Wireless in the park.

In New York there's free wireless outside. I am sitting in City Hall Park with my laptop. The long endurance test of a road trip, in which my resolute absentent-mindedness directed at the singular accomplishment of the city to which I am now tapping at my computer. I am staying at the Harlem YMCA in a room so small that I have to stand sidways to pass between my bed and wardrode (though the fact that I actually have a wardrobe in my private room should give me less reason to complain). For anyone who is not familiar with Manhattan, Harlem is very, very black, and, for anyone who is not familiar with me, I am very, very white. I stick out a little. If you look at Satelite images of Harlem and you notice a small white speck floating through a sea of dark skinned ladies and gentlemen then you can say, "Hey that's that guy on the blog collective whose posts I try to avoid."

I would be moving into a new apartment in Queens had it not been for the whims of chance. I had seen the apartment the day before yesterday and was unsure, gave it a night to think about it (knowing full well the incredible perils of hesitation in situations like this), and finally I fully resolved on it early the next morning after checking into my room in that black-culture mecca. I call the landlady and she tells me that she is going to be showing the place to someone else and that if I come down there and am in earnest that she will hand the keys over to me and have me sign the lease. Unfortunately, she does not tell this other girl at that point that the apartment is taken, either not trusting that I was in earnest or assuming that the other girl would not be able to make an immediate decision to take it. I get there as fast as I can, fully prepared to pay all in full, but (as fate is a wily tramp) the other girl has fully decided that she too wants the apartment. She is a lanky, short-haired black girl from Florida with high-cheekbones, a small featured face, chocolatey skin and an English accent who is going to NYU to get a masters in film. The landlady, though, does not want to make a decision and hopes that the two of us can decide between us. We compare trials (akin, though not quite tantamount too the Seinfeld episode in which George compares his woes with an older gentleman who had once survived a sinking ship): she is only here for the weekend to find a room and has a flight back to Florida in two and a half hours and will be returning in a week to begin classes; I have classes starting in two days and am living in a hostel with a fraction of my stuff while the rests sits in storage while I try to find a room. It is possible that great moralists have pondered long over situations like this and have reached logical, elequently argued solutions that would satisfy all parties involved (except, of course, the person who doesn't get the room), but I decided to leave the decision to fate (that whorish vixen) and let it be decided on a coin toss. The landlady pulled from her purse a Israeli coin on one side of which was a ten and on the other was a menorah. I decided to put my faith not in that symbol of god's benevolence and perseverance, but in that indifferent number 10. That was my fatal error. I was allowed to be the one to flip the coin, and I raised into the air that spinning disc that was to be the determinant (and detriment) of my entire future. And as it sank to the earth with an unwavering thud I could see even from my height the candles looking up at me. It was over. I conceded. I walked away. Went back to my room in Harlem to cry silently. And now, this morning I am back on the internet to seek out more rooms (and occasionally to procrastinate by writing long, overdone descriptions of what I've endured).