He was trying to convince me that BLACKPINK was going to prevail over NewJeans and XG, and that revenue was the sole arbiter of success in this world — clearly a nonsensical argument.

“You don’t understand what you’re talking about. My ult biases are way more talented. They’re better singers, dancers; they have better producers. Everything. By every objective and meritocratic standard, they are simply superior.”

Rather than lower the volume, he instead raised his own:

“Bro, no offense, but when it comes to international pop and content-driven commerce, you’re out of your depth in a debate with me.”

The ruffage and rocks of upstate rushed by as we headed south back towards the city following our $2,000 meal at Blue Hill Farm. Beyond our windows the only sound the forest could hear was the Doppler-affected, honey-sweet harmony of “Coca-Cola Mashita”.

I reached over to lower the volume. I didn’t like that particular chorus much anyway. “Alright, explain it to me, smart guy.”

“It’s really quite simple,” he began. “Music today is an arms race. It’s all about distribution, and today, distribution costs are exponentially more complex than they previously were. While the physical act of pressing a record and shipping it is no longer relevant, the necessary expenditure to perfectly craft not just a one-off but repeated hits requires immense amounts of capital and quite frankly the use of creative talent as little more than human batteries to be exhausted and discarded as though of Matrix-like manufacture. That’s just the business of music, my dude.”

As though to celebrate, he chuckled, re-raised the volume, and lowered the gas pedal — the stream of music and scenery blurring into the background further.

“But no dude! That’s my whole point! I get it! This isn’t about the talent, even though XG and NewJeans are so obviously more talented. It’s also about the money. These are perfectly manufactured products!”

Cap smirked. “Oh?”, invited his pray tell.

“XG in particular represents a critical moment of East Asian unison. Think about it like this: why has America dominated for so long? Yes, there’s geography and the war and history as law being written by the winners, but there’s a bigger core reason why that power has remained. America’s biggest export, and in fact its biggest armament, actually isn’t weapons. Do you know what it is, smart guy?”

Cap’s smirk turned a full smile as the car’s speed further rose alongside the corners of his mouth.

“That’s fucking right dude. Culture! America is the greatest cultural appropriation, re-packaging, pricing, and distribution engine in the history of humanity. Christianity is straight shook for dropping to second place in driving worshipper acquisition at these conversion rates!”

Cap threw his head back as the car jerked forward suddenly, his uncontrolled body laugh extending straight down to his foot. My argument followed.

“You see, America is always at its best when it has an ‘Other’ to fight. It’s only when there’s no clear Other that threatens our way of life that we turn our fight inwards. So too is true for the big three East Asian dominants: Korea, Japan, and mainland China.”

I continued, breathless and unaware.

“People think America has divide and racism, but few of us have been truly exposed to the level of hate that exists between Korea, Japan, and China — and that hate has history. The idea of those cultures joining forces is almost unheard of. That is, until now.”

“All this talk of recession and the war in Ukraine and the energy and climate crises and the shifting of world currency away from the US dollar — all of that pails in comparison to what’s really going on, and bro, for real, XG is at the center of it all.”

I was lost in my ego, the car’s pace increasing to keep pace with the delivery of my argument.

“The only way that China is going to truly win the coming war for the east is not through hard power but soft, and with XG, you have the first time in history that a Japanese-born, Korean-bred and trained, and Chinese-funded girl group is being deliberately manufactured to deliver a globally-appealing product. And their distribution is using all of Reels, Shorts, and TikTok to generate a type of manufactured virality that would put even the tinfoiler’s whole Covid conspiracy to shame! It’s fucking genius, bro. You don’t understand.”

“You want to talk cultural content as commerce, distributed dominance, and soft politick genius? Well, XG isn’t just a girl group: they’re the inflection point, an international shift in the very geopolitical socioeconomic fabric of our fucking species. And it’s fucking genius! That’s why they’re going to win. The game is rigged, bro. Deadass!”

Capitalism turned to me and looked me dead in the eye with an even more voracious grin. His satisfied eyes were smug with the truth of my obsession, and his gaze remained unbroken as the broken bridge rail splintered and disappeared above and behind us.

Even in the dark of cold river water, his sneer was static as our car and my soul sank one last time in realization of my curse, before and beyond.

No Cap was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

She’s sitting across from me right now. Jet black short hair. Harsh cheeks. Dark liner. Green army jacket. You know the type. She’s on her Lindsay Weir trip, and I’m loving every second of it.

Freaks and Geeks was such an underrated show. I wonder if she’d be into it, too. The good stuff always ends too soon.

