As I got ready to leave here this AM I could not find MAX. I asked everyone. The Wild Thing didn’t want to talk about it, sensing that I thought MAX was more important than him. That’s not it at all, I told the Wild Thing. I take you places but I don’t want you getting any dirtier than you are, and I’m not putting you in a Ziploc bag. So then I said: Anyway, Wild Thing, you have a habit of sneaking into my bags anyway. He denied it.
I asked POOP. He didn’t even know who MAX was, and why would he? POOP is still new here and MAX doesn’t mingle with The Team too often, spending most of his time alone in my bag, wielding his scabbard (huh huh).
I take MAX everywhere so he can guard the payphones when needed, as he is doing with this phone at 43rd Street and 6th Avenue.
MAX Guarding The Payphone at 43rd and 6th
Keeping it real, I was not distraught about MAX per se. I knew he would turn up, or at least I was mostly certain of it. It’s just that I don’t lose things, but I’ve been such a fumblebutt with my pockets and bags of late that it was not impossible I might have left MAX on a payphone somewhere in town.
When I am drinking I sometimes wake up to find I have left something in a place no sentient person would have left it, such as the VR headset of yore turning up inside the deep fryer, which is in a cabinet next to and under the sink.
But MAX? MAX doesn’t just get thrown around. He was with me at the CBS filming, and at other incidental triumphs. He is no superior to the Wild Thing, but he has his place of urgency. The Wild Thing keeps watch on what I do here, and everywhere. The Wild Thing doesn’t have to go with me because he is always there. MAX, well, MAX is always learning.
It turned out he was in the same bag he’s been in for months. Without me knowing of it he had escaped from the usual pocket he shared with a mass of Starbucks napkins and a couple of months-old rolls of Life Savers in favor of another pocket he had all to himself. He thought that would be a good thing. Then I zipped that pocket shut. He could not escape. I didn’t know. When I found him in there he begged to be returned to the other pocket, since the Starbucks napkins provided a cushion that he had taken for granted, and he was actually living off the Life Savers. For the first time ever MAX seemed a little confused. It passed, as the above photo demonstrates.
You can never have too many Starbucks napkins, or Life Savers.
Well, yeah, you can.
…
This was a… day. I’ve decided it’s war against the Smart City. On Twitter I am going to block the kiosk makers and their sycophantic cronies. I’m angry about their removal of the Super Center payphone, and what I assume to be the impending removal of the other phones around here I have used to call suicide and depression hotlines over the years.
I AM NOT SUICIDAL SO PLEASE CEASE YOUR INTERVENTION.
I have called these lines to talk about how others’ suicides have impacted me, most importantly my father’s, but also A (more on him, much more in fact, later) and L and S, and that girl M, who I never knew but I think about more than I should. I don’t call to talk about myself or my potential tendencies. It’s about the effect of others’ suicides, including people I never even knew. It’s like Al-Anon vs. AA. The former is for people whose lives have been influenced by alcoholics, the latter is for alcoholics. I do ti from payphones because that is where I feel safest.
In the future any such conversation as I had with these hotlines will, if conducted over a Smart City kiosk, have to be screamed, and heard to by anyone in the vicinity. Can you imagine walking along and hearing both sides of this conversation, which is a sanitized version of the last time I called one of these numbers from the Super Center Payphone? (all caps because you have to fucking SCREAM to be heard when making a phone call over a LinkNYC Smart City kiosk):
WHEN THE DETECTIVE CALLED ME SHE SAID IT WAS A SUICIDE. I NEVER SAW THE SUICIDE NOTE. SO LAST WEEK I FOUND HIS MILITARY HATS IN MY CLOSET, AND FOR THE FIRST TIME I CHECKED TO SEE IF THERE WAS A BLOODSTAIN ON ANY OF THEM. BECAUSE I HAD ALL THESE SCENARIOS IN MIND ABOUT HOW HE PREPARED HIMSELF FOR HIS LAST DANCE, WAS HE WEARING HIS CW3 REGALIA, WAS HE NOT WEARING ANYTHING, WAS HE…?
I liked that particular payphone for these kind of calls. It was isolated but not remote. Calling from payphones for this kind of thing is preferred for me, though I am not naive in knowing they can drill down to my exact spot in an instant. But it’s a payphone. I can run. To make a call like this from a LinkNYC kiosk means I can run but I cannot hide. The cameras will turn on and start recording at what the Smart City algorithm determines to be a signal of threat.
That’s how the Smart City works, right? Targeted surveillance.
Fuck the Smart City. You know who is smart? I am smart.
