Twenty Minutes on Bedford Avenue.

12:01 - 12:10
I buy an egg salad on a wheat bagel at Bagel Smith. As I wander around outside, trying (unsuccessfully) to eat it delicately, I start reading the breakfast menu of Bliss out of boredom. A short, bald, toothless man taps me on the shoulder and says I look familiar, but I'm not who he thought I was - his friend (who's a "fashion designer with her girlfriends and they make clothes and then model each others' clothes") - because her hair is longer. His name is Peter, and we converse until my sandwich is nothing but an egg-smeared piece of wax paper. He says I'm "adorable to talk to" asks "if I drink" and I tell him that "I hope to run into each other again sometime." He says, "If fate will have it, we will."

12:13 - 12:14:30
I walk into an eye doctor's office. The receptionist is unlike any other I have ever seen, even compared to the clientele of my Very Queeny eye boutique back in Chicago. Imagine if Eddy Munster grew his hair out to look like Priscilla Prestley. Draw in eyebrows with a thick, black, solid MS Paint brush. Dress him in tight black jeans, black boots, and a yellow . . . well, blouse. And give him a John Leguizamo circa To Wong Foo latino accent. Voila. The guy who told me the doctor will be back at 3 p.m.

12:15 - 12:21
I head towards home. In the span of these six minutes, a man in a red Subaru drives by three times, blasting a Dean Martin CD and singing along at the very, very top of his lungs. I laugh harder each time. I wonder why he keeps rounding the block.