ROBB TODD
Someone actually let me have a book. My first collection of fiction is on sale. You can even enjoy a Kindle edition.
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© 2012 Robb Todd
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I ALSO HANG OUT HERE
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Another Drums Along The Hudson Pic. #inwoodpark #inwood #inwoodhillpark #washingtonheights #washheights #newyork #city #newyorkcity #nyc #Uptown...
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“No one is ever really alone. You are part of everything alive.”— William S. Burroughs, Queer
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Skull Crystal LED Door Knob
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“Malia and Sasha and a bunch of my friends and Michelle had sort of like a roast, a little private roast, each one of them read something and Malia...”
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“I’ve no light in me
but that I reflect of you.
You are stars to me.” -
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Look, single dudes, the world will never be in short supply of
ticking-clock women who want kids, so just stay in a little bit of...
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29 posts tagged east village
WHAT ELSE ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DO IN THIS SITUATION?
All advice fails except this: Never trust anything that is orange that has eyes.
You might also try bacon as a bookmark. Be proud of your double standards because it is really hard to exist, especially in the City of Ids.
A man on the sidewalk said to an upset boy: “You know exactly what you’re doing. You’re making bad choices. Hey! One more of those and that’ll be another five minutes.” He took the boy’s hand and a sports utility vehicle ran over an empty plastic bottle. The bottle exploded. The cap shot off and hit a woman in the head and the boy sang, “Plip plop goes the poop!”
We ruin everything we like by just trying to get there.
ABSOLUTE GRAY
Caffeine is a drug, in case you were wondering. Also, the anti-establishment is an establishment.
A little girl roared in the East Village. The East Village, where there is a 7-Eleven and a Subway and a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Papa John’s. We cannot let Brooklyn win.
The more colorful male pigeons puff their necks, fan their feathers on the ground, and spin a circle to attract females. Squirrels are doing it on trees but it looks like they are fighting.
Take your time.
PANK PUBLISHED A STORY OF MINE
The December issue of PANK is filled with words that might interest you. They should interest you. They BETTER interest you. There’s also this story, All You Need Is Love (And A Job (Or Maybe Not A Job)). I wrote it. Maybe check that one out, too.
BAH TO THE DISPASSIONATE, KNOTTY CHORUS
A large hawk hunted for food in in the park. I sipped coffee and ate a biscuit and watched the bird, hoping. Someone claimed it was an eagle. Its spread wings were wide and beautiful.
The bird was difficult to photograph and so was this dude who walked by wearing a fur coat and black baseball cap with “LET’S FUCK” stitched in white letters across the front.
The hawk perched on low branches and when it spotted a pigeon or some other small bird not paying attention it swooped at them and tried to snatch them from the air with its talons. It also dive-bombed squirrels and just missed plucking them from tree trunks.
A woman on a bench near mine was laughing but her laughs sounded like sobs. I looked over every now and then and she was smiling and joking with a man, touching his knee a lot, but when I looked away I was sure she was weeping.
The squirrels sent warnings to each other with jittery tail signals and others hugged branches tight and kept their heads down while making some kind of weird chirping — a rodent alarm — whenever the hawk was near.
A boy ran away from his mother toward a puddle near the dog run.
“I love this puddle!” the kid yelled.
“No, don’t do it!” the mom said but he was already in the air.
The splash and the delighted scream scared the hawk and it flew to another branch on the other side of the park. It did not catch anything but it kept trying. It was not an eagle.
WE LOVE YOU / AND WE HAVE YOU
A woman walks past a man sitting in the middle of the sidewalk and he tries a pickup line on her. Everyone rushes to work around him.
“C’mon!” he says. “I gotta try!”
She sips coffee, struts and ignores. A tattoo on her arm in script letters: “Everything Happens For A Reason.” What could the reason be for the tattoo?
Tired people crowd the deli, sip coffee, and the guy sizzling eggs takes orders over his shoulder.
“One on a roll and one on a croissant.”
“So, how many?” he says. His goatee is graying with especially long hairs sprouting from a mole.
“One of each.”
“So, two?” He rubs oil over the grill with a flat metal spatula.
“I dunno. Is one plus one still two?”
Eggs sizzle.
A woman digs through her coin purse trying to count exact change at the register while the line grows.
“I can never get rid of pennies,” she says. “I’m convinced pennies are slowing down the economy. What country still uses pennies?!”
It is not the pennies slowing everyone down, lady.
A kid runs in and yells at the egg sizzler: “Yo, bro! Please tell me you have bacon, egg and cheese.” No. “Fuuuuck!”
A guy in a wheel chair on the street corner rattles a cup, a leg nub dangling from a pant leg like someone erased it. My earbuds are in but no music is playing while I wait for the light and he screams, “Quarter!” and I look at him and he screams it at me again and again. He motions for me to pull out my earbuds and screams, “QUARTER!”
I feel rain.
