The Cripple

Posted by Lex Konrad in Dispatches | Jul 05, 2006

Coke whores notwithstanding, it’s not as if New Yorkers are cold or soulless or anything dramatic like that. It’s just that, in a city of endless diversions, no one can concentrate on anyone or anything for long.

Some have it worse than others. Like the girl with the cast on her arm. She keeps reaching into her purse for her cell phone and surreptitiously checking text messages from some phone stalker. I catch her doing it, then she apologizes, and then, minutes later, she does it again.

Remember the good old days, when people didn’t drag their virtual pals with them everywhere? Neither do I. Seems rather quaint now, like something out of A Prairie Home Companion.

It’s been said we despise in others those qualities we truly despise in ourselves. When, the very next night, I catch myself doing the very same thing—to my parents, no less—I realize that I too suffer from the New Yorker’s attention deficit disorder. I’ve become, in a sense, a social cripple, hobbling from one trivial interaction to the next, always off balance, unable or unwilling (I don’t know which) to steady myself in the moment.

But back to the girl. The cast frames her pert breasts nicely, exaggerating her cleavage. All the same, her arm must look ridiculous when she’s being done from behind, hanging there limply or else swaying to and fro. I fixate on this image and sort of chuckle to myself while she prattles on.

And so I ask her: “What’s it like being a cripple?”

As if I didn’t already know.

More: Dating | New York

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