Magnesium, cholesterol medicine interactions affecting sleep and sleep data collected by a new ring she’s wearing. Reviewing data from last night and recent trends in an app on her phone, which now her friend is holding, scrolling through and remarking, comparing with her own sleep issues while the phone’s owner—the one with the ring—fixes her coffee. Cream with two spoonfuls of sugar.
A man outside the cafe I’m sitting in stops on the path through the small park outside. He must be feeling himself today because he’s been photographing himself with his phone for the past five minutes. Longer.
Holding his phone as far as his limbs allow, and cocking it at an artful angle in his hand. Shot after shot. From behind him I can only faintly see his expression change when the muscles in his jaw flex. Everything flexing.
I think for a moment of recording him, of sharing it with a friend or publishing it online to mock his narcissism. But I think too of the way self portraiture is a form of self love. If your appearance makes you feel good surely there’s no harm in capturing it when not at the expense of others. But the immodesty too. The issue’s unsettled.
He sets his backpack down and gently rests the phone against it on the ground. Touching the phone as little as possible for fear of knocking it over, marring the pristine glass housing. He taps a button on the screen to activate a timer. He steps back then, unsure of the phone’s stability. He kneels, either posing or too nervous with the phone precarious out of his reach.
Crossing his arms now, he strikes a new pose. Suddenly projecting confidence. Dramatic change, the contrast jarring.
People with kids are a monolith: Robbed of taste by circumstance, they can no longer engage the zeitgeist. They are occupied by their strollers and giant cars full of crayons and Cheerios, and therefore ignorant to culture, fashion, and habitat. They are broken people, devoid of personality and potential.
Unlike other groups, no special criteria must be satisfied to make friends among parents. All they require for kinship is the feeling of shared experience: people they can relate to over their unknowable struggle.
People with kids describe this exclusive condition with poetic hyperbole: agony of this, ecstasy of that; short years of long days. Your heart living outside your body.
All this grandstanding feeds parents’ insufferable air of superiority. They think they’re doing something noble with their lives, and everyone else is wasting theirs.
Pocket Dispatch from Shit Fountain
When we bought our first apartment we explored the neighborhood more thoroughly, no longer as a place we liked but as a place to which we now laid some claim. Through this process we came to know Shit Fountain, a sculpture of an impossibly large coil of dog feces, maybe two-and-a-half feet in diameter, shiny and wet from the water babbling from its tip, and mounted on a pedestal about four feet tall.
The artist’s statement was directed at neighborhood dog owners who neglect to clean up after their pets, imperiling floor mats and welcome rugs everywhere. Ours is a shoe-free household, but even the worn carpet of our building’s staircase has fallen victim to the violent laziness of certain local dogspeople.
I found it tasteless. When Shit Fountain first appeared on mapping apps, I flagged its name for editing when its name wasn’t censored. But its presence there also made it a landmark we used to help guests and delivery drivers find our apartment. Despite my resentment, Shit Fountain served me.
And even in my disdain for it, I never hoped it would be removed. Censorship of the work itself never seemed appropriate. Even the vulgar name only bothered me contextually, like when my daughter learned to read well enough to ask what it meant.
Whatever my feelings, Shit Fountain remains an enduring fixture, and I have come to appreciate it as political art and a fine tip on the neighborhood’s edge.
Still, I was surprised Shit Fountain grew on me. I realized it one Sunday afternoon when I was looking for parking and found a spot in front of it, where a group of brunch revelers were posing for photos with it. This was typical, but I was surprised to see one of them climbing the fountain.
He planted a foot on the edge of the pedestal, braced his weight with a hand on another sculpture and placed his feet on two edges of the fountain’s pedestal. Then he squatted so as to appear to have produced the coil himself. He grinned at the friend taking his photo and gave a thumbs up.
For some reason I was offended by this. Although I’d watched tourists pose stupidly in front of Shit Fountain for years, something about this guy bruised my pride in our neighborhood, which harbors the artist who created it. Or my pride in the artist, who harbors our neighborhood.
I parked far, leaving more than a foot between my tires and the curb. Not my best work, and an embarrassment of another kind to deal with later. Then I threw open the car door.
“Hey, I know it’s super funny to take your picture with it like that,” I said, dragging out “super” for effect. “But it’s still a piece of art, and you can treat it with respect.”
The man’s eyes widened, and his friends turned to look as he hopped down.
“Sorry,” he said.
I ignored him and took two bags out of my trunk, locked the car, and walked off toward my apartment.
Fucking kids.