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Yesterday afternoon I was walking briskly towards Astor Place and I passed three college-age kids and heard the following excerpt of their conversation:

BOY: . . . and this girl said your asshole has to be open before they fuck you or there’ll be pain, so I put a banana in my butt.
GIRL 1: Oh, a banana’s a good idea.
GIRL 2: But you can use anything. A cucumber, a shampoo bottle.
GIRL 1: Or a back massager. I used a back massager once.
BOY: Why’d you use a back massager?
GIRL 1: I was bored.
GIRL 2: You could use a back massager for S&M, too.
BOY: Would you be one of those S&M people?
GIRL 2: Hell, yeah. You get paid a lot, like seven or eight hundred dollars
GIRL 1: Would you whip a dwarf?
BOY: For eight hundred dollars I’d whip anybody.

At this point our paths diverged—theirs down the street, mine into the subway.

But I went down the station stairs grinning at the joy of youth.

As the uptown 3 train was pulling out of the 14th Street station this evening I witnessed the following exchange.

Foreign Couple Looking (Intelligently) at a Map: Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber.
Old Guy Who Looks Like Santa Down on His Luck: Where are you trying to go?
Foreign Couple: We are wanting to go to Times Square.
Old Guy: Oh, you just go to 34th Street and get off, it’s right there.
Foreign Couple: Thank you so very.
Old Guy: Here we are, 34th Street—it’s my stop too. Here’s where you get out.

(The couple stands up to follow him as he leaves the train.)

Random Nearby Lady: This is not your stop. Times Square is at the 42nd Street stop, which is next.
Foreign Couple (sitting back down): Thank you so very.

(The couple sits back down until 42nd Street, at which point they leave the subway, as do I.)

I mean, okay, it’s kind of weird to live in New York and not know that Times Square is at 42nd Street. I mean, there’s a musical about it. But if you live in New York and don’t know that Times Square is at 42nd Street, don’t you think there are tasks to which you’re better suited than giving people directions?

Since I am 1) a writer and 2) very disorganized, I have more than a passing familiarity with the phrase “insufficient funds.”

I usually encounter it, however, in the context of buying clothing, for example, or too many books.

Before this evening I had never encountered it in the grocery store with a basket containing half a pound of chicken, four peaches, an onion, and a bottle of paprika.

This has not been my day.

Okay, I need help.

(Ha, ha.)

Would you please go here to take a two-question survey?

It may help me resolve a problem over which I’ve been gnashing my teeth and tearing my hair out for three weeks now. The nature of the problem itself must remain concealed for the moment, but the day will come when all will be revealed.

Thank you.

Update: Some people have been kind enough to leave the answer to question #1 in the comments section on this post. I appreciate your generosity, but I’d like to ask readers not to do so from here on out. I myself know the answer; my aim is to find out whether readers recognize the phrase—and so putting the answer in the comments actually defeats my purpose.

BEIJING — AUGUST 10: President of the United States George W. Bush holds up the American Flag the wrong way before wife Laura Bush instructs him to turn it around at the swimming arena at the National Aquatics Center during day 2 of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on August 10, 2008 in Beijing, China.

Are we to be spared nothing?

Today I saw Mamma Mia. I wept rivers during “The Winner Takes It All.”

Then I went to a party where I sat next to Oksana Baiul, who was hysterically funny.

Remember Dmitri the Lover?

Well, lucky for us all, he’s giving lessons.

According to the protocols of the Rasputin Method of Seduction developed by Dimitri The Lover, it is important that as much physical contact as possible occur during the initial interaction in order to
set the tone for future sessions. Unfortunately, due to absurd, unnatural, feminist-inspired North American laws which run contrary to our natural biological urges, men are restricted from groping women at will. Therefore, it is imperative that the touching be consensual. The key is getting women to feel both comfortable and aroused at the thought of being treated like a piece of meat at a slave auction.

When I was in college, if I was in love with somebody I knew slightly but I couldn’t come up with an excuse to, you know, actually speak to him, I would tell him he’d appeared in my dreams the night before (in a completely non-sexual way).

“I dreamed that there were a bunch of people floating around as circles,” I said to one guy once, “and I was a triangle, and then I saw another triangle floating around, and it turned out to be you.”

We ended up making out once, several months later, so obviously I was onto something.

It has just come to my attention that there are people who have not read True Porn Clerk Stories.

If you are one of these people, please, please do your part to rectify the situation.

You won’t regret it.

Of course, the job he was beginning was in the department where this happened less than a month before his first day, so it’s possible he should be granted some leeway.