She’s curled, knees up, on the wooden bench that sits along the coffee shop’s warmth-fogged glass: Americano-to-go in one hand, crumpled thrice-read copy of “Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit” in the other. The maple tree behind her is just beginning to blossom for the season, small buds as brightly colored as her pink lips.

I’m trying to study her but I think I’m doing so with all the subtlety of a busker in 14th Street station.

She looks like she didn’t go out last night. Just my type. My mind is racing. I’m actively concocting an entire Tolkien-tome’s worth of lore about her and her past. She prolly works at Buffalo Exchange, but not in a sad way. She loves fashion but the old stuff. She has an LP collection and a record player, inclusive of Nat King Cole and Bobby Caldwell but also Sza. She’s prolly a Capricorn.

Oh no. She just looked at me. Fuck. Did she notice that I was staring at her?

Did she clue into the fact that I was about to shift from writing the backstory to the active plot line wherein we catch eyes and the book drops from her hand into the formed puddle below her from the tears of joy she cries in that moment when she realizes she too has met another Milhouse?

Did she too in this moment recall Murakami’s “On Meeting The 100% Perfect Girl?” and realize that we once knew each other and we vowed to forget each other and our eternal love as a test to prove that, if it was truly eternal, we would again find one another, years and lives later, and once again return to that abyssal wash of sheer euphoria?

Oh. No. She was looking at a cute dog that just barked behind me. I guess that moment we just shared was mine and mine alone.

I wonder if she’s waiting for someone. She looks comfortable as she’s turning the pages. I hope she’s lonely. No, well, okay. I don’t mean that. I just want to marathon a show I don’t care about with her three blankets and two chip bags deep, you know?

The cuffs on her tan slacks are so neatly folded, sitting there all high and mighty like a rich preppy Upper East Side Dalton School fuck, but like a cool one because they’re resting on top of her black-and-white Jordan 1s.

This is a movie.

I gotta say something. Maybe if I just clear my throat and then awkwardly smile. Let me try that.

Errr. Nope. She looked then looked away.

This is the end.

Wait. Did she just double take? DID SHE JUST SMILE AT ME? IS THIS THE SERIES FINALE?!

Oh no. She’s getting up. She’s walking away! This is it. I have to do something.

I watch as she turns the corner, fleeing away from me and toward the swarming mass of the city’s bodies and cars and buildings and adventures and romances and tragedies, just another apparition in the crowd.

She probably wouldn’t have been into a girl like me anyway.

Avenue C was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“You know, Henry, sometimes, I just don’t get it.”

Henry turned to him with confusion, tilting his head just enough to prompt John’s continued exposition.

“I’m no spring chicken. I’ve been around. I’ve watched this city grow. I’ve watched this city prosper. I saw the planes hit the buildings. I saw the projects become condos. I seen it all.”

His cigarette drew limper still after another agitated drag.

“This is my city, ya know? And I’ve been good to her. But this fahkin’ bitch, I tell ya, she hasn’t been any good to me. I help this old lady with her bags? What’s my reward? She thinks I’m tryin’ to steal from her and smacks me with ‘er fahkin’ purse.”

Henry fidgeted, discomforted by John’s hostility. He listened on.

“I’ve worked hard. Spent all my good years working for the man, doing the best I could, tryin’ do right by the ‘game’. And now what? Bunch of fahkin’ exec jag-offs got rich, bunch more paper-pushin’ ‘directors’ got their fake news promotions and their little houses out in the boroughs, and now I’m out on my ass, lookin’ for another gig just to get a fahkin’ chopped cheese from the bodega. Poverty don’t take me, heart prolly will.”

Another cigarette drag by one. Another wince by the other.

“Why do we do this, man? Why the fuck do we waste our lives workin’ for someone else to get rich? This fahkin’ system sucks, you know. We’re just scurrying around trying to get some cheddah. This can’t be all there is. It’s garbage. There’s so much cheese in this city, why can’t I get a little taste, you know?”

The two sat quiet a moment, before John righted himself and apologized:

“This fahkin’ rat race just really gets to me, you know?”

Henry, not one to dwell, remained quiet. The rat then scurried away.

Rat Race was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Perched upon the windowsill, plain in sight to see, I sat and looked out the window and past the balcony.

Parched was I of mouth and tongue that I could scarcely be, and yet I sat and beckoned him, glowing oh so pleasantly.

I curse the pane that you slid down which kept you, from I, away; oh, how I longed myself through the glass with bounty of dismay!

