Todd Levin

In a cab tonight, after a junk food bender so humiliating it should be recorded on some eating disorder web ring for teenage girls, I had an out of body experience. I was retrieving messages from my cell phone – my mom, two wrong numbers, and Fudge Castle telling me my order is cooling – and suddenly I felt a very familiar vibration in my ass. It was the same vibration my phone gives off in my pocket, but how could it be! I am sort of embarrassed to admit that I did a “phone take” where I pulled my own phone away from my ear, wondering how it could be vibrating while in use, though knowing full there was no “how”; it just couldn’t be.

Finally I realized the buzz was coming from another phone I’d sat on when I entered the cab. If it hadn’t been in my ass I probably wouldn’t have known it was there but, upon discovering it, it seemed a good idea to answer it. I wound up speaking with a nice girl named Helen, who was waiting somewhere for the phone’s owner – a man with a bit of a problem being on time. Helen and I are to be married in the fall, and you’re all invited, but that is not my story. Not now.

I did what I thought was most appropriate. I gave Helen my mobile number and instructed her to have her friend call me there so he could retrieve his phone. The succeeding turn of events is not worth report, except for two details:

When Phil (i think that was his name but couldn’t be trusted with this information; names drop out of my memory just as soon as they enter it. i’m excellent with fingerprints, however.) dropped by to retrieve his phone, I greeted him at my building’s stoop. He was a young guy – asian, slight – and he grabbed my hand and said, with alarming earnestness, “THANK GOD FOR NICE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.” It was actually kind of moving. Thank god for nice people like me? As he held tight on my hand, I feared he’d experience the same super-powers Bruce Willis had in Unbreakable. Through his touch, I wondered if he would be able to feel all the horrible things I’d done with my life, especially since some of them had occurred earlier that day. Would his expression change from gratitude to spiritual pain, and finally slacken into grim disgust as he backed away from me? Still, the very idea that he would thank God for people like me made me want to do something nice, like destroy my eugenics laboratory.

Earlier, when I was trying to find Phil’s information in his cell phone, I discovered that this model doubled as a digital camera. Curious, I selected a menu called “photo album”. There were only two photos in there. The first was Phil making a crazy face into the camera. The second was Phil making a less crazy face into the camera. I’ve a feeling there won’t be many more pictures than that during this phone’s lifetime, which is probably not so uncommon. On television commercials advertising camera-phones, there is always some scenario in which the phone’s owner sees the Grand Wizard of the KKK kissing a Mexican baby or something, and thank God for nice phones! In reality, 99% of the photos on those phones capture its owner making a crazy face. The other 1% are blurry shots of my penis head poking through the opening of my boxers. (sorry, phil. there’s no god in the history of religion you’ll want to thank for that.)

Today I woke up with an erection (not so unusual; i have a farrah fawcett latch-hook rug displayed on my ceiling above my bed) and it has persisted all day. I can’t get it to relax, no matter how many times I punch it with my fists or slam it in my office door. Yes, It’s spring in New York City today.

If you don’t live here, where the loveliest men and women on earth come to nest, you might have difficulty fully comprehending this all-consuming sensation. Perhaps where you live spring weather simply means more parked cars with Tasmanian Devil sun visors propped up in the windshield. Maybe it means the soccer moms are hornier. Or maybe it’s springtime every single day, and you’re a huge jerk. I don’t know how you roll. But here’s how we do it:

Imagine one day waking up to find that everyone you’ve been sharing a bus/subway/train with, everyone you’ve barely acknowledged on a daily basis, is suddenly the most gorgeous, sexually desirable creature you’ve ever seen. They’re 25 pounds lighter than you’d remembered. Women wear their hair animal-hot and let it curl at the ends like beckoning fingers. Guys have melted off their carb faces. Grey, bland complexions are flushed with curiosity. And everyone seems to be wearing the same expression – the one that says, “ask me about my uncontrollable libido.” In New York City, there is a name for this unusual phsyiological phenomenon. It’s called “86 Degrees Farenheit.” Excuse me while I smash my genitals with a phone receiver.

p.s. Last night, on the soft eve of this beautiful weather, I was buying produce at my favorite – i.e. most conveniently located – Korean grocer. I struck up a conversation with the cashier as he scanned my baby carrots and weighed my fudge (4.5 pounds). Suddenly, after several minutes of complaining about his sore hands, he announced, “maybe it’s because of all this Nature’s Beauty that my hand is hurting.” (his english – not the best. just like mines.) I looked puzzled, sort of the way a dog looks after the ‘disappearing treat’ trick, so he elaborated.

“Nature’s beauty. You know. All these pretty girls.”

“Ah.” I concurred politely and silently, by making the split-finger gesture over my open mouth and flicking tongue.

Then he added, “You so lucky to live here in Park Slope. In Queens – nothing.”

Hey, Queens – our heavily politicized lesbians are sexier than your Greek Orthodox senior citizens. Eat it, QB!!