People are everywhere. Something really should be done.
Imprisonment?
Death?
I'm not a politician. But I know a fucking problem when I see one.
They were at the train station this morning, pushing, shoving, grunting, moaning. There were even more of them on the train, snoring, coughing, sneezing, farting. Two hours later, the train pulled into Penn Station in midtown Manhattan. The place was infested: people on the stairs, on the escalators, lying on the floor, hurrying, scurrying, shouting.
It is Monday morning, and I am in the small cell that is my office, trying to comfort myself with an egg wrap and a cup of coffee. It isn't working. I would have ordered a scone or a muffin, but the guy behind me at the overcrowded deli was nose-breathing down my neck, the woman beside me was poking me with her umbrella, and all
promotion
I could think about was getting to my office and Googling "Zyklon B" as quickly as I could.
I got 387,000 hits — none, unfortunately, e-commerce — before Lior appeared at my office door.
"D'you see the race?" he asks, a smile on his face.
"Uh," I say, trying to figure out which answer will lead to the quickest end to this conversation. "No," I lie.
"Oh, man," he says, sitting down in the chair beside the door. "What a race."
"Don't ruin it for me."
"I won't."
"Don't tell me anything about it."
"I won't."
"Not a word."
He shakes his head.
"Rossi is God," he says.
"Are you ruining it for me?"
"No, no. I'm just saying. Nobody has a chance against him. Capirossi's quick, but the Ducati doesn't have the cornering. And Hayden, I mean, come on."
Valentino Rossi is the Michael Jordan of motorcycle roadracing. I'm a fan. My helmet is a Rossi replica, and I have a sticker of his number, forty-six, on the back of my Yamaha R1.
"Fuck Rossi," I say. What I mean is "fuck you."
When I first became interested in motorcycle roadracing, my wife understandably attributed it to the opportunity it afforded me to wear leather pants in public. She was only mostly right. There was also the speed, the beauty, the precision, the danger. Most importantly, though, even more importantly than the leather pants, was the fact that the sport, at least here in America, was so pathetically unpopular.
I'd be more of a humanist if I didn't hate people so much. I'm down with the basics — rejection of supernatural beliefs, commitment to the search for truth and morality, belief in self-determination — but it's the whole "dignity and worth of all people" thing that
I may not die a happy man, but I'll die a happier man if I never have to go to another city, or concert, or rally, or — God help me — a sporting event.
trips me up. People annoy me. They depress me. Red Staters, Blue Staters, it doesn't matter. I'd prefer an empty state, surrounded by a moat, filled with piranha. I couldn't find one on Craigslist, so instead I bought a house in the middle of the woods in Upstate New York (Kaczynski would love it here; I would, like Ted, send out random explosive packages, but I don't care about people enough to kill them, and I'm fairly certain they'll blow each other up sooner or later anyway). What I'm saying is I don't like people, and I like them even less when they gather together in large groups, which they tend to do with alarming frequency. I blame this on monkeys; if only we had evolved from a less tribal animal, like ferrets or hawks. I may not die a happy man, but I'll die a happier man if I never have to go to another city, or concert, or rally, or — God help me — a sporting event. Sports fans irritate me more than anyone else, and that's saying something — the pitiable vicariousness, the desperate belonging, the violence unleashed over losses not their own, the ecstasy enjoyed over accomplishments of others. It's bad enough I feel these things alone, but at least I feel shame about them; group dynamics, particularly when the group is made of lemmings, only encourage acceptance.
I don't get invited to many Superbowl parties.
"FUCK ROSSI?" shouts Lior. "FUCK ROSSI? He's the greatest rider in the history of MotoGP! Who do you like, Nicky Hayden? Pedrosa? Come on, Pedrosa's SHIT, dude."
We were already into the "dude's." Thanks, monkeys.
