I overheard a strange conversation at the store today, between two men who I’d say were in their late teens or early 20s.

“Newports make you sterile,” the first one said.

“What?”

“Newports, the cigarettes.” He twirled an invisible cigarette at his face to clarify what he meant by Newports. “If you smoke them over a long period, they’ll make you sterile. I heard that.” He gestured haphazardly toward the door, as if pointing toward where he had heard this.

(Laughing) “Cigarettes will kill you first. Who cares if you’re sterile?”

“Sterile would be worse than dead.”

“Why? Who cares about making babies? You make babies, they’re gonna die anyway.”

I almost turned to them and said “You make life sound so bleak and pitiful,” but their conversation moved on to the subject of their latest sexual conquests so quickly that I would have sounded like a dud interjecting the bleak and pitiful comment.

I wonder if that is what he meant to say. Why make babies, they’re just gonna die?

I left the store weighed down by fresh existential dread. Already I felt the day in progress was headed for disaster, having heard a radio news announcer say that a storm that killed six people in North Carolina was coming our way.

Something about the way the announcer said it made death imminent, its rage and torment storming through New York with unimaginable force, millions of us dying violently, helplessly, in the apocalyptic catastrophe that already killed 6.

That was 10 hours ago and I am still waiting for the damn storm to kick in. I am sitting by an open window, listening to the subway rumble by in the distance.

I have lived in this apartment for over 9 years but have never spent much time sitting by or looking out the window. Looking out the window might not seem like an urgent pursuit in life, but I am glad to have re-arranged the furniture in here so I can glance outside in between flourishes of brilliance here at this table.

I don’t have a desk. I have a giant table that a friend gave me several years ago. I don’t think I have ever seen a desk that I liked. The closest thing to an exception might be the giant government-issue type desks with the ugly steel drawers containing mysterious and never-fitting metal slats.

I had one such desk many years ago, and would still have it today but when I moved to Atlanta the movers from Moishe’s claimed the desk could not be moved out of that apartment. “It will take hours. 6 or 7 hours.”

Moishe’s movers got the desk in there a few years earlier (the main reason I called them again), but the new recruits didn’t have the same mad skills needed to get it out.

For all I know that desk is still there, an immovable fixture that comes with the apartment.

Modern desks are too clever for me, with elaborate hutches and computer-specific intricacies. Most importantly, desks are never big enough for me. I like big, flat, empty surfaces. I like blank walls and empty pages. These little elements of blank force my mind into action, which in my case could constitute a still-harmless manifestation of insanity.

Ah, OK, in the last few minutes the apocalypse has begun. A smattering of rain, and the lights dimmed momentarily. When there were more car alarms around here these thunderstorms had the side effect of setting off particularly sensitive car alarms, turning the neighborhood into a wretched noisehole. The Mr. Softee truck, too, used to blast its obnoxious music loud enough to set off car alarms very sensitive to the vibrations of the atmosphere and hey, maybe even the universe.

Sitting by the window has thus far not produced any memorable sights or sounds, though I like to keep an eye on my car at all possible hours and minutes.

One night last summer a friend and I were on the roof of this building when I noticed someone in an apartment across the street, sitting by the window, typing things into a computer and waiting for results to come up on his screen. He seemed to pursue some piece of information very precise and, I gathered from his fidgeting, either very arcane or just hard to describe in a way that pleases a search engine.

He rapidly typed what looked like 4 or 5 word phrases, waited for the results, then pressed the palm of one hand to his forehead, impatiently tapping his fingers on the table with the other hand. Whatever it was, he wasn’t finding it.

After 8 or 10 rounds of this he slammed his hand on the table and pointed at the screen. I could not hear him but imagine he said “THAT’S IT! THERE IT IS!” Then he clicked a couple more times and nodded his head as he browsed whatever he had found. It was a strange but exciting little glimpse, however brief, into one man’s pursuit.

I now know that it is illegal to be on the roof of this building. I did not know that at the time, but occasionally I still steal up there. On a calm night, however cold it might have been, I spent some hours last winter sitting on my lawn chair sipping gin and tonics on the roof. It might be 5 degrees but with no wind and with suitable armor I find it a gloriously solitary feeling to be in the cold.

I don’t have anything to say (as the apocalypse develops) but the sound of the tapping on these computer keys is not as annoying to me as usual. It throws a counterpoint against the sound of the rain splapping onto the air conditioner.

Splap? Hey, why not.

I will now walk around the apartment and do other things. Periodically I will stop by here to write a random memory that surfaces during my busy travels around this place.

* Summer camp, walking in on a friend masturbating to a picture of the redhead girl from the B-52s. He was shell-shocked and not happy that I barged in on him, but I did a fabulous job of pretending I saw nothing. He covered his crotch almost instantly. I did not mean to be rude (people barged into each other’s rooms all the time, it was normal), but he left his door not just unlocked but open a little bit, so what the hell?

Later that day I remember eye contact he made with me. As if looking for a glimmer of something in my eyes, something that I never quite defined. Leaning toward the upbeat interpretation, I think he gave me a long look of confidence. Was he looking for some indication that I knew I had walked in on him in a teenager’s most embarrassing act? Maybe he was looking for two things: that indication that I knew, and/or some look of confidence that his secret was safe. Maybe he wanted to know that the secret was safe with him and no one else.

We never talked about it. I never told anyone, and my guess is that he either thinks I didn’t know I had walked in on him masturbating, or that he knew I knew (Nu Knew!) but kept the secret safe.

Man, I hope he’s not reading this.

* College dining hall (almost said dinging hall, lunch. I take a bite out of a hot dog and place the hot dog on my plate.

Friend sitting across from me looks at the hot dog, then his face produces a ghastly cross between horror and one of those “I’ve got bad news” grins meant to comfort (but not really) before the bad news is delivered.

“There’s a vein coming out of that hot dog.”

I looked. Sure enough, a fat, purple vein that I had just bitten into and partly consumed sat there, crass and kind of hilarious, staring up at us from the middle of a hot dog.

Who cares, I asked. Hot dogs have all kinds of junk inside, you just don’t usually see it.

I joked about it, telling people later that my friend was pretty tactless to publicly point out the veins in my wiener.

Some time later I encountered a dictionary definition of hot dog. The definition was “tube of beef.” I used to laugh at that goofy sounding definition, but not so much any more.

My present dictionary says that the primary definition for hot dog is to show off, as in hot dogging on your skateboard or motorcycle. I know that term but I do not think I ever heard it used in normal conversation. I have heard the phrase used to express approval. “Hot Dog! Hot Diggity Dog!” That expression either evolved or simply shifted in my mind to “Hot Damn!”

* Squinch. I love that word. As a teenager I fell instantly in love with the girl who introduced me to squinch. She knew other architecture-related words, and I wish I could remember the others that she mentioned. We were in a place that had examples of squinches and other things, and she pointed out each one with its name and description. Mad, passionate love smoldered in my squinchy brain.

* The first time I ever called somebody a cocksucker. Security guard at a Food Emporium on the upper east side accused me of stealing a package of chicken. There was no possible or even imaginable way I could have done what he said, but he seemed satisfied to have provoked an angry reaction and driven off a customer.

I used to think cocksucker was a really strong name to throw at somebody, apropos to calling a woman a cunt. Nowadays I regard neither word as particularly strong, though context is everything.