My Public Face

I left work a litte early today; I had to make a very important phone call. I was walking down 37th, thinking about my day, about my evening -- nothing especially salient.

I was passing the church when I felt myself getting the full-body eye grope, the kind where you feel just a little dirty for being in someone's creepy sight line. He was a large man wearing a velour jumpsuit standing in front of a Catholic church. He had a moustache. Yeah, that guy.

"Whatchu lookin' so depressed fow-uh? Its sucha gawjus day!"

I flashed him a quick, tight smile and hastened on my way. In my wake, I heard, "Ey! That's bettuh."

Do I look so miserable walking down the street that complete strangers feel the need to comment on it? It happened when I was in college, too, as I walked across Washington Square.

I feel like I have a neutral public face, but apparently the look is funereal. Screw it -- for all people know, I was at a funeral.

I've been back from the Bahamas less than a week, and already this city is getting under my skin again. Maybe it's time for a change of scene.

Mrs. Butterworth's Conspiracy

This morning, when I got off the train at 34^th Street, the subway station was reeking of natural gas.

New Yorkers, as a rule, ignore everything, whether everything is a pan-handling woman wearing a potato sack, Crocs, and flaming-red dyed hair, or the smell of a gas leak in the morning. Even if they aren’t actively ignoring it, they’re not really commenting on it either; twitching a shoulder to let the pan-handler pass, and maybe sniffing the air curiously, but not sniffing deeply and then turning to fellow passers-by with widened eyes to confirm something smells ‘not quite right.’

So when I got off the train and caught my first whiff, I did what any New Yorker would; put my head down, my umbrella up, and trudged my way into the office, where I promptly forgot about it, assuming I was just smelling things, and no one else had noticed.

My co-workers started trickling in about 10, and Josh and Preeta started talking about it as they waited for their computers to fire up. This helpfully confirmed I’m not crazy and that my stress-addled brain is not manufacturing phantom trouble smells.

Josh checked the news wires, and yes, Con-Ed has indeed been fielding calls about a mysterious natural gas smell which has blanketed the entire city, but is particularly strong in mid town. No explanation as to what it is, at least not as of 10:30 this morning.

This unexplained smelly event reminded me of last year’s Maple Syrup Incident, wherein the city, its boroughs, and Jersey smelled exactly like someone had poured Mrs. Butterworth’s all over everything. The syruping of the city happened twice, and a Google search for ‘syrup smell NYC’ brings up plenty of articles about the incident itself, but nothing by way of explanation.

Josh has postulated it’s The Man, doing a clandestine test to see how chemical weapons might spread across the city. In the absence of any explanation, I’m a bit apt to agree with him. I don’t abide by most conspiracy theories, but I couldn’t find anything online to explain it. (As we all know, if you read it online, it’s true.)

This natural gas odor is far less pleasant than the maple syrup smell, but the syrup was far more creepy. What the hell makes an entire city smell like a diner, then goes away, and is never explained?

And today, is it possible that one gas leak could stink up the entire city? Or will this, too, fade into the annals of city lore?

“Remember that day when midtown smelled like gas?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“Whatever happened with that?”

“Dunno…”

Oooooh.