Wednesday, July 16, 2003
nice dinner conversation
Last week I had dinner on my way home at the Wrap Works. When I got my number and sat down I noticed a man sitting at a table sort of talking to himself. All the empty tables were in his area, so I just sat at the most comfortable one and buried my face in my book.
But he wasn’t talking to himself. He was involuntarily talking. Shouting obscenities and mostly incomprehensible garble. Thus the perimeter.
I glanced.
It’s quiet.
“FUCKING ASS PLACE (sumthin sumthin sumthin) DIRT”
I glance up over my pages. My paranoia makes me face doors, people who are scary, etc. So we were facing each other from different tables.
“MUTHA kkrrrrp nnnnnBBuuuu” The man is trying to chew his salad, and something in his brain is making this happen.
Suddenly I feel better. He’s not angry. Is this turret’s syndrome? How do you spell that?
He’s got a briefcase at his side. I imagine people who sit near him at work. Did they give him his own office? Does he have a cube?
My food comes and I make busy with it. I sip my straw and our eyes meet. His eyes look tired and a little bored. But not angry, or completely crazy. By the way, angry worries me much more than any category of brain trouble.
“BUUHHIITT!” a small piece of lettuce flies. That must be really annoying for him - my projected feelings. He looks nonplussed.
An employee comes around and takes some of his trash.
“Thank you,” he says in a perfectly normal voice.
He gets up for a soda refill. Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney’s duo The Girl Is Mine begins to play. He dances, snaps his fingers and does a twirl but doesn’t sing. He’s crazy, I think.
But maybe he’s not at all.
Maybe he’s developed a wonderful and harmless lack of inhibition and self conciousness as a result of the tourrets (sp?). I have danced in grocery stores, mainly because they are such large and boring places. My brother has laid down on the floor in the subway to learn about the public’s response to the unusual.
I stand and clean up. The squawked and grunted wordthings continue, but quieter. Maybe the short in his brain gets food coma.
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