In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, there are photo shoots every weekend. Even though its no longer ‘edgy’, it doesn’t stop people from posing in front of pull down metal gates, bad graffiti and on dead end streets, I should know, I live on one.

This Sunday I was walking home from the grocery store where I bought baking soda to make biscuits from scratch. Forgetting that I was missing a few other supplies, like a rolling pin, cutting board and biscuit cutter. I heard you could improvise a rolling pin with a wine bottle, but since I don’t drink I bottomed out there too. I could substitute an upside down glass for a biscuit cutter but in the end I decided to just make toast.

When I approached the corner of my street, I saw what I feared to be a Mime. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt with black horizontal stripes, the uniform of the Mime or just some Danish guy in Copenhagen. His face was in profile and he was slightly obscured by a person standing in front of him but then he turned, revealing his white-painted face in all it’s revolting glory. A wash of anger came over me. I don’t know why Mimes make me so angry. But then I saw the photographer, it was the Pilgrim.

The Pilgrim is a guy that dresses like, you guessed it, a Pilgrim. I believe he’s lived in this neighborhood longer than I have, which is over eleven years, since my friend Kim used to tell me about him when she lived here before me. He looks exactly like a Pilgrim, right out of a Thanksgiving’s Day card. The cropped black pants with white stockings, the shoes with square metal buckles, the cartoon-like black hat, even round old-fashioned glasses.

Somehow the sight of the Pilgrim photographing the Mime made it okay. It was okay that there was a Mime if he was being photographed by a Pilgrim. 

This morning when my alarm went off I jumped out of bed and crumpled like a marionette.

My leg was asleep.

I would live in a dryer if I could. I would use it for exercise, like a hamster wheel. The humid air would keep my hair fluffy and wavy. The laundry warm would keep me cozy. And my clothes would always smell like dryer sheets. 

Today I ventured out in the aftermath of the snowstorm. My entire street is a solid block of ice. I have no practical snow or rain boots. I’m wearing white boots with a 2 inch heel. I went skittering about the west village to drop of t-shirts at my friend’s salon, Seagull. On my way back to the train I slipped on the sidewalk and landed in an awesomely queer Freddie Mercury pose, down on one knee, hand extended. A girl stopped and said,
“Oh my God, are you okay?”
No autographs, please. 

I was walking down Bedford Avenue in the early afternoon with a coffee. A guy working at a construction site was rolling a dumpster down the sidewalk behind me about half a block. It was making all this noise, giving me the feeling that I was being chased.

He kept trying to get my attention, yelling things at me to get me to turn around. Finally he just started singing “You look like a black girl from the back girl.” I started laughing but I didn’t want to encourage him, so I just turned the corner.

That was the subject line in an email I received today. I couldn’t find the results from that IQ test, but apparently I’d taken one in 2005 that yielded a score of 129 earned me the title of Visual Mathematician. The email goaded me with “Think you’ve gotten smarter in the past year? Take the test again.” I followed the link and took the Super IQ Test. It’s been three years since my last test, this time I yielded a score of 147 and earned my new title of Intuitive Investigator.

If I truly am this smart, why do I keep misspelling the same words? Why do books like James Joyce’s Ulysses and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow fill me with a sense of dread? Why can’t do math in my head or spell words out loud? Why do I accidentally call people with my butt?

The other night I was watching Late Night Oprah.
It was a show about fear, intuition and violence.
Dr. Oz said,
“Deep down all Men fear that women will laugh at them.
While deep down all Women fear that Men will kill them.”
I thought it was just me.