strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Nov 8 05: ny moment #38,215
Why do I love this city?
Because it’s the sort of town where you can go to your polling place, half a block from your apartment, and find three volunteers at the table for your precinct. Two of them will be checking your name against the list of voters, getting you to sign the book, that kind of thing. The third will be a grizzled, portly man in his early sixties, maybe. He’ll be having a conversation on a cell phone tucked between shoulder and ear: You remember her, right?… That’s ridiculous…. She’s rich, she can buy her own goddamn groceries…
Only then you realize that he has no cell phone. He’s just chatting with the voices in his head. You make eye contact with the other two volunteers; one of them looks at you and says Mmm-hmmm, and the other just rolls his eyes in a way that plainly says Buddy, don’t get me started. You go into the booth and pull the Big Red Lever, and outside the curtain you can hear all the poll workers talking about him: How the hell did he get this gig? Do you think we should maybe call the Board of Elections?
And then you vote and you go home and your partner has scored a mess of Girl Scout cookies at the office, some for eating soonish and some for archiving in the freezer until you forget about them and then discover them accidentally at some point in the future.
That’s why I love this city.
(Texas, on the other hand, can go to hell.)