Monday, June 11, 2007

Nemesis 2: Electric Boogaloo

My other Nemesis and I played a game against each other for years. A game of will power… and it was a fight to the death from which I have recently realized that I have emerged victorious. My Nemesis was a guy who stood on St. Marks and flicked a flier at me.

Not just any flier though, this one was for a sketchy tattoo/piercing place called Andromeda and their flier was a crudely rendered and printed 3x5 piece of paper with drawings of the various piercings available and what they looked like on various parts of the body. I had seen them on the ground and they were so crudely done that it was quite difficult to figure out what part was what part. I was once walking by a group of about 12 year old girls who had gotten fliered by this man and I will never forget their conversation:

Girl 1: This ones your ears and that’s your bellybutton.
Girl 2: That’s nose and ewww… penis!
Girl 3: What’s that one?
Girl 1: That’s your p*ssy dumbass!

From the mouths of babes.

For years, every day I would walk this stretch of St. Marks, sometimes multiple times a day and a tattooed/heavily pierced guy outside of Andromeda on the sidewalk would flick the flier at me with an audible “Flick!”. I would ignore him and move on.

No matter how many times a day I walked by…”FLICK!” in front of me.

I came to loath this man, for surely after years of walking by he recognized me as from the neighborhood as I recognized him.

Thus began the battle of wills. Would I ever take the flier? Would he ever stop offering it to me? Would we ever say a word? How much longer would it take him to realize I would never take the flier?

Even if I were to get another tattoo or get a piercing, this became the last place on earth I would ever get it from, just for my desire to never give in to this man.

It is a petty Nemesis but it is a battle that managed to rage on in my heart and mind for 9 years.

9 long years of walking by this person multiple times a day and every time a “FLICK!”

I got to the point of where I would enter the block and spot him and a mantra would repeat in my head, “Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.”

I walked by today with hopes of getting a photo of my nemesis only to discover him not out there. Perhaps they have stopped and he no longer torments with his crappy fliers of smudgy piercing drawings. I can only hope, for now I fear that this is another Nemesis that I have vanquished, and I am now Nemesis free.

For now.

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