Shoplifting in a Ghost Town

photo by Clay Enos

On New Years eve, Alex was visiting from California. Not having much of a plan, we decided to play a game. We would get on the subway, one of us would pick a number, and that would be the amount of stops that we would stay on that train before transferring.

The guidelines were:

• Avoid ending up in Time Square
• Get pizza
• Don’t go home until we witnessed someone vomiting

It was a complete success!
I wore my favorite ears. We drank mysterious teas at a dimly lit bar that was blaring Marquee Moon. We rescued two balloons from their impending doom of being popped by a pair of stilettos by the end of the night, and took them along on our adventures. We ate pizza at the World Trade Center, when midnight struck. We had a toast and drank our favorite sodas. We got yelled at by the cops for climbing on tall blocks of concrete. We found a glowing pokéball in the Financial District. Alex occasionally leaped over sleeping homeless people. I occasionally cried wolf narcolepsy and fell to the floor of a busy path for a refreshing 10 second nap. We ate more pizza. We watched people from a doorway on Bedford Ave. We made a bum chuckle. We gave our balloons faces and ignored the snickering remarks. We choose a nearly empty subway cart, sat across from a very nauseous looking man, and when he did the inevitable, we went home elated.

I spent so many years listening to my Ziggy Stardust album and building the apocalypse in my head, that I was sure by this time in my life I would be in Tenerife, avoiding raining frogs, aliens, nuclear power plants, and telemarketers.

But as 2011 neared it’s end, I completely forgot about my irrational fear of this year. I was too busy enjoying it. I’ve been enjoying it more than i thought i could, every day since.

Here’s some other things I’ve been enjoying, recently:

Acting like a total airhead for fun

Standing on the yellow line where I bet myself that the subway doors will open

Sitting in the seat closest to a window, in any situation.

Feeling out of place, but not out of order

Listening to Graffiti Monsters after I’ve had too much caffeine

Thinking of how wingless birds would fly

Reppin’, yo!

Blowing huge bubbles with my gum

Getting excited about little things

Poking fun at everything!

Ignoring superstitions

Eating cereal out of mugs

Getting to act like a big kid

The look that dogs get when they think that the person coming out of a store is their owner

Huge bowls of popkorn

The designs put on old baking bowls

Owning records I’ve spent my entire adult life searching for

Making my favorite animal appear in unusual places

Going anywhere here and saying 95% of the time “this is the best pizza in New York”

feeding animals

even if they’re not always hungry

These fingers!

Creating pretend parades

eating nachos with a fork

Finding inappropriate uses for office supplies

the number “zero billion”

Spending quality time with things from long ago/ far away

Using my imagination to make things happen

Honorable Mentions:

• Music playing while taking a shower.
• My semi annual life assessment sessions with Ryan.
• Watching the sunrise from a moving window.
• Alexs review of our Advulture show
• When the elevator is already on your floor.
• Sam using her blog again.
• My grandmas perfect handwriting.
• R. Kellys commentary on Trapped in the Closet
• Having bedtime stories read to me over the phone until I fall asleep, instead of keeping the TV on.
• My wishbone Marc Jacobs necklace from Sam.
• Getting a phone call that ends with the sentence “Ok. I’m getting you the novelty flamingo claw.”
• David Sedaris singing like Billie Holiday.
• Wearing slippers.
• Being emerged in my Own Private I Don’t Know.
• Painting my nails really fun colors when I’m doing really mundane manual labor.
• Successfully training other peoples dogs.
• Nick Krolls voices on Comedy Bang Bang
• Trying to go from a laying to a standing position by doing back bends.
• Receiving records, comic books, and huge bags of candy in the mail.
• NY See
• Having one of the 5 channels my TV receives being the New York public access channel.
• Laughing, and then laughing because of the fact that you can’t stop laughing.
• Sitting on bean bags watching the Muppet documentary, twice in a row.
• Brand new blank composition books.
• Getting an extra hour of sleep on my bus ride to work.
• Calling someone to tell a joke, 5 minutes before their alarm is meant to go off because waking up smiling is awesome.