Morning subway ride with homeless mentally ill passenger his eyes dilated now he looks up you really shouldn't make the mistake of making eye contact now he's looking at you one of his hands is dark silver as if he's painted it and his nails white too the other the color of normal skin -- This silver skinned hand has a quality of menace people keep sitting next to him oblivious at first to the wide berth other passengers have given him and to the hand itself me I can't stop looking at it maybe he's wearing a tight white glove that's so tight you can't see where it separates from the skin maybe he's wearing that glove because he wants to kill us all and leave no prints don't be silly but still this feels like an omen like a departure from a good world this is where the universe reveals the worst it has in store for us gradual from this point people exchange quick looks the guy keeps looking straight at people talking to them in low tones the train won't move, the train keeps stopping and some fucked robot keeps apologizing for the unavoidable delay.
The guy keeps looking straight at people and talking to them: That's how you know someone's crazy in New York City. They look people in the eye and talk to them, like a child would. The train refuses to move.
Afternoon: Feel-good charity delivery for low-income workers, the rub being that the low-income workers are really the company's underpaid employees and the delivery was late and so that thick cloud of dread that hung only over me and the man with the silver hand this morning now has spread to the others around me; to mothers fathers and children waiting for something they thought they could get for free. Instead of giving them something free now we've taken hours of their time so it's like we're paying them by the hour in holiday food.
No one can reach the delivery people. The drivers don't seem to have phones. Perhaps they began driving before the invention of the cellphone and have stuck to CB radios. Stalwarts. Maybe if we had a CB radio we could reach them and tell them if they don't get here soon we'll burn their trucks and parade their heads in the street on pikes. There are kids crying in the lobby.
Night: we're in a fancy restaurant. One of the fanciest restaurants I think we've ever been in and it's making you uncomfortable. Maybe I'm uncomfortable too, but that isn't something I notice these days. We're doing okay though throughout the meal. Then you look across from me at the table and it looks like you're going to cry, like you've caught the dread. Maybe it's too much, that discomfort is turning to full leaden guilt, that you can picture how many folks the tab of this meal would feed for a week, or a month, or a year. To distract you I tell you a story, the story of this golden nature.
This is the story of a New York chef. One night, a Wednesday like any other, he shuts down the restaurant and goes to sleep early. At some point in the night though (here it becomes less a normal night) some pretentious foodie angels descend on a whim from the heavens and imprint two giant Michelin stars on his forehead as he sleeps.
When he wakes up in the morning our chef has a serious hard-on, the kind the label on the pills warns you about, and it just won't go away. He's worried for a minute, but then he looks in the mirror and sees the stars, and this makes him happy, I mean, two Michelin stars. That's pretty good; I mean, before he had zero stars, it hadn't even really been much of a thought. Only now he looks on his face and sees plenty of room for the third. Who's to say there couldn't be a third? Or more?
But still there's the matter of this pesky continuous stiffy. Our chef goes about his business, gets the paper and eats his breakfast. Now it's starting to get a little painful. And now (that's a little better actually) numb. Refreshed, our chef decides to take a shower, but the sound of the water bouncing off of it really makes him notice. Our chef looks down and his dick has turned to gold.
At first he considers going to the hospital, or smashing his penis free of the gold with a hammer. But after an hour or so he's calmed down. It really is a fine piece, he tells himself, it really shines. And what would the papers say? He's got these stars to think about now; the last thing he needs is a scandal.
Time passes and our chef really adjusts. And none are the wiser. There are things he'll never be able to do, it's true -- urinate, get an MRI, go through airport security-- but the man with the golden dick adjusts. He drives to his vacations, he seems to have lost the biological imperative or need to urinate, and his health has never been better.
Perhaps most important, this golden nature of his dick has freed him up to worry less about his libido and more about his cooking. It improves by leaps and bounds, it improves spectacularly; his cooking now is a perfect weave of science and inspiration and sublimated sex -- his cooking now is a celebration of the very essence of living, and those culinary professionals around him seek his presence as one would seek a yogi, or keeper of the flame.
At night he sleeps alone, always alone, and dreams of an inspection (somehow he knows that it's *her* there at the corner table) that glows so flawlessly, the result could never be in question. Later that year the third and fourth star are conferred all together, in the thick of the night by those same asshole angels.
The next morning his doorbell rings and it's her, this time without her disguise, love beaming in her face. They have three years of bliss together, until one day the dread arrives.
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