They're Out To Get Me

On a rainy night last week, Susan and I were cutting through Washington Square Park on our way to a reading at the Bowery Poetry Club.  A soggy homeless man wrapped in a blanket shambled toward us across the lawn.  “Excuse me people,” he said.  “I want to tell you something that the CIA doesn’t want you to know.”

            Always on the lookout for scraps of suppressed information to bolster my various conspiracy theories, I was eager to hear what the man had to say, but Susan grabbed me by the arm and hurried me along.

            “I’m J.F.K Jr.!” the man called after us.  “The knowledge of that could get you killed!”

            Gee, thanks for telling me, J.F.K.  I’ll be on the lookout for black helicopters.

            When we got to the edge of the park, two other street people, a man and a woman, were arguing on the street corner:

            “Where’s my money?!  Give me my money, bitch!” the man said.

            “I don’t have your money!  You owe me five dollars!” the woman retorted.

            “I want my money!”

            “Give me my five dollars!”

            Continuing to scream at each other to that effect, the couple stepped out into the street, blocking traffic.  Cars couldn’t get by, and they all started honking their horns.  The couple were standing right in front of a cab and the cabbie leaned his head out the window and yelled at them to get the hell out of the road.  I turned around to watch, and, doing so, stepped backward and stumbled into a tree well.

            “Don’t watch them,” Susan said.  “They’re trying to create a distraction so that someone else can commit a crime.  Do you still have your wallet?”

            I felt my pocket: I did.  Then I noticed I was standing in an inch-deep puddle in the tree well.  The street people really had it in for me tonight.  “I think they wanted to create a distraction so that I would step off into the mud,” I said. (Ed Hamilton)