The number one summer movie five years from now?

Snakes On A Motherfucking World Trade Center

I’m just saying…

George is my cat. He’s about a year old (which would put him at about fifteen in cat years, so in reality he’s at the whiny, pimply-faced teenager chapter of his life) and has lived with me for about six months now, having come from an animal shelter in East New York aka ghetto central. He very much prefers his new home here in Prospect Heights and is a very good cat—very affectionate, playful, entertaining and stupid looking at all the right moments and overall I am very glad to have him. However, over the course of our time living together, I have developed a few concerns about the little bugger:

1. He’s become a fat-assed little fucker.
2. He acts like he’s the Liberace of felines.

I recall his first day home, poking his head out off the cardboard box, all groggy from getting his nuts chopped off. He was small and skinny. Today, he’s still pint-sized, but his ass takes up several parking spaces. I can actually grab on to folds of lard that hang off his gut. When he parks himself on the floor his butt just seems to flop out, all blubbery and shit. I’ve tried putting him on a diet, but his ass seems to want to expand like Walmart. A big, gay Walmart.

Why do I think my cat is gay? Is it the way he prances about like Carson from Queer Eye? Is it the way he wears his fur like like Dolce couture? Is it his curious interest in shows like Project Runway? I’m not sure what ties it all together and leads me to this assumption, but I am certain George is a definite shade of lavender, a friend of Dorothy always ready to go Brokeback on a bowl of wet food or a pile of catnip. He’s a fat, gay, eunuch, but he’s mine.

To see George is all his fat, gay glory, you can view my rather huge (and growing) gallery on Flickr. Scratch that fat, gay feline itch.

About ten years ago, I was living in a shitty little apartment in a drab, white-trash neighborhood. I was about twenty-one years old and my life revolved around getting fucked up, sleeping, puking and smoking. Sometimes I’d combine one or more together for kicks because I was an angry little fucker and I liked it that way.

One afternoon, after waking up naked and extremely hung-over, I scrounged around and discovered that I was completely out of cigarettes. I was chain-smoking bastard at that point in my life, so this simply would not do. I needed to run to the corner store to further martyr my lung cilia.

Bleary and with head a-throbbing, I still had the common sense to not run out the door completely naked. I threw on a T-shirt and slapped on a pair of these Armenian work pants that I’d found in some Army-Navy surplus store. I’ve no idea if real-life Armenians actually did any work in them, but I kind of liked them. They were dark blue pants that instead of having a zipper or button fly, they used an overlapping contraption that closest resembled how the crotches of tighty-whiteys are set up. It looked completely normal to me and for some reason, I was partial to them. Perhaps it was the drugs.

Since I planned on coming right back, I threw these pants on without bothering to put on anything underneath and hit the street, heading for the corner store.

Ahead of me was a family on their porch. Father and mother, sitting around while several children ran about, screeching and giggling as the fucked up little parasites are known to do. One of the children came running in my direction, chasing after an inflated rubber ball. When the ball neared me, I crouched down, picked it up and gently lobbed it back in the kid’s direction.

Suddenly, the kid starts bawling, turns tail and runs to her parents. The mother looks at me and offers up a “Oh Jesus fucking Christ” to the heavens and the father starts eyeing at me like he’s about to beat me half to death.

It was about that time that I began to notice a draft.

I glanced down and saw to my sheer fucking horror that a force beyond my control, be it fate, karma or physics had caused my dearest pieces to be exposed. I was hanging out. The flag wasn’t raised—thank whatever Gods responsible, but it was definitely flying in the wind.

Somehow in bending to get the ball, the fly-contraption on these Armenian work pants had managed to shift a little here, a little there and now here I was, standing in front of some white trash family on a Sunday afternoon, hung-over with my dick hanging out. The older children stood there, slack-jawed—the image of my face being burned into their brains as the role model to compare all future examples of “bad men” against. Score one for daveb.

I may have little or no redeeming qualities and I may just be an overall useless leech of an asshole but one thing I am most certainly not is a pervert that whips his junk out, especially in front of children. I was fully mortified.

As quick as I could I stuffed that shit back in and took off as fast as possible without actually breaking into a run. There was just no point in trying to explain myself and the curious contraption that made up the crotch of my Armenian work pants. I hit the store and chain-smoked my way home, taking care to walk a much longer and completely different route. I was to maintain this new route for the remainder of my time living in this neighborhood.

I have not worn Armenian work pants since that day.

While I was in San Francisco last week, I started noticing that in that city people talk to strangers, even when they’re sober. I found this experience to be seriously evil as several times I found myself assaulted with casual conversation by persons completely unknown to me, commenting on this, that and the weather. I’d hiss threateningly and scurry off, making an inverted sign of the cross, shocked and scandelized at this invasion of my little bubble of dudeness.

People in New York do not chat. There’s nothing to share and if there was, we wouldn’t care to hear it. You can smile if you want, but there’s not a damn thing funny. If you come up to me while I’m putting sugar in my coffee and remark how you never have a second cup, but today you decided to break the rules, I immediately know one or more of two things:

1. You are fucking insane.
2. You are from someplace that lacks spitting crackheads, mad subway masturbators, gang-bangers, muggers and stanky-ass homeless dudes rubbing themselves less than discreetly. This means that you do not deserve to breath my air, much less accost me because I have to suffer through all this shit and you don’t.

If you fit either or all of these descriptions, I don’t want to be anywhere near you. You’re sick and you need help, but not from me.

It boggles my mind why people would make small-talk with strangers. What’s the point of commenting on the weather? I know it’s cold. I know you know it’s cold. I don’t see any reason why it needs to be validated further. Why am I supposed to respond to “Sure is cold, isn’t it?” with “Oh geez, it sure is!”? If I were to answer by discreetly mentioning that I enjoy duct-taping my balls to the inside of my thigh for that “sporty and aerobic testicle-taping look”, just to get people to leave me alone, would any sane person really fault me? Would it be any less blasphemous than if I were to willingly give in and “shoot the shit” with Billy Dee from Denver on his first trip to NYC with the family?

The problem isn’t just that as a defining rule, I dislike people. It also has a lot to do with the fact that in New York, when some stranger talks to you, you’re either going to get mugged, murdered or latched on to by an insane person and/or tourist. You learn this pretty quick. It only took a couple hours of listening to some crackhead’s life story and his unddying love for “fishscale” as he and his cardboard box parked themselves on the ground next to my table at an outdoor bar during my first visit to NYC. Deserved payment for making the error of responding to his chatter. I’ve not made that mistake since.