Having recovered from typhoid or whatever cruelly unrelenting (and therefore, old world) ailment I contracted two weeks ago, I ventured out into the wonderful world of subways again last night.
It was a good night for money. I don't normally talk about that kinda thing on here, but man. It was good. And Lord knows I needed it. It was also a good night for some new songs; I busted out my new piece, "Son of Cain," and tried my hand at Dylan's 11-minute long epic, "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (which I think I had previously mentioned was the sole member of an elite recent playlist of mine). All in all, good things happened.
I even had an audience. Sure, she was homeless, drunk, loud, and had an appearance that compelled me to believe she was a stand-in for that Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. But she was supportive! She banged on her corner of the bench with her bottle of liquor shrouded in brown paper so vehemently that it drove away potential donors to my fine cause. So maybe it wasn't that cool.
Finally resigning myself to the fact that she'd never leave (although her surprisingly comprehensive memory of the lyrics to "Rocky Raccoon" was interesting in its own way), I gave up and took the 1 train up just one stop to 28th Street. Ah, yes. FIT fashion students are always patrolling this area in search of some forlorn busker to whom they can give away a sizable morsel of their trust fund. Or so I tend to think. It didn't work out quite like this.
But it wasn't awful, either. I met a guy who books singer/songwriters for a coffee house at Columbia...he told me they're looking pretty full for the fall, but there'd be space in the spring. I thanked him, and he told me he'd get in touch with me via myspace. He was wearing a Dylan hoodie, so he seemed respectable enough.
As I was packing up, a suspicious dude started swaggering his way towards me at quite a pace. I say suspicious, because he seemed to be one of those homeless guys who has headphones on and is carrying a CD player that's yellow and was probably made in 1995, and it's my guess that even if this guy was able to find batteries for it, not even SONY made discmen that had such a notable longevity. Discmen suck, it's a well-known fact. Plus, he had a sleeveless flannel shirt on that was unbuttoned (similar to what I wore in The Full Monty, if any of you saw that) which exposed his (again) suspiciously well-toned abs, and black jeans. That's just not a good sign. So I tried to pack up quick in case he had some nefarious designs to steal my motherlode or deface my capo or something. Instead, the guy gave me a dollar bill. I thanked him, and he held out his fist for me to reciprocate. I fist-hit him (what do you call this? punching?) back, but apparently you're not supposed to do it with your left hand, a matter that he made sure to relay to me for correction. I got him back with my right. He tipped his grungy baseball cap and sauntered off into the night, his suspiciously rock-hard abs cutting the air as he walked.
Talk about abnormal.
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