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.