Fruit Compass

Yesterday was my birthday and I had the day off. It’s the way things should be.

The composite of events earns ribbons and medals as one of the best birthdays. My boyfriend and I spent the day in New York. All day calls were received. Two friends sang birthday wishes into my phone. My mom and my dad (who never ever, I mean never, sings) sang birthday wishes into my phone. My boyfriend gave me an elephant who sat on the dash all day.

In the morning I saw an excitable black man, ticketed for having an open container of vodka in public, stand before a judge in a New York courtroom. Since the brand of vodka was not noted in the charge, the case was dismissed. The excitable black man turned to face the audience, jacked-up smile, raised his arm and cheered to the crowd. The courtroom became a small spirited music club for that moment.

Around noon we drove to Heavenly Bodyworks to give our bodies peace by way of shiatsu massage. Coincidentally, around the corner there was a car shop named Heavenly Body Work. We visited the former, where tiny Asian girls pressed their hands into our muscles. Hands massaged my body for over an hour, pushed office knots out of my back, reshaped my keyboard hands, freed my neck. As my girl moved her hands down my arm and jiggled my hand loose, she said, "You have a beautiful body." I may shift into yellow-fevered lesbianism if this white heterosexual trip flops.

After our massage we drove to Long Island, where I transcended a major threshold and my very skin, new and piquant.

We made a wrong turn into shady territory on our way back to Manhattan. We stopped at a Wendy’s so I could pee. My eyes were crossing with need. When I tried the knob to the bathroom, there was a bloody screech from inside. I waited with pitched eyes. And waited. The screecher stood her ground, so we drove further out of our element to an even scarier KFC. When I emerged from the room of stench and tile my bladder still held stubbornly on to some of its jewels, rightly protective in ghetto-hades.

While I was in Wendy’s my boyfriend had gone across the street for drinks at Rite-Aid. He surprised me with an elephantine Heineken, which I opened and drank as we sailed without compass or map back to Manhattan.

At long last we landed. We parked outside my friend’s workplace as he descended the stairs after a long day, thick beard and all. We sat in a colorful bar for a few beers, reminiscing about past war trips and conjuring shamanistic tours, and then drove back to Jersey. Today I feel tired but new, like fruit.