I get home and make myself feel better by looking at a headline for the day, namely a headline about Rudy’s $148 million judgment. He won’t pay it, but they threw the bookcase at him and I say good aim. Picking on those ladies. I mutter this while sizing up the dog shit on my bookbag, and my hoodie’s right and left sleeve. It appeared very recently but I’m not sure when.
You don’t expect dog shit on your person. Your shoes, if you’ve been careless and had bad luck. But nowhere else. As I became aware of this particular dog shit, each deposit proved more abundant than first expected. At one point I felt maybe I had a marshland of brown traveling about on my lower person. After all, if dog shit was on my bookbag and hoodie sleeve, it also had to be on my shoes, and that meant anything in between might be covered too. This idea came and went, being a bit much for me to handle. Luckily I got away with dismissing it. But it’s a bad day when you have to think that at all.
Reality, as it often does, gave me a break and played soft. No fooling, the shit really did fluke into those select spots without appearing anywhere else. Further, this was at night, with few people to see me. Now I’m up in my cousin’s apartment, which has a washing machine parked back here with me, near the bedroom I stay in. It’s working away at the hoodie on a 90-minute cycle.
The downside: I walked around with dog shit on me and didn’t know it. In daylight I’d have been the world’s greatest fool; instead, I was denied the title by circumstance.
And by Rudy Giuliani, I suppose. God bless that man.
Details. Streaks and curds of brown shit, and a couple of small lakes tucked into folds. Brace yourself for the following discussion: in a neighborhood with doormen and fancy towers, the available dog shit is of a color and consistency that resembles chocolate frosting. For several moments I hoped that’s what it was. Then I saw the particulate matter hanging in the suds of Fantastik.
I dumped most of the shit down the toilet, on sheets of Bounty taken from a backup roll kept below the sink. Then I sprayed the toilet with more Fantastik and wiped it with more Bounty. Hand-washing and so on. Now the laundry machine is working away. The disaster will be dealt with and gone.
I still don’t know how or when it happened. Recently, that’s all: between getting off the train from North Hempdale and showing up at my cousin’s. More precisely, after buying a salad at a Vitorini’s. Really precisely, it happened while I was sitting on one stoop to eat the salad or sitting on another to smoke some pot. But I don’t know which. I don’t even know how it happened. You know how shit winds up on a shoe. How does it wind up on your cuff? Makes no sense. Sitting on a stoop, you’ve got your wrists against your knees, and the knees are nowhere near anywhere that dog shit tends to be deposited.
Put differently, I got shit on myself and never noticed. There’s a thought to end the day. Here’s another: $148 million. On the other hand, my cousin’s building has a door that slides open by itself, and first you have to stand there while it decides to. Lights shine all around you. I stood and looked up at the sensor, and meanwhile the doorman sat on the other side of the glass and looked at me. On entering I received a slow, very slight nod in return for my hello; his mouth had gone very small. I have Rudy Giuliani, and I guess the doorman has me.