Mr. Helpful
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Well, it happens tonight. The first reading of our new ongoing series. But let me digress...
A regular routine for me, every Monday and Wednesday night, is to take out the St. Mark's Bookshop trash. I actually like the job, as it gets me out from behind the desk and away from the public for an hour or so. Mind you, there's nothing essentially wrong with the book-buying public, just as, say, there's nothing essentially wrong with water. Yet, if I can stretch the analogy, being in retail in New York City is like falling off a kayak in a quickly-moving river--stopping on the banks once in a while would naturally be a welcome respite from whatever's pleasant about drowning. So, it's nice to go down to our quiet bookstore basement and gather the trash. There's a surprising amount of it that collects, and it makes for a nice workout. The mind wanders in privacy.
We share an elevator with the Sunrise Mart upstairs. When I arrive in the elevator lobby from the basement there's usually a crowd of people waiting to go up to the second floor. At this point the eternal but friendly rivalry kicks in, between people presently working and people presently shopping. So every Monday and Wednesday I brusquely lead them out of the way and ebery Monday and Wednesday they frown and mutter in recognition of the generic authority of one who picks up heavy objects in tight spaces.
Well, last night, for the first time ever, some guy started helping me out. He broke my train of thought, which was most likely in preperation for the reading series, as I had been thinking about it all day. It was weird. Still talking on his cell phone, he sort of picked up one of the bags, dropped it, apologized, and only then said, "Here let me help you." I didn't like this and so was extra brusque with him. "Please, sir, let me handle this," I said, as if I were a cop standing above a double homicide. "Yeah, I'm helping this guy with the trash," said the guy into his cellphone. Eventually, the job was done and the shoppers were on their way up, Mr. Helpful still talking on the phone as the sliding door shut. I tried to give him the stinkeye but he wasn't even looking at me.
Now that I think about it, I want to thank that guy. Not because he helped, because mostly he got in my way and worse, made a routinely private activity public, but because no one ever does anything out of the ordinary in New York. I hope he comes to the reading tonight so I can thank him personally. Actually, that's a lie. I don't like meeting people, can't decide whether I think of this reading series as public or private yet, and I wouldn't recognize him even if he did come. How about this: he annoyed me enough to get me to notice my routine. New York routines are the undoing of most New Yorkers. That was nice of him. So thanks, guy.
The reading starts at 7:30 tonight.
posted by Greg Purcell @ 1:55 PM,