Black stencil graffiti on the sidewalk: “ART IS MY WEAPON” over the silhouette of an AK-47. A man pushing a baby carriage steps on the stencil graffiti. His T-shirt has a tilted guitar under the words “Music Is My Religion.”
A blue double-decker tour bus stops at the light, the open top deck filled with some other type of people wearing yellow plastic bags. All of them smile the same smile.
DUCK CONFIT BURGER, AVOCADO MILKSHAKE
German and Thai and Italian all at once on the train and I wonder where the Spanish has gone. There is always Spanish in this constellation. We live in a society whether we like it or not. Look it up.
This conductor cares about his job and the people he serves: “Have a beautiful evening and a warm and cozy weekend.”
After midnight there are fewer people out who do not understand how a sidewalk works. A woman near the curb trains her dog to sit. Her men probably do not understand why she has so much control over them.
The lady holding my arm says, “There are really good dogs out tonight.” There are many of them all at once, lifting their legs, some small, some hairy, some large, men and women with blue plastic bags over their hands picking up poop.
She woke me up this morning by punching me in the back in her sleep. She did not punch me the night before. The night before that she punched me in the chest. The night before that she punched me in the face twice. She has bad dreams. She dreams that I cheat on her and that I try to give her genital diseases on purpose and sometimes she punches me because of things other people do to her in her dreams.
It is all okay, though. I like the way she walks up stairs and I appreciate the way she bends over on the bed to turn off the air conditioner. We do lots of fun things together.
A limo driver crushes an orange parking ticket in his fist and throws it on the ground next to his black stretch (license plate: SH ZAAAM) and does not get a ticket for littering and I drop a ten in a tip jar by mistake and dig it out.
“Yeah, right, man!”
A friend sends a photo to my phone of a happy woman with “What you think about her?” Big smile, looks honest. Usually a good sign. But I am a sucker for a nice label. That is how I buy my wine. And I do not know shit about wine.
Dip into a spot for quick dinner. Duck confit burger and an avocado milkshake, pass on the sweet potato fries. Unheard off, right? RIGHT. You will never find this place and I am not telling, and she and I bounce to a rooftop party in a nice neighborhood on a nice evening.
“I would totally come up here and look into apartments all day long. But you never see people having sex and, let’s be honest: that’s why you look. We do our parts” — he points to the woman next to him — “and leave the blinds open.”
He winks and asks for a lime to plop in his gin and tonic and all the citrus that is left is a used slice.
“I don’t think it was sucked upon. I think it was just squeezed,” I say.
The bottle of wine with the best label is almost empty and I pour it all into a glass. I swirl it and sniff and dab my tongue in it a little. Hints of grape and notes of alcohol. It tastes great.
A woman with an accent that is hard to place tosses a scarf around her neck and announces to the table: “I want to be a dolphin-trainer trainer. But I don’t want to be too famous.” She says if she was a drug dealer, this is what she would tell boys who got in her face: “Get outta here before I make your girlfriend pregnant!” She snarls and laughs.
The conversation switches to poop.
The lady holding my arm says: “My poo game has been really good lately. I’ve been impressed. Usually when I wipe there’s nothing even there and I have to ask, ‘Did that really happen?’ And I check the bowl and it did.”
The dolphin-trainer trainer knows how to say “drop the kids off at the pool” in five languages and does so. Impressed. She says German is the sexiest language even though she does not speak it.
Back on the sidewalk, stumbling home.
“If you love me, you’ll collapse on the ground right now.”
The lady on my arm collapses. I collapse. People step around and over us all at once. A man leans into our view and says, “Excuse me. Sorry. See that tree there?” We tilt our heads but do not sit up. He says, “It’s like a BIG little tree!” He points. “All the way. All the way into the ground!” He points and points. “All the way. Look!” He points. “A big LITTLE tree!” We do not look. He smiles and shakes his head. He stares at us and we stare back and he says, “Okay, thanks,” and walks away.
The sky is large above and she holds a fly swatter so big she swats stars.
Wheelchair sippy cup
A young woman pushed an old man in a wheelchair and he stared at me while he drank from a sippy cup. I was carrying coffee in one hand and breakfast in the other: two eggs, potatoes and toast that I bought for ninety-nine cents at a place that is famous for hotdogs.
I sat in a park near a statue of a man on horseback who is long dead and I ate and thought about the wheelchair and the sippy cup. The steam in the styrofoam container made my burnt toast soggy. In mid-bite, a bird or some animal in a tree pooped on my favorite shirt. The poop was blue, like the animal was eating berries, and it made a big stain, like a pen broke, like like like a lot of things. Like blue poop. I wiped it with a napkin and groaned about my favorite shirt and slid over a bit on the bench and ate the rest of my over-cooked eggs and blue poop struck me again. The same animal, certainly. This must have been intentional.
I reached for another napkin and knocked my coffee over and it spilled all over the place.
