28.1.05
crazies vs. sanies
I'm reading this book which is a memoir of a guy who lives in New York, and he's describing one scene when he's walking down Perry Street in the West Village, and a man in a wheelchair requests his help.He's old and frail looking, and he needs someone to help him get upstairs to his apartment. He can't use his feet, so he asks the author to carry him up the stairs. This is sounding really familiar, I think, because it happened to me. I was walking with two friends, and the same man asked us the same thing. It's an odd request in New York, because you never quite know who is out to con you. A meek, harmless looking person could potentially be a murderer. It's like confusing the investment banker barking into his phone via a headset with the homeless bum who happened to have found a particularly sharp outfit, talking to himself.
I always find the scary looking people to be interesting and rather nice to talk to. I usually immediately trust them. I have some sort of reverse paranoia.
Anyway, we go through the routine the author describes in the book. Locking the wheelchair to the outside of the house, lifting up the man in the wheelchair, and carrying him up four flights of stairs into his house. My friend carries him, and I open the door. I go into the apartment to put his mail where he wanted it.
The place is a cozy west village apartment, with lots of light, and photographs upon photographs on the walls. It's mostly shots of dancers, some young women and presumably him as a young man. I think of the career he had before he became ill, and how he must have been a dancer, or a dance company photographer, or something artistic, beautiful, and creative. The whole thing makes me rather sad. Sad, but still slightly suspicious.
Having read about it in the book, it's nice to know that he is not a psycho... meaning that we didn't just luck out that there were three of us, and the thugs hiding in his closet couldn't take all of us.
posted by a girl @ 05:15
1 Comments:
re: reverse paranoia. I call it "parannanoia". I made it up with our lovely Soviet ex-patriot friend on the phone the other day.