I did improve because I did not cuss at him--that it would be better to approach people outside. I told him if he were outside when I was done I would give him something but he was pressed for time, had to go pick up his meds he said, and wanted to know how long it would be before I came out. So it ended awkwardly, again, but with some semblance of manners projected by both parties. Which in lieu of the joy of giving, and receiving, will for now just have to be good enough.
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