I. (A Preface) One of the guys who lives on my floor dressed up as the current stock market for Halloween. He wore a sandwich sign that said "Shit is Coming" on the front and "the Dow" on the back, with an arrow pointed (subtly) to his ass.
Halloween in Manhattan was literally one the scariest things I've ever experienced. My friends and I, after having smoked to our faces, walked down 14 St. towards 6th Ave to see the parade. What we found was a grid-locked, body to body, mass of human beings pushing and shoving their way through stampede-style in every direction. It was worst right on the corner of 6th, where my friends and I, mostly very short, found ourselves being crushed by people all around us, and then thrown from one side to another by people trying to escape and go back. I had an elbow poking into me from every angle imaginably (and some unimaginable ones, too), and I found myself only able to hold Sinead's hand and pretend, very hard, to be somewhere else.
Once we had safely made it back home (an hour later), most of the gang was too burnt-out and traumatized to forge on further into the night. Sinead and I, the die-hard night owls, went out in search of our next chemical buzz and a Halloween to remember. We found ourselves first at a party Dorm X, where I spent an hour and a half or so trying to figure out the seemingly-straight man who seemed to be hitting on me, and wanting very badly to see him naked. (It's been a while). Outside, smoking on a stoop, we witnessed three men chasing another down the street, throwing punches and whipping him with extra-long glowsticks. The guy being beat up was yelling something about calling the police when the others decided to bounce. I never know what to do in those situations. Being a basically decent human being, I always feel like I should do something, but rarely do. I am 5'6'' and have no muscle tone to speak of. An intervention on my part would probably have ended up with both me and the victim getting our asses kicked. And that's a lose-lose situation.
Then Sinead and I the people we had met at the party migrated to Dorm Y, only to realize that no one actually had a friend there or knew where we were going. After an honest effort to find something to do there, Sinead, a couple others and I split and started walking back up home. As we passed the park, we saw a cop car pull up next two guys (presumably smoking a joint) and patting them down and cuffing them. Damn.
The streets were just as crazy as earlier on the way home, and I found myself feeling that shit was, indeed, coming.
II. Someone explain this to me: Whenever I read the word polish, I think it's Polish, as in, from Poland. I've only recently noticed this--somehow, polish keeps popping up in everything I read, and I always go--they mean pollish, as in, to shine something. But I know that's not how you spell polish, that's not even how I spell it, so I really don't understand this little short- circuit in my brain.
III. And that's for daaamn sure! (the title of my blog) is one of my favorite catch-phrases. I don't know how it started or why, but one day I just started saying it. When I do, the angry Black woman I was in another life comes over me, my voice changes and my whole body rocks.
It's funny to watch (I'm told), fitting, and makes sense.
But Celia (my dear little Asian friend and Sinead's roommate) trying to say and that's for damn, sure! like me is one of the single funniest things I've ever heard. She sounds exactly like one of the little orphans in Annie trying to cop a 'tude. It's so adorable it may be even better than my version. I want to record the two of us and post them for comparison.
