I fall in love five times a day. Minimum. On an active day I’m in love a hundred times or more. It’s the true real thing. It’s love at first sight and I have it all the time. I see beautiful girls day after day walking past me, thirty foot tall girls dry humping brick walls on Houston Street, gorgeous girls arching their backs on the sides of moving buses. Women, luscious women everywhere. And I always fall in love. Fashion’s greatest gift to mankind was making the thong an everyday underpant. I honor that moment with a cheer. Hooray! A tight pair of jeans is always supreme, but how can you reinvent sliced bread? Taking the back pockets off of girl pants comes close. Close? It’s f—ing brilliant. Unobstruct the view. And fashion, again, I thank you very much. Hooray! I see girls on the sidewalk walking by and I’m in love. Black girls, white girls, hispanic girls, mixed girls, every girl that turns my head. The other day I fell in love accidentally with a girl that must have been fourteen. It’s not my fault, blame the gifts that fashion gave us. I saw her from behind, saw her pants, and I was in love. But then she turned her baby face, and squealed at her friend with all her might, “Oh my god! I forgot to tell you! Darren fingered Carrie!” Oh MY god! Those damn missing pockets! Those damn misleading hips! Stupid! Stupid! Always look at the face before you fall in love! I could have been arrested for the the thoughts I was having, for my handling of those hips in my mind when I thought they were twenty-five. But I still thank you, fashion, though your gifts are proven dangerous.

At what age does a fart in the face cease to be rude? I’ll guess the age of the man who farted in my face to be seventy-five. Was the release beyond his control? I think it was beyond his caring. Sitting in the coffee shop, half reading the foolish newspaper that consistently delights and disgusts the fool in me, as of yet unperturbed by the table of elderly patrons talking (as is often the case for the elderly) in voices that seem to carry everywhere but the inner-ears of each other, my peaceful air was about to be broken by a rudely broken wind. I was alone in my paper, lost in the flavor of my coffee, when the chair of the man with his back to me pushed angrily against my table, sloshing coffee over my mug’s edge. The perpetrator of the rude chair slide then stood, ass level with my face, and farted. My head tilted like a confused dog’s, and the voice in my head asked, Did that man just fart in my face? In answer, through the seat of the baggy tan pants, came a second cheek-clapping fart. I looked to the farter’s three companions who continued their shouted conversation without interruption, as if face-farting was something they’d grown used to ignoring. And there I sat, the victim, believer in the fart as the oldest form of humor, but also believer that when not being used to pull chuckles from the audience all effort should be taken to squeeze that fart out silently. A silent fart, and I would have never known, perhaps only smelled the odor and wondered where it came from. I am the victim of a crime to humankind. Should the irritability of old age produce the entitlement to fart in the face of youth? I think not. If I had this life to live again, a chance to make up for my mistakes, when I came to this day with a chance to redeem it, I’d tell that old fart what I really think, then I’d fart in the face of his wife.

Am I a vulture, circling around that flesh, waiting for an opening through the other vultures to light at the edge of the meat and plunge my head in? Meeting girls can be tough, especially on a night out with the boys. Look at those two pretty things sitting on their bar stools drawing us in with magnetic tits and encouraging smiles. Look at our faces circling, swooping in with our witticisms. I’m circling too, waiting for an opening, hoping my subtle wit will hit its mark and earn me a bite. But it’s tight around those girls. I hover awhile, then circle away, circle higher and see the view from above. A bar can make a guy pretty pathetic. Bunch of vultures dunking our heads into giggling meat. (Who knows what these girls are in real life?) I move down the bar to a fresh beer and a few guys that are more interested in bullshitting than diving for nickels. When morning comes eventually, I’m alone in my bed, but that’s alright. I’m no vulture, I’m a lone hawk flying, eyes across the world. (Remember this, Rich, the next time the vultures start circling.)