Food Day in Brooklyn - 1

We went with the others across the park, through the fields and the woods, against an equal current of those returning. It was a bright-blue day, hot. The sort of day when nothing can possibly go wrong.

I scrutinized the faces of those passing us. Some bore wry expressions. Others seemed perfectly content. But it was hard to tell the former from the latter. We continued.

I thought I heard fragments of dejected speech. Almost mocking in tone.

When we arrived the line was hundreds long and wound along the semis parked on the service road. Over the fence and beyond a wall of trees were assembled the multitudes. You couldn’t see them yet. No music was audible at the moment. But you could tell they were there.

The line was moving, but not so fast that you could see it move. It moved like a minute hand. Like the burn of a cigarette.

We commented on the youthfulness of the crowd.

I spotted Joe and Maya walking our way down the line.

“It’s a complete disaster,” proclaimed Joe, smiling faintly. Maya concurred.

They were just describing the scene—long lines for everything, no way to get a drink—when we came upon a woman on her hands and knees, vomiting spasmodically onto the pavement. A man—her man?—stood a few paces away, discussing the matter with a cop. We were struck by his lack of regard for her immediate needs—don’t you hold her hair back when she’s puking? Tell her it’ll be all right?

We parted ways with Joe and Maya, telling them we wanted to go in just to see.

Upon entry we were each handed two packs of Orbit chewing gum. Spearmint and peppermint. The gum lady’s emphatic gestures, her vendor’s tray packed with rows of cellophaned packs, her saccharine little getup—these all belied the scene we were to witness.

IMO

One woman is walking away from the kitchen area, ending a conversation with another who’s lingering by the microwave, watching her lunch rotate in the amber light.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss!” she says over her shoulder. “In my opinion.”

Buzz the Buzzer and They'll Buzz You In

In the rush-hour crowd at the 14th Street station this morning I wheeled Sophia to the emergency door and found it locked. Usually it gives way like a magnet separating. Sounds the alarm.

“Buzz the buzzer,” a portly black woman beside me said. “And they’ll buzz you in.”

I pressed the button and peered through the bars at the woman in the booth. She gave a little glare and I felt the door release.

TROOPS

The walk, six miles each way, was a tiring slog

Sugar in the Raw: A Very Short Play About Something I Saw Today

CHARACTERS

Man: A man in his late thirties.
Woman: A woman in her late thirties.

TIME

The present.

SCENE

The kitchen of a corporate office. The Woman is stirring a cup of tea on the counter, by a rack displaying a colorful variety of sweetener packets. A cup of coffee and a gallon of milk sit on the counter a few feet away. A few feet farther still, the Man stands holding a second gallon of milk which he has just removed from the refrigerator.

Man (holding the milk and staring at the other milk on the counter): I already took out milk.

Woman: Hmm?

Man: What am I doing? I already have milk. I am losing my mind. (Opens the fridge and puts the second milk back on its shelf.) Donna, can you get me one of those Sugars in the Raw?

Woman: Sugar in the Raw?

Man (closing the refrigerator door): Um-hmm.

Woman (as she hands the Man a packet of Sugar in the Raw): My cousin’s husband designed the logo for this.

Man: Sugar in the—?

Woman: Raw. Yup.

Man: Raw. Wow.

TROOPS

When he was 19, in 1926

TROOPS

remained crouched behind some leafless bushes

TROOPS

Tom stared into his empty glass

TROOPS

You spend too much

Q&A: Where You Can Find Me

Q: Where can I find you?

A: You can find me down the hall. Past the Pre-Action Valve Room. Pre-Action Valve. Past Rocco’s office. Past Rico’s.

Q: Past Rico’s office? Past Rocco’s office?

A: Rocco’s, then Rico’s. Go past Rocco’s. Go past Rico’s.

Q: And then the Pre-Action Valve Room?

A: Pre-Action Valve comes first. Pre-Action, Rocco, Rico.

Q: And then where are you?

A: I’m at the end of the hall.

What Do You Remember?

I remember the old College Restaurant, or the Campus Restaurant. Whatever it was called. Downstairs and full of smoke. A crowded forest of corduroyed legs.

I remember going to her German class. The teacher scary. Jet-black hair tied back. Wire frames and bright red lipstick. I might be making this up. We watched a slide show. Rolling Bavarian countryside.

And then what happened?

I don't know. We went home. I can only imagine we went home.

TROOPS

Toward the apex

Jesus, Like I'm Gonna Do That

It was one of those stations where you still get reception, if you’re not too far from the stairs. Late, late at night. A woman paced near me, her phone clutched to her ear. This is what I overheard her say:

I still want to see you and I'm so pissed right now.

I'm an honest person!

Wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait a minute wait wait wait wait wait wait wait—

Jesus, like I'm gonna do that.

