The Adventures of Cowboy Hazel

If I sound different today it’s probably because I’m drinking Italian wine instead of French. If you know me, you already know that I’m close to OCD status in several areas of my life. Food and beverage consumption is one of these. Every morning, I get the same everything bagel with cream cheese from the same cart right by the subway station. The woman who works there grabs the bagel before I even ask for it and says, “How are you today, Papi?” Then, I make it over to Liberty Deli once or twice throughout the day and the woman there prepares El Café Gringo (coffee with milk, no sugar) and asks where Andres and Michael are if I happen to come in without them. Of course, there’s the Korean deli and Chipotle too. I’m tiring of this conversation, let me sum up… I am getting in a rut. I do the same shit every day. Part of that is drinking French red wine. When I’m at home, I never drink anything else. I switched that up a bit though and bought a bottle from an Italian vineyard called Falasco. It’s not bad. But, I’d rather have my Louis Jadot.

So, in that pompous preamble, I managed to lose my focus and completely forgot what I wanted to write about tonight. Oh, wait, I just remembered…

I had an interesting ride home on the subway today. I got on the 6 at Grand Central and managed to find a seat. It was fairly quiet as the doors closed and we started. I looked around and noticed a cute hippie chick and her boyfriend sitting across the way to the right of me; an ugly, fat, old woman with facial hair directly to my left; and an unremarkable woman to my right. I didn’t however, notice what was to become the star attraction. Let me pause here for a second to explain something. A creative writing teacher of mine, Carol Keely, once talked about listening to conversations around Chicago and even interviewing bums to get good story ideas. I don’t take it as far as interviewing, but I definitely keep my eyes and ears open for good content, especially on the subway because that’s such a good source. Anyways, back to what I was saying… We’re well on our way to 51st, when this crazy black woman straight across the aisle and to the left starts yelling. “Destruction is on the way…. Change is coming soon…. America is getting a new face… The change starts at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue…” She keeps going and going and some of the other people on the train either made an obvious effort not to make eye contact, others snickered amongst themselves. I, however, was staring straight at her. She returned the eye contact and said, “I know who you are. You think you can fool me? Why do you think everyone else is looking away? They’re afraid to see Satan… I know who you are… You don’t scare me… You know what America needs? Another Rosa Parks…. Jesus is going to conquer you… You know who I am, that’s why you’re giving me that look, but I know who you are too… We need to end all this prejudism…” And then, surprisingly, she got of at 68th Street. Weird. I definitely didn’t expect that.

I was going to write about how I became involved in the creation of a South American fair trade directory today and about the fact that I changed my mind about the whole Five Fish List thing and registered the domain, but I ran out of energy. I need to go to sleep. And, I’m going to do so now. Ciao.