Throwing it All Away

At times, the city seemed to be such a hardcore, tough place to live. I don't mean that there were unique circumstances that made life hard but as a citizen, one tended to come in contact with certain characters or to witness certain situations that one wouldn't commonly experience anywhere else.

This concept can be explained by my experience walking east on 86th Street upon "de-subway-ing" at the 86th Street stop on the 6 train one busy Saturday afternoon. I left the station by vaulting up the narrow stairs of the southeast exit to 86th street. Instead of winding my way through the avenues and streets to my apartment on 91st and 1st Ave. I decided to walk due East on 86th to see what was playing at the (relatively) new movie theater on 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd avenues.

There was a large crowd of moviegoers in front of the theater ticket window beneath the marquee. As I approached, I looked up at the marquee to see what was playing. Nothing really interested me, so without so much as slowing my stride I began weaving my way through the dense crowd and past the theater. A knot of teenagers had formed in front of the ticket window however, taking up almost all of the space on the sidewalk directly in my path. I swerved towards the street to get around them. As I did so, I noticed a gaunt, older black man leaning against a signpost holding a cane in one hand and a black plastic bag used as packaging by any number of the local bodegas in the neighborhood in the other. This man was not directly in my way but I somewhat cautiously moved between him and the teenagers so I could pass. Just as I passed by him I saw him out of the corner of my eye jerk suddenly and bend over while emitting a strange, high-pitched whirring sound that could best be described as somewhere between a shrill whistle and an electronic beeper. This startled me and I kind of hopped away from him while he proceeded to vomit a thick yellow-ish orange all over his shoes and the sidewalk directly in front of him where I had just been walking.
"Oh God!" I groaned half grossed-out, half exasperated as I knew that was too close for comfort. Again, not breaking my stride, I looked down at my pant leg to see if there was any damage but a quick inspection found none. At this point I had a flashback to the last time someone nearly vomited on me which would've been at the GW Sigma Nu house during their epic end of year blowout party called "The Wave". At this party, a severely inebriated freshman guy vomited all over the bar in the basement of the frathouse and then spun around while still vomiting showering the vomit onto those standing nearby. I was one of those standing nearby. This was of course embarrassing at the time and now, here on 86th street I felt almost as embarrassed. Wanting to distance myself from the older vomiting man on the street I kept going home, hoping I wouldn't later discover a dollop of vomit clinging to my pant cuff or shoe. The kids staning near the older man started screaming in disgust and I left them to it.