Freek City

OK. The next installment of my odyssey is a little complicated, and it's taking me time to write
So in the meantime....

You ever play that video game, Grand Theft Auto?
One of the funniest things in that game -besides the bitch-slapping and cop killing- was the random shit people would say in the street when you bump into them
well, I know now how the game designers at Rockstar did that
They just got someone with a tape recorder to walk down Broadway on a tuesday afternoon

Man, New York is a freaktown! Freeeeekycity!
Seriously, you can't walk a single block without seeing someone who doesn't talk or look crazy1
There are people who walk along talking to themselves, just vocalizing whatever's going through their mind at that particular time into a stream of consciousness gobbledegook:

“thenimgonnaeatsomechickeni'mhungrybutifthatbitchbacktalkstomeonemoretimethenitsoverilltellhergonnawatchthatgametonightfuckingiants-”

I have a pet theory about this -i think if you live in new york too long, with the pace and the sounds of the city at you 24/7, you lose your ability to have a monologue interiure2
the mouth and the brain get fused together!
and then you get people just shouting shit at random in the street
the conspiracy theory nutters who hang around Ground Zero are my personal favorite3
It's one thing to read that shit on the internet, another to have it shouted at you in the street

All kinds of mental casualties get washed up in new york
it's tragic -but it's interesting too
and sometimes they wash up in our hostel
I gotta tell you about this chick who was staying in the hostel a couple of weeks ago
she really was NUTS
she had that dead-eyed look of the insane or the heavily medicated
She was in her 40s too4
and for some reason she got fixated on me!
why do I always attract the crazy ones?5
she was always hanging round the cafe bar when I was working
she actually complained to the dudes at the front desk that there was “something wrong with me” because of my hyperactivity (“bluebottling” sarahfriend calls it -there's a new verb for ya'll!)
and she kept asking if I wanted to “have a talk”
naturally, I demurred ;-)

but my #1 favorite exchange with her was this:

[She sidles up to the counter]

ME: What can I get you?
HER: Coffee.
ME: No problem. You want it black or white?

[She fixes me with this stare]

HER: What do you MEAN by THAT?
ME: Um... do you want milk... or not?

At the time I thought she meant I was offering her a good/evil coffee choice(!)
But I think it was racial
Turned out she was a christian fundamentalist white supremacist frootloop
She racially abused some guests, staff
And was duly shown the door
She'd stayed at jazz and been thrown out before, it transpired
She was on the “blacklist”
The blacklist is an interesting document
Some of the people who've been barred from here!
Like a guy who wasn't even a guest
He just used to come into the cafe bar with some booze, get the guests drunk
Then rob them
Nice
(he ended up being chased down the street by davey with a crowbar)
But my fave is “Rambo”
Rambo was a guest in the summer, before my time
He was just a little wee white guy
But he had a Rambo fixation/obsession
And when I say obsession, I mean:
the headband
the face camouflage
and
oh yeah - he was armed
(armed as in armed-with-a-gun armed)
OMG!
He would go out “on patrol”, some kind of vigilante jag
Just as well no one “pushed” him, huh?
He got his ass arrested, natch

So I find all these crazy people fascinating
Maybe that's wrong but i'm a so-called writer6
That shit is meat and drink to me

I'll keep you posted if we get anymore nutjobs staying here
There's bound to be!


1 This works in your advantage if (like me) you want to indulge a, ahem, pseudo-eccentric dress sense. No one here bats an eye at lil' old me! Also, no one over here thinks I'm gay (which is the usual schtick I get back in england -i think every girl i've ever been out with thought I was gay when they first met me). The only people who ever think i'm gay these days are the gays (they wish!) and other english. Well I got news for you englanders -the english are the gays of the world!
ha ha ha!
Seriously -people from other countries EXPECT you to act camp and foppish. So don't disappoint folks on your travels, y'hear? Dress like a peacock and talk like hugh grant. They lap that shit up.

2 Disclosure: It's stared to happen to me! When i'm out walking my dogs, I find i'm talking bout all kinds of shit to them- whatever's on my mind. Now the dogs don't know what i'm talking about, because they're dogs, so this is technically talking to myself.
I'm going crazy in the coconut!

3 I keep expecting to see Baron there; he believes that shit, and with his unkempt beard and gaffer-taped clothes he'd fit right in. ;-)

4 Always suss when someone 40+ stays at a hostel. Like a few weeks before the crazy lady, there was this guy from england. Jesus christ he took minutes off my life! He was in the throes of a full on mid-life crisis; I think his wife had left him for a younger man (or something).
Man, he was pitiful.
But I might have been more generous in my opinion of him if he hadn't been a colossal perve (he kept making the female members of staff uncomfortable; took sneaky pictures of them, shit like that).
And if he gatecrashed a wedding in central park! WTF?

5 Kidding, past-and-future girlfriends! (Apart from the bitches who fucked me over, obviously. You hos are all crazy as shithouse rats.)

6 I'm finishing one of my so-called stories right now. Watch this space!