Yet there he sat, fat on mat, captive mind somehow shackle-free of the obligation he still has to fucking water me.

Neglect was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“So, a cow, chicken, and a pig walk into a bar, right. They sit at the bar next to each other in a row. The bartender comes up and serves them, and as he does, he asks each about themselves.”

“The cow, he asks, ‘so whadya do for a living?’”

“‘I make milk.’”

“The chicken, same question.”

“‘I lay eggs.’”

“As he turns to the pig, the pig loosens his collar and sighs loudly in anticipation of the question that goes unspoken.”

“‘Let’s just say, I bring home the bacon.’”

Smiling from ear to ear, Dad turned to the room and awaited the thunderous applause. His one bedroom held its tongue, still and empty.

Dad Joke was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So stood Times Square: empty but for the few locals in transit as attention-starved ads sheened and shimmered like the brilliant stars above a desert night in desperate competition for the attention of an audience below.

The odd native tourist-in-own-town stopped for a fleeting moment with smartphone in hand to memorialize what may be a similarly-fleeting emptiness.

The slow strut of cars was scarcely noise enough to smother the hum of the still-running subterranean subway, from which speaker voice could be heard on surface above.

Yet, loudest was a sound that stood out starkly like the crackles of a record playing: the gentle twanging dance of a guitar’s string strummed with studied fingers.

Like the Square, so too stood the Naked Cowboy, singing his song for no one to hear: tip jar below as empty as his silent stare ahead, eyes set past the empty streets to the better summers beyond and behind.

Naked was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s 8:10 pm. I’m sitting at my desk, staring out the window. I really like this song. I really like the view. I really don’t use the TV. I really tire of this place. I really hate working late. I really don’t know what I’m doing with my life.

This morning, I studied Literature. I must’ve read the same paragraph a thousand times over. Fatigue had set into my eyes. You know the type: that burning hot singe from cornea to corner, where you blink in a panic to relieve the pain only to find yourself looking at the word “what” on the page before you as you are suddenly rendered immediately and completely illiterate in that brief lid-borne dark respite, scarcely comprehending how such arbitrary scratchings on a page and guttural sounds forced from gullet could amount to a word virtually impossible to define yet so permanently trapped in the gutter of our collective understanding.

I don’t even remember what I was reading. “Literature”, I guess. The book was about nothing.

I’ve taken on a new job recently which has taken me away from my studies. You know how it goes. I had to pay the rent.

And, of course, the art of love is as expensive as the love of art.

Eh, she wouldn’t like that I’m saying that. Then again, she’s herself trapped in her own studying, in her own room with her own music and her own thoughts. She’s surely longing for that same change of scenery. She’s working harder to get it, though. Tiny girls are the toughest.

Work is fine. I make an appearance Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays — I’m trying to balance the studying and the girl with the dreams and the do’s and do not’s. I don’t know how those Japanese life simulator video game players do this. I’m exhausted.

I don’t know what’s happened with my friends. Fuckers are probably doing stupid shit; playing video games or chasing tail or smoking cigarettes idly on the corner of the town they’d never mustered the courage to leave.

I haven’t had time to see them. I have to keep up with the studies, and the work shifts, and batting away the stubborn and sinking feeling like all of this is sending me no place in particular.

I should be going to the gym more. My trainer keeps telling me I’m making progress, but to be honest, I still can’t do a pull-up on that pair of bars at the park. I guess I need to just stick with it.

Ah, to hell with it. We’re all going to the same stop on the subway, when it’s all said and done. What good is there in moving to the first car?

I guess I’ll play my game before bed. I need an escape. And so are my nights: I plop myself down on the bed and pick up the controller as I drift through the screen and back into that same seat, at the same time, staring out that same window with the same doubts.

It’s funny how art imitates life.

Ringo Ishikawa was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I happened to uncover some of my old writing, and re-reading it has been very fulfilling. It’s interesting to see how far one has come, and I’m fortunate enough to have a huge portal into a younger me.

As I can, I’m going to post some of the more intruging old pieces. This one is from October 24, 2006, when I was working in Scarborough during a co-op term. (N.b., I’ve deliberately left the story unedited. Some of the original language may be offensive.)

Sometimes, the ironies I encounter in my life seem so ridiculously well placed that I’m almost tempted to believe in fate. Normally I don’t feel that everyone’s “path” is mapped out by some greater power, but rather we’re all meant to experience X amount of a given life event: disappointment, victory, defeat, love, etc. However, on days like today, it’s hard to ignore the coincidences that life always seems to manifest.

