Plain
“Plain cheese pizza. Oh, that’s right, you’re not from New York, so you must be used to having salad and appetizers on your pizza.”
I am the king of ordinary. As I walk through Union Square on a 65 degree day, in my wide horizontal striped golf shirt and wrinkle-free black Dockers, I cannot help but sense how plain I am, how I just blend in, and how I work it to my advantage to observe life and women’s breasts. It’s a skill, I feel, to be five years behind in fashion, in order to remain a wall flower. No one looks in my direction here in New York, and it’s important to take comfort in the anonymity of the masses. As I stroll with my hands in my pockets, I see maybe two thousand individuals, unique snowflakes that become a colorless mass when staked on top of one another, and I move like a free electron, joining to another person with every gaze that locks with mine. I see the girl in big sunglasses sketching her own graphic designs, and the group of crack addicts sipping McDonald’s coffee, and the co-workers eating Whole Foods salad for lunch.
I come to the last page in my notepad, and I’ve decided to write my manifesto of ordinary so that I can look back at this point if I become unique just like the rest of them. I remember always being so plain that all I could do to scratch my own pine box of banality was to smoke cigarettes in non-smoking areas and spit like the Staten Islander I am, and I’d have to do it in towns like Wildwood and Buffalo just to stand out, because I’d always keep my mouth shut long enough for everyone not to notice that I had an accent taught to me by pizza makers, mechanics, longshoremen, teachers, cops, and firemen who raised roofs in their spare time. I stay silent to listen in case the guy or gal who knows the meaning of life whispers it to someone nearby on the train, at my office, in a bar, or in the park as I stroll by the benches and then the steps just below the general’s horse. Everyone else listens to their iPods on their lunches breaks spent alone.
