Tayari's Blog: Overheard in The City

This happened in my first week in town. Yes, (to quote ladylee), I was straight from the cornfields. However, I didn't know that I had been so tainted from my time in the middle of nowhere. I thought that my years in Illinois had caused me to be IN the sticks and not OF the sticks. The wake up call came on the corner of 8th and E, near the Gallery Place metro stop.

I was walking along, minding my own business when I encountered a man cursing and gesturing wildly. Sweet little me. I just ASSUMED he was using his cell phone via wireless bluetooth technology. I mean what else could it be? It couldn't be that he was mentally ill in an era of drastic cut-backs to state mental health programs, could it? (So now, I have a coined a new phrase for people who seem to be a little off: That guy is NOT on the bluetooth!)

Okay, here's another one. Day before yesterday, I was sitting at Union Station waiting for an Amtrak train. Beside me was a perfectly nice looking gentleman wearing a business suit and sipping a latte, munching a bagel, and reading his horoscope. His cell phone rang and he answered it by screaming. "Why the hell are you calling me? I told you that I am trying to catch my f**king train! What could you possibly want? If I miss this train, it's all going to be your fault. You are just so goddamned NEEDY and I am running through the train station as fast as I can. You KNOW THIS, I TOLD YOU I was running late, so why the HELL are you calling me?! GOODBYE!" Then he switched off the phone and continued with his latte and bagel.

The last occurred in the Mocha Hut. I was working hard on my new novel. (I have this thing where I go to a different coffee shop every day.) Anyway, I was pecking away and this guy situated himself beside me and picked up his cell phone. From what I overheard, he was complaining about a woman with "issues," as he put it. "She was fine as hell, but damn. Talk about issues. And her mama got even more issues!" He went on and on. "Those professional sisters are like that!" This went on for a long time. After about twenty minutes, I figured out he was talking about the character played my Sanaa Lathan in the movie, "Something New." To his friend on the phone he says, "I know you are a Muslim, dog, and I know you don't get into the interracial thing, but I have to tell you that I went to see the movie on Valentine's Day and the theater was PACKED with sisters... FINE sisters... alone, dog. I mean, it was Valentine's Day and they didn't have nobody to be with, no place to go. Damn." He finally got off the phone and plugged in his raggedy computer which booted up with so many creaks and groans that it could have had arthritis. He gazed out of the large plate glass window in front of us, watching the women on U-Street. He finally looked at me. "You know what I like about the new millennium? I like the way women walk around with the crack of their ass showing. I love that." I didn't have a mirror, so I don't know what the expression on my face looked like, but it sort of shut down that line of conversation. Finally, after a few minutes he tried again, "Hey, you want to go out on a date with me sometime?" I said, "I don't know you." He said, "See, I bet you was alone on Valentine's day."