What am I talking about, you question? Well, today was my 22nd birthday, and it was today that I finally realized how “real” life is in the fair city of Toronto. I know that sounds strange, but it was only today that I really realized where I am in the grand scheme of things and how the world really is. What’s strange is that my day — and perhaps even my year — was defined by a single solitary passing of about 30 seconds or so on the bus ride home today. The event which I am referring to was over before I could even appreciate what had happened, and yet the reprecussions of what happened would leave me thinking about so much.

But enough explanation: on with the story.

A somber, lonely and long day of work was coming to a close. I’d accomplished a pretty fair amount during my time at the TDSB today, and so I was feeling fairly good as I storde out of the office and into the Sun. Though the day was coming to an end, I couldn’t help but marvel at how long it had been. It seemed like years ago that I woke up at 6 am and headed to the GO Train. It seemed like ages ago that I sat in Union awaiting the next ride east at the hands of the cancelled 7:30 train. But, all this thought was for not: the day was over and I was heading home.

As I headed into the Scarborough RT station, flashing my pass to the attendant, I noticed a young slender girl in front of me. Her body and manner seemed young, but her face appeared old and tarnished with the apparent wear that her life wrought upon her.

She proceeded down the stairs in front of me, and continued to shadow my path right up to the very bus stop where I needed to wait. We stood together, in silence, and we boarded together, seperately. I sat on one end of the three-person bench, she on the other. I surveyed the bus, as I tend to do, and my eyes fell upon hers: a smile was shared and then instantly hidden again in the frown of every-day life.

As it does most days, the bus began rolling along the urban rails of the Scarborough mid-town. People returned to their cell phones and their conversations, drowning out my thoughts. I occasionally decide to head to the station without my music on — days that I want to play the DS on the train, I tend to forego the music for battery life, and with my recent acquiring of Contact, I decided today would be such a day. Typically, this proves to be a bad decision, as the bus quickly fills with the sounds of angsty teenagers, angry and eager-to-impress urban trogldytes and the typical array of “bus characters”.

Strangely, none of the typical characters were there: the guy who picks up the trash on the bus, the crazy old man who talks to himself, the young asian kid who sells chronic over the phone as though he was making legitimate business calls, the old brown woman who absolutely cannot stand and will go out of her way to find a seat at the front of the bus, the strange skinny tall white woman who stands at the front of the bus and bottlenecks the incoming passenger traffic regardless of how many stops she has to go, the slutty high-school chica who comes on to a different prepubescent boy with each ride — all were absent on this day.

Indeed, it seemed that today’s ride would be the most dull and quick trip of the year. For almost the entire trip, the ride was relatively easy and I remained positioned a seat down from the worn girl.

Eventually, the bus came to the biggest stop on the circut: Bellamy and Ellesmere. Typically a very large transfer point for people getting on and off, only one person boarded: a mid-20s asian thug with a small mp3 player hanging from his neck and an all-around rugged and dishelved appearance. I wouldn’t have paid any special attention to him were it not for the fact that he broke the cardinal rule of male bus-goers: he sat in the middle seat between the girl and I, thus rendering me — and surely himself — uncomfortable.

Little did I know that his intentions were to do just that, very purposefully.

Within moments of the bus’ resumed driving, the man turned to the girl and quickly looked her over. As he was within earshot, I could hear everythign he was saying — despite the fact that he was doing his best to speak privately to the girl (regardless of the current surroundings). He began talking to her, and naturally I began ease-dropping. They hadn’t shown any signs of acknowledgement of each other before he sat down, so I wondered what the story was. Given the relatively impersonal tone that their conversation took to begin, I concluded that he was merely trying to woo her with his asian thug charm.

I was dead wrong.

After a few short sentences of conversation, I quickly realized that their talk had taken a turn for the worse. His mumbling became much less audible, until he uttered the sentence that would stick in my head for the rest of the day.

He looked at her straight in the eye and said, without flinching or moving:

“I’m going to fucking kill you and there isn’t a damn thing you or anyone can do to stop me.”

At first, I did a mental double-take. Did he really just say that? Was it a joke? Are they friends and he’s just playing around? When I saw her face, though, every question was answered. Tears piled up along the rims of her eyelids, and a gush was ready to burst the weak damn of her frail composition. Her eyes hinted with a slight touch of disbelief and she looked towards the bus driver, as though she was looking for a safety net.