Drugs I've Worked On So Far

Aciphex
Activase
Aranesp
Arestin
Arixtra
Asmanex
Avastin
BeneFix
Boost
Botox
Brilinta
Celebrex
Copaxone
Dificid
Elaprase
Fanapt
Flector Patch
Flumist
Gardasil
Geodon
Gilenya
Humira
Isentress
Juvéderm
Levemir
Lucentis
Lyrica
Multaq
NovoLog
NuvaRing
ParaGard
PegIntron
Picato
Pneumovax 23
Pradaxa
Procrit
Rituxan
Saflutan/Zioptan
Saphris
Seroquel
Silenor
Sutent
Tamiflu
Tobi
Torisel
Tresiba
Victoza
Viramune
Xolair
Xyntha
Zelboraf
Zoely
Zostavax
Zyvox

TROOPS

The effect of hegemonic masculinities on health decisions is

People are signing on in droves

Back to the lake

3 ways to spring into fun

TROOPS

A dense thicket of brambles

Certain older women regress to infancy in their style of dress. Soft, stretchy blue pants with giant pink flowers; blouses adorned with pretty little filigrees or teddy bears, puppy dogs or flowers. It’s as though they are signaling to the world their return to innocence, their abandonment of adult sexuality, and foreshadowing their eventual senility and dependence—the opposite of motherhood.

I had just reached the bus stop on 42nd Street and Bryant Park when a cacophonous throng of high school kids marched by. Then there seemed to be two groups—the first headed east, the other west. Maybe a larger group had just divided. They were laughing, jostling each other, gossiping without restraint—it was a parade of raw, exuberant youth; beautiful, unself-aware. I peered at them, trying to understand where they came from and where they might be going.

A thick-set man in his late forties paced jerkily at the stop. His patchy, long, blond curls were matted to the side of his head. He wore a multicolored leather jacket.

“Pack a fuckin’ assholes!” he shouted.

The boys and girls continued to stream by, oblivious. The man turned on his heels and stomped around by the curb, looking over his shoulder.

“That’s a pack a fuckin’ assholes!”

The Enterprise - 38

The ax fell along the lines of seniority for the most part. Jared the IT guy, ingenuous, assiduously business casual, was out on his ass after a tenure of two weeks. Hippie Allison was gone. Newspaper Lisa. My department lost Dave, the assistant graphic artist. He had recently purchased a top-of-the-line Mac PowerBook G4, all sleek aluminum, sinking an entire paycheck and the better part of another, and today he folded the thing back up, gathered up his earbuds and skulked away with a queasy look on his face.

I was among the lucky ones.

The following day Sam drifted in at around noon bearing a large cardboard box which he plonked down on one of the recently vacated polished-steel desks in the middle of the room.

“Everyone gather ‘round, OK? Everyone take a break from what they’re doing for a minute? Please?”

We assembled, bleary-eyed but curious.

“I just want to let everyone here know something, OK? This is the group,” Sam declared, and let his statement hang in the air a moment.

“This is the group! You guys are the guys I want to take into battle We’ve come a long way. We still have a long, long way to go. Clearly we have a ways to go,” he continued, smiling broadly. “But this is the group that’s going to get there. I can feel it!”

Some smiled, a bit sheepishly. It was tempting to believe what Sam was saying. A cough or two were heard from among the throng. I stood with my arms crossed, shifting foot-to-foot.

“And I want to mark this occasion with a gift. From me to each of you,” he continued, cutting open the box with a scissors blade. He lifted the flaps and reached in to retrieve two T-shirts off the top, which he then held aloft.

“Everyone gets a shirt!” Sam exclaimed triumphantly.

We gazed at the silkscreened design and text, each of us seeing, reading, trying to understand. There was a picture of our beloved robot, the Product’s avatar, the very same one Bob had drawn for the blastoff site and for all our marketing materials since, our support site, the brochures and the leave-behinds, the novelty stickers, the downloadable wallpaper, the coffee mugs and shot glasses and messenger bags and all the other merchandise that had been produced and distributed to employees and had found its way to their boyfriends, girlfriends, mothers and fathers. In this version he—he always seemed to be a he—bore three stripes of face paint, a feather in his hair, and a rudimentary spear in his hand. He stood on an unmolested, paradisiacal beach, palm trees heavy with coconuts. The text curved below him in a sort of Polynesian tiki-bar font. It read:

SURVIVOR: INTRACTO 2001

The Time Report

Each week someone from HR sends out a mass email listing all those who have not submitted their billable hours in a timely fashion. If you’ve been on the list two weeks in a row, your name goes up in red.

I scan the email for names of people I might know. For my own name. Even though I haven’t been delinquent. You see a list with names on it in red, you check for yours.

It’s long enough so you have to scroll—maybe fifty or sixty names, from practically every department of every agency. The red ones glow with shame. What dramas lie behind them? What pathologies, what turmoil? What does it take to put a name up on the list in red? Divorce? Mental breakdown? Drug addiction?

Probably nothing. But you never know.