too kewl to eeww

I was walking down 19th St. after work. After a few minutes, I became aware of a cold, wet feeling where my nylon satchel was brushing against my arm and hip. I peeked inside the exterior pocket and remembered a banana I'd put in there last week. At the time, said banana had been fairly ripe, and I'd brought it to the office intending to eat it before it died on our kitchen counter.

At this point, I realized that the banana had melted into juice and slime and was passing through the fabric of my bag. It was cold because the A/C in my office is aggressive enough to preserve a corpse.

I decided not to extract the dead banana right there in full view of downtown, rush-hour Philadelphia. Instead, I adjusted my shoulder strap so the bag was held with a centimeter gap between the contaminated surface and my body.

Fortunately, fruit flies did not carry me away before I had a private moment near a trash receptacle.

cold demeanor

I saw my GP this week. The last time I saw him, about two years ago, he'd asked gruffly if I was getting my medical care somewhere else. My previous visit had been three years earlier.

I don't like my doctor. For context, I'm the kind of guy who likes my mail carrier, and wants the meter reader to like me too, bt something about Dr. G. irritates me. Maybe it's that we're almost the same age, both Jewish, from New England, have kids the same age and live in the same town, but he gives off an air of contempt, like he can't believe he has to deal with me.

I am the only white man I have ever seen in his practice. I've been going to this clinic ever since I graduated from college in 1992 and established my first residence in West Philadelphia. He's been there since 1996.

At my last visit, Dr. G. huffed that at 35 years old, it was time for me to come in at least once a year. Last year I got something irritating in my eye, made a same-day appointment and saw another doctor. I considered that my 2006 visit. This year everything was running smoothly, so I scheduled this visit for a day when I was taking off from work anyway.

Dr. G. asked a few awkward questions, then told me he might as well do a full check to see if I had anything growing on my skin that I shouldn't. He told me to undress down to underpants, then left the room.

It took me ten seconds to strip down to boxers, and then I sat on the exam table to wait for the doctor to return. I was right under the A/C vent. 62° air was blowing down on me. It was freezing.

After five minutes, Dr. G. came back in the room. He made a snarky comment about my boxers - I'll give him the benefit of the doubt: perhaps he was trying to be humorous - as he quickly checked my back and listened to my lungs through his stethoscope. Then he grabbed a pair of latex gloves and sat down on the stool across from the exam table.

Of course, THIS was the moment when he wanted to talk like we're friends. We had a quick discussion about kids and summer camp, totally normal except that I was practically naked, freezing, and aware that the latex gloves mean I'm about to get felt. I couldn't decide whether to stall or precipitate the inevitable. I elected to keep the conversation going.

The good news is that I do not have a hernia. The bad news is that I can't remember ever having my balls juggled by someone I don't like as much as I don't like Dr. G.

Reformed Train Buddies

There's a guy I see some days on my commute. He walks stiffly, wears a scowl, and reads mean-spirited church newsletters. The one that caught my eye had a regular feature called "The Homosexual Agenda." When I saw that, I was reminded of the Anne Lamott quote, "You know man has made God in his image when it turns out that He hates all the same people that you do."

On Monday morning, the uptight guy was standing on the train platform reading a text called "Sodom and Gomorrah." It didn't look like a travel brochure.

The train was already full when it pulled up, and all the seats were taken. Those of us boarding at my station had to stand in the aisle. Uptight Guy nudged a sitting passenger and said "Hey Steve, how are you?" He smiled, the first time I'd seen him perform that trick. Steve greeted Uptight Guy. They made some quick, predictable small talk about vacations being too short. Then Steve returned to his work.

I was standing up next to Steve and had a clear view of his lap. He was writing in blue pen on a yellow legal tablet. It struck me as quaint, a very 20^th century activity. I saw his leather valise and tasteful suit and made him for a lawyer. Because I'm nosy, and since I couldn't read my book while gripping the seat back for balance, I started to read over Steve's shoulder.

We came up from the riverbank and Suzie laughed because her pants were stained

How sweet, I thought. He's writing a letter. Maybe it's to his daughter at summer camp.

She pulled them off, and then her panties too.

Okay, maybe. If Suzie is two years old, then this is still fitting into my framework.

We decided to go up to my place because Suzie thought her parents were home.

Just as I was growing sure that this was not a camp letter, Steve sailed into a minor writer's block. He used his sunglasses case to shield his writing from the woman sitting in the window seat, who wasn't watching anyway. He worried his lip, wrote a few words and scratched them out. Finally, he moved to a new line and added in a spasmodic burst,

When we were done, we came downstairs.

Steve! You skipped over the most important part!

Our train pulled into the terminal, and Steve packed away his legal pad. I struggled to align the facts into a sensible narrative.

1. Steve is friends with uptight gay-hating guy
   
2. He writes erotic fiction on the train
   
3. He doesn't enjoy it and/or he has no talent for it
   

My conclusion: Steve and Uptight Guy met each other in an Ex-Gay program. Steve was working on his homework assignment.

My Kind of [Entrance to] Town

Two years ago, while on vacation in New Mexico, Rachel stretched her arms out radiantly and declared that this vista before us, popping with mountains, was where her soul felt most at home. "Don't mountains just make you feel right?" she asked me.

I mumbled noncommitedly. They're nice. Mountains, like Broadway musicals, inspire great happiness in other people, and I have nothing against them. I just don't seek them out. Sometimes I feel bad when everyone else is having crazy endorphin rushes and I'm looking at my watch. Am I calibrated incorrectly? Does this lack of mountain-love signal a deeper character problem?

This morning, I woke up early in my New York hotel room. I walked to Zabar's bakery in Grand Central Station, before the big rush of commuters. I prowled the corridors of that big, beautiful train station and took the time to drink in the schedules, the brilliant Zodiac ceiling, and even the informational display about the long-delayed Long Island Rail Road tunnel connecting the Sunnyside yard to Manhattan's East Side. I read it all. I touched the displayed sample of 500 million year old mica schist that the tunnel borers are digging through.

There's going to be a new train station in New York for the first time in 90 years! There hasn't been a new mountain in New Mexico in, like, forever.

Grand Central Station is where I feel that happy tingle that my family was enjoying on the Southwest trip. It reminds me of being a kid and visiting my grandma. I thrill to being part of the rush at salmon spawning speed, and I love standing still, out of the way, and watching the motion from a single vantage point.

I recall a New Yorker cartoon where a woman says "I thought I liked babies, but as it turned out, I mainly like baby clothes." That's kind of how I feel about trains and stations.