mmmmmc

“Loin Voids”

I couldn’t understand what he was
getting at.  Was he mentally displaced,
or an alien from outer space, or an app
arition that only I could see?  And what

was I hearing him say?  Loin voids?  That
sounded suggestive in an asexual sort of
way.  So of course I was intrigued and
looked around to see if I was the only

one catching this.  It wasn’t a busy time
of day, there were a few tourists, since
it was a time when most locals would
be working in offices in the Financial

District, where we had our encounter.
And then I noticed that I had been
paying so much attention to this,
whatever he or they or it was, I mean,

one doesn’t go around dressed in a
polka-dotted suit, with the dots being
seemingly every color on the palette—
dotted upon white—and NOT get noticed.  I 

looked down, I wasn’t dressed for work or 

anything, I was on one of my elongated non-

working periods, you know, the ones that got 

me here typing this story up to you with such

faux urgency?  I was wearing sneakers,
the most expensive pair of shoes I’d
ever worn, to the best of my knowledge,
picked them up the weekend previous at

some swank new hipster haven, it was
on Fillmore, as I recall?  So, expensive
sneaks.  “Loin voids!”  I felt like I was
doing research, but then, as I said, I

looked down, somewhere in the direction
of my own voided loins, but what my eyes
landed on cranked up within me a sort of
exasperation, and anger, and who was the

first...thing...upon which I’d take out this

anger?  My new friend of hollowed out sex. 

I’d just decided he wasn’t a figment of my
imagination but rather one of those Frisco

freaks who walk around at all hours relaying
to whomever will listen about something terribly
bad was about to happen.  And soon.  An alien 

invasion.  The next best earthquake.  That Jesus 

was here and would soon be floating home with 

his flock, and he’d be grinning and winking at

all of those of us who were left behind.  Some
such tale of twisted baloney.  And they were

the only ones here to give us a fair warning. 

As I said, while looking down, I glossed over my 

sexless middle section and noticed that my precious

new sneakers had sunk into wet concrete, up 

to well above the iconography on the canvas

or hide to the level with the laced portion of 

my shoelaces.  I let out a very feminine

yelp, or it could have been a full-fledged

girlie scream, trying to articulate the pain
I was feeling with words that would have
meant My Brand New Fucking Shoes!, but
me being me it came out more like I, Mandy,

Stuck in Poo!  And this of course was directed
at the San Francisco freak because I was
already blaming him for my somehow not
knowing I had passed a “Sidewalk not in

use” sign, as well as a, “Please cross here,”
as in to the other side of the small Financial
District alleyway the two of us were traversing,
or had been only moments before my shoes

got stuck in hardening concrete.  And after I
yelled whatever indecipherable nonsense I
had yelled at mister voided loins he patiently
gave me a look of dismay as if I had excusable

personal issues or something and said again
what he had already repeated maybe three
times at this point: “Hey mister! I said maybe
you should pay attention, learn words, can’t

you read?  That sidewalk’s been closed all week.
He was gone before I could apologize.  Or
before I had the wherewithal to do so.  And
I stood there long enough that I had to slip

my feet out of my new sneakers and walk
home sock-footed, all the way up the hill,
had blisters for weeks, all the while thinking
about what a Loin Void might be, if it would

have been something said, if those had actually
been the words directed by me by the Frisco
Freak who tried to save me and my sneakers
from the fresh concrete from across an alley,

as I failed to focus on what he was saying
in actuality when we crossed paths.  I kept
imagining that he’d always said what I thought
for sure I heard him say, that weird little pair

of words (he had to be from New York City, surely)
that kept me from paying attention to where I
was going and upon what my new shoes had
stepped upon and into.  Which is the story of my

life in a nutshell, I suppose.  Always too engaged
with my surroundings to pay attention to myself.
Always blaming others for my stupid booboos.  It’s
an expensive and an embarrassing problem, to say

the least, and one I’m sure I’ll take to my grave.  I’m

no comedian, but it just goes to show that sometimes 

nailing the punch line is a bitch, am I right?  But hell, how

would I ever know, having never been much of a comic?