At a Starbucks in Forest Hills. I had to go this for a same-day appointment with an ENT. Hoping this hearing loss is not permanent. Thinking it is just earwax buildup, which has happened to me before. I’ve only been to one ENT. He was jerk but he did yank a small alien lifeform out of my head. Or was it my nose? Wait, that’s part of my head, too… Time for a head enema. I wouldn’t miss it if they flushed out the brain along with everything else clogging up this useless tip of the stick.
Forest Hills feels like a small town to me, this part of it at least. Queens Boulevard gets palatial and all but Austin Street not so much. There used to be a conspicuous cluster of payphone enclosures in this area, some with authentic PRAY scratchiti. Those are all gone now. The City and CityBridge have, in routing out every last public pay telephone, laid the groundwork for an inevitable public communications crisis when the lights go out.
I took more crazy calls yesterday. The job feels like everything I wanted it to be. A revolving door of real New Yorkers, one after another after another. One woman yesterday, apparently a frequent caller, asked if I knew who she was. Not that she was famous (although she kinda is) but because she assumed caller ID showed her name and number. It does not usually do that at this job. It always shows the ANI (unless deliberately obfuscated) but it seldom shows a name to go with it. When it does show a name it is usually wrong. I don’t know why that is, if it’s a glitch or what, but that’s how it usually turns out when a name shows up on the screen.
This woman, though, intrigued me with her question about knowing who she was. So I looked up her number and within seconds I was looking at her tassled breasts, pictures of her naked save for one “wardrobe malfunction” tassle on each of her nipples. She looked like quite a character, and I considered her question with respect to knowing who she was to be an invitation to discover exactly that. Like most of us in life she is a celebrity in certain circles.
Some people are fascinating in how they interact with someone like me. Sometime it’s like they hold their noses in dismay at having to interact with this menial layer of the species. Others listen to our words with a kind of wonder.
Forest Hills reminds me of an odd incident involving my father’s estate. I had to get a co-trustee to sign the paperwork. I could likely have gotten away with never doing that but a friend from the neighborhood agreed to do it. All he had to do was be present for an hour or so of signing papers at the bank. I don’t mean to make that sound trivial. Asking for that kind of favor expects a lot of someone. But he seemed happy to help a guy out.
After the estate was all settled I started getting paper statements from the bank. I did not open them for several months, when a pile of 6 or 7 envelopes seemed like something to finally file away.
I had not touched the accounts since they were funded. So I was surprised to browse these printed statements and see page after page of transaction. Some were from Astoria but several were from Forest Hills, at clothing stores like Men’s Wearhouse and Eddie Bauer.
I thought there had been some kind of identity theft, even though i knew from emailed monthly summaries that the account remained funded at its original amount.
Somehow the co-trustee, who also had a savings/checking account at the same bank, had gotten his transactions intertwined with those of the trust. i was looking not at transactions from my accounts but from his. He could have had no idea about this.
First thing I did was call him to let him know. He was out of town and never returned my call when he came back weeks later. This, I think, was fortunate. He didn’t need to know. No harm had been done, save for me learning of his massage parlor patronage.
I told the estate attorney about this. He commented that bankers are the weakest link in the economy.
OK, just wanted to type that story out one more time in this life. Gotta go get earigated.
