What Is All This?

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Authors: Stephen Dixon
was that you have something on your face.”
    â€œMy nose.”
    â€œYes, your nose. You see, you knew. I didn’t have to tell you after all.”
    â€œDon’t I know. And excuse me for being so blunt, sir, but you’re mad.”
    â€œNo I’m not. I thought you were more observant than that. Can you take a little more honesty for one day? I’m feeling unusually content with myself talking with you here, not at all mad. That’s honesty. That’s an honest statement about my life, is what I’m saying, which you might or might not agree.”
    â€œI mean in the head, which you knew perfectly well. A screw loose. Daft. Disturbed. Your desperate need for attention perhaps. Your…but I’m not going to analyze you. Excuse me for even having said what I did, as your mental and emotional states are none of my business. And now I’m going. Stop me again and I will call the police, and after that, who knows? Maybe the courts will decide you belong in an asylum for a while, which I don’t think you’d like in the least. Now, have I made my point clear?”
    â€œGood and clear. If that was any indication how you make your points, then you make them very well.”
    I watch him go. I sit on the curb. I watch the cars and trucks go by. The vehicles. Buses, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters. People go by too. Baby carriages. Not along the street but across it and then on the sidewalk across the street. Lots go by. Dogs with their walkers, dogs without. A battery-powered wheelchair. Two girls on roller skates in the street. Only roller skaters I saw today on the street or off. Day goes by. Night comes and stops. I stay on the curb. I look at the lights of passing planes overhead. I look at the water running along the curb under my legs. A twig floats by. Half a walnut shell empty side up. Piece of paper. I pick it up and read it. It’s the label of a pickle jar. Spices, cucumber slices, vinegar, a preservative, and where it’s made and by which company and the kind of pickle it is. I drop it into the water and it floats away. Someone must have opened a fire hydrant nearby.
    A dog off its leash stops and sniffs the parking meter pole I’ve been using as a back rest. I shoo it away. It comes back. I say “Scat.” It sniffs the pole some more and lifts its leg. I say “Get out of here, beat it, scram,” and raise my hand.
    â€œTouch that dog and you’re in trouble,” a man holding a leash says.
    â€œHe your dog?”
    â€œWhether he is or isn’t, just say I don’t see anyone beating on dogs.”
    â€œIf he’s your dog, tell me, so I can ask you to call him away.”
    â€œWhy? The pole’s public. On a public sidewalk alongside a public street. So that dog has as much right to the pole as you.”
    â€œAny sensible person knows people have more rights than dogs. Just the word ‘public,’ for instance, will tell you that. From publicus, pubes, populus, people, people, not that one should expect anyone else to know that.”
    â€œOkay. Maybe some people have more rights than dogs. But for you, I don’t think so.”
    â€œWhatever you say. But I don’t want your dog, if he is your dog—just this dog then—stepping a step nearer to me and lifting his leg again, or I’ll summon the police and have it taken away. There’s the street for what a dog has to do, not the sidewalk or against a building wall or fire hydrant or parking meter pole, and certainly not against me.”
    He raises his finger in a curse sign and walks away. The dog follows, does its duty against a parking meter pole a few feet away. Does its other duty on the sidewalk a few feet past that. The man inspects it, hooks the leash on the dog’s collar, and they leave. I continue to sit. Those were the only words I said to anyone or were said to me since I saw that other man on the street and tried to speak

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