spent yesterday following people around New York. It's for a story, but like so many of my story ideas, it's just an excuse to be weird. The concept was this: One morning, track someone to their destination. At that destination choose someone else and follow that person to their destination. Go all day. See where you end up. So at 8:30am, I started in the subway platform of W. 103rd, scanned the crowd for promising subjects. The cute dark-haired guy reading the sports page? The fat woman in the jogging suit? I fell for a mother-and-daughter pair wearing matching SAS comfort shoes. The girl, maybe 10 maybe 12, looked scared, and dabbed at her scabbed mosquito bites with a Kleenex. She popped Vick's Vitamin C like candy. They took me to a bakery on 79th and Broadway, where I picked up a black construction worker with a wandering eye on his cigarette break. We went around the block twice. By the time he got back to the loading dock at Zabar's, I found a raving, ravaged homeless man to follow. He carried a newspaper under his arm and had scotch tape on his cheeks and his beard and displayed a tendency to talk to invisible men. He walked into a deli and knocked over merchandise as the Asian women behind the counter stared at their cash registers and the stock boy snickered.
"He come in here often?" I ask her.
"All the time," she says under her breath. "We have to call the police. Nothing else gets him out. He make a mess."
I follow the raving guy to the refrigerated section.
"Excuse me, sir," I say, reaching past him for a Diet Coke.
"Rah-rah-rabababa."
"I know," I say.
He smiles. His teeth are brown, rotten stumps. "Rah-rah-rabababa."
"It's true."
He smiles again and nods. Am I connecting with him? Then he screams and slams his fist into the Ceres fruit juices. That's my exit.
I spend the rest of the afternoon following people through New York. More on that later. Consider this an explanation for my absence as of late. Hope you're doing well. I need a nap.