LOOKING FOR A HANDOUT

There was a guy named Ethan who worked with me in the kitchen at the barbecue joint who recently quit to return to Georgia for a while, and he was funny in a very dry way. He told me the following true story that makes me so glad that I live in Brooklyn, where not only are the weak killed and eaten, but where the free humor that occurs while just walking down the street is second to none:

"I was walking along Atlantic Avenue near what used to be the holding tank for guys who had just been released from prison, fucked up out of my skull after hours and hours drinking at some dive bar. I noticed that I was being followed by some dude, probably recently out of Ryker's, and he started hassling me for money. First he asked for a dollar, and after I kept ignoring him he finally came clean and asked for five bucks so he could get a handjob."

When Ethan told me that, I was horrified not only by the prospect of a nickel handjob — to say nothing of the professional offering the courtesy in question — but hadn't a few years in the rest home given the moron a pretty good clue about taking matters into his own hands? Maybe it's like "the Stranger," namely where you cut off circulation to your hand until it falls asleep and when you get set to let fly with the population paste it feels like somebody else is doing it to you...