Ten minutes after i'd taken the drug i began to feel its effects. or i thought it was ten minutes. you can't really tell when you're on it. it takes your
sense of time, right with your sense of
human decency. not that that's a bad thing or anything. it just feels a little strange at first. and this was my first time. or was it? hell, i didn't even know what i was taking. i just took it.
i think hours passed. i watched the others around me gawk at me as i toured the familiar streets with an unfamiliar perspective. or were they even taking notice? i don't honestly know. i was paranoid. the rest of
new york is just as fucked up as i am on the drug, anyway. they couldn't have noticed.
i ended up in a pizza parlor somewhere in
greenwich village. i could tell by the streets. it was probably midnight, and this nice
italian couple was cleaning for the night. i had walked in the door after seeing the man's hair through. he had the kind of greasy curly black hair that's absolutely disgusting but somehow doesn't disgust. i had to go look at it in more detail. for a moment the couple kept at their work -- the lady continuing to vaccuum the worn red carpet and the man with his cloth wiping down all the tables briefly and then stacking up the wooden chairs on top of them. the dim lighting was beginning to get to me so i turned to leave, but was interrupted in my action by the italian lady, who addressed me coldly: "watcha need, kid? we're closed." she didn't speak any colder than the average
new yorker speaks, but it just got to me somehow.
i picked up the big
bread knife laying on a
pizza tin near the entrance. i didn't remember seeing it there before, but now it seemed to have been placed on purpose. it seemed to be waiting for me. and so i took it. i don't think i even said a word, but
i'll be damned if i didn't look frightening waving that thing toward the lady. and that's what i was going for -- something in me was telling me to be frightening. it wasn't my fault.
the man had been watching all this take place and probably didn't like my
waving a knife toward his wife, even if she was across the room. but he didn't seem to care all that much. it took him at least three minutes to walk over to me, and all the while he had a very serious but
laid back expression on his face. on the way over he took a huge pizza cutter off his otherwise clean counter and started moving it back and forth toward me, as if to threaten me with it. i didn't think he was actually too mad though --
i hadn't done anything wrong. just picked up a knife and waved it in the air a bit. but that wasn't my fault.
sooner than i believed was possible at the rate he was travelling he was right next to me. i stood passively as he swung a slow but defined path through the air at my left wrist with his pizza cutter. i watched it seperate my skin cleanly. it took a moment for the blood to come, and when it came it was kind of a shame. there was a beauty to that freshly cut skin. i had wanted it to stay like that for awhile.
as i watched the blood surface on my left hand, he was beginning to swing again at my right. before his weapon even got there i had dropped the knife for my hand onto the floor. that was also
a shame. before that, the place had been in almost perfect order, and the couple had been working to clean everything up. and now i had dropped a big old
knife right onto his clean floor. i didn't think he'd like that much, so i moved my hand to pick the knife up as it was falling. right as i began to move the
pizza cutter struck me again, this time tearing up on my skin as well as slicing it, as a result of my trying to pick up the knife.
i didn't think i could probably pick up the knife at that point without making it bloody, since this new cut on my right hand had almost instantly began to bleed terribly. i wondered for a moment if i should be feeling the cuts i just had been given, but it wasn't of any importance to me really. suddenly i wanted to leave.
"
thank you, sir" i said to the italian
gentleman. "
sorry about the knife." and i walked out the door.