Things I would have handled differently

if I’d been given the script a couple days in advance (and if my life were an action movie where violence was always the answer)

ONE
It’s a cold March evening on a packed 146 bus. The ebbing and flowing crowds have pushed me toward the front door, where I stand pressed against a pole with my nose buried in a Newsweek, trying—as is my usual custom—not to let my bag or my bulky coat or my elbows or my ass be in people’s way as they enter and leave the bus.

We reach a stop not too far from mine when suddenly I realize an angry old lady is yelling at me.

“It’s a DISGRACE the way you’re blocking the doorway. People have to get OFF, you know.”

I look up to see the wrinkly face of a self-righteous old biddy I’d voluntarily given my seat to about five stops earlier when she boarded the bus.

My response at the time: Stunned silence.

What I should have done: A helpful push down the bus stairs. A swift kick in the vagina.


TWO
I’m at Sidetrack on a cool spring evening. I haven’t run into anyone I know, so I’m standing against the brick wall in the glass bar, watching the boys cruise each other.

Suddenly, a wispy little Prada queen drifts up to me—dressed, coiffed and polished to the point he’s obviously trying to overcompensate for something (a lack of personality, perhaps?). As he gets closer, I realize his eyebrows have been so overtweezed and overshaped and overpenciled that they look like little felt cutouts perched above his soulless eyes.

“You are so brave,” he intones to me with all the masculinity sincerity he can muster, “to wear frames in a gay bar.”

(Frames? Who says frames? I look around, though, and—oddly enough—I really am the only guy in the bar wearing glasses.)

The man-girl starts to drift away, leaving an effluvium of expensive cologne, hair product and social desperation in his wake.

My response at the time: Stunned silence.

What I should have done: An uppercut to the jaw. A cruel smear of the well-blended concealer. A swift kick in the vagina.