The asian was quick to remove any such luxury from her mind, though, as he looked towards the bus driver and scoffed, “He won’t be able to stop me. It’ll be done before anyone notices.”

He then paused and looked towards a big white gangster-looking guy in an Echo jacket towards the front of the bus, only to remark to her “Even that big cracker won’t be able to stop me.”

At this point, I’d heard and comprehended the entire situation, and I felt that same feeling as I did oh so long agao when the slipper-criminal alerted the bus Ian and I were on that he was robbing us. A surge of adrenaline and a rush of quick planning. Should I say something? No, it isn’t my place. Yea, but that’s not right. And if he has a knife, or a gun? I really doubt that he does. Well, say you say something and a fight starts; good luck taking this bus unscathed for the rest of the semester — my mind was a volley of dedication and courage, fright and despair.

I knew in my heart of hearts that I really couldn’t do anything but look somewhat imposing and hope for the best, so I looked at her again with the grimmest face I could muster, and when she made eye contact with me, he took notice.

He turned to me and with the most scornful eyes I’ve seen in my life, did a once over of me. Clad in my business-casual attire, I surely didn’t look the role of one who would pose a fight, though surely my size did me a service that many do not have the luxury of having; it paid to be a big guy today.

Not one to look away, I stared right back at him for what seemed like an eternity. Sensing her desperation, I allowed my eyes to shift back to her, and then him again, noticing that he’d locked on me and seemed to offer no chance of letting go. I then looked towards the big white gangster guy who the asian had called out earlier, and he looked back at me — he was aware of what was going on, and had heard the cracker remark.

Not a single word punctured the tense air. The asian followed my eyes and then smirked. He stood, fixed his mp3 player, tapped the girl on the face and then headed for the front of the bus, saying thank you to the bus driver before looking back and exiting the bus.

With door closed and bus in motion, I looked towards the girl. Her dam finally burst and she began sniffling and quickly swabbing the tears from her eyes. The white gangster relinquished his interest and returned to his cell phone, but I wasn’t so quick to let the preceeding air dissapate. The entire bus was oblivious to the goings-on.

It was now just her and I.

I couldn’t help but watch her cry; it was such a surreal moment — perhaps the most uncanny of my entire life. It was then that I realized how sheltered my life truly had been. What crime had I seen? What reality had I ever witnessed?

They say that games and movies desentize you to violence, but it was only today that I truly realized how much of a crock of shit such a belief really is. I saw no violence today, but merely the threat and feeling of impending violence was enough to jar me out of the complacency, the naivity that shrouded my life.

It was only today, on my 22nd birthday, that I realized just how real the world is. For all I know, that girl could be dead now. All for just a bag of coke, or a turned-down trick.

Her sadness engulfed me, and I felt incredibly ashamed of not being able to do anything. With eyes still locked on her, she turned to me and sought consolment without saying a word. I mustered a short blast of speech into the air, though quickly locked up not a moment later: “Are you okay?” Unable to produce any vocalization of the terror and fear that was so visibly evident in her quaking frame, she simply nodded and resumed her tears. It was then that I recalled I had some kleenex in my bag, so I reached in and passed her a handful. She dried her eyes, but they remained so only for a moment before the next tide commenced. For the remainder of the trip, not a word was said. To me, it seemed as though the once fury-inducing air pollution of the bus chatter had grown silent: all that remained was my incredibly loud thoughts.

My stop came and I got off, never once letting my eyes fall off the girl. She didn’t look back, even as the bus passed over the horizon: never looking back, just staring ever-forward as though she’d already been killed and buried.

So was the trip home today; a tiny incident that had huge reprecussions. Surely my pathetic prose cannot be eloquent or vivid enough to document such an epiphany. I’m no Joyce. I’ve spent too many words on this already. I’m tired.

Unlike previous years, I have no giant recap and projections for the coming year; that complacent routine has been rumbled right out of me. Perhaps I’ll say something tomorrow, perhaps not.

For now, all I can think about is the look on that girl’s face. The look of hopless, utter desperation — forever stained on the canvas of my mind — tjat looked so frightening familiar, as though I’d seen it somewhere before, looking back at me.

Speak No Evil was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

With a deep breath, she took in the sweet smell of coffee beans and warm milk, it dulling the edge off of the coolness of her breath which she could still see before her. Her eyes closed gently as her lips curled slightly, and she shivered as the outer cool gave way to inner warmth.

As she waited to begin, she surveyed the shop around her. It was like all of and none of the others in the city, she always felt. It was hers, on her little corner, in her little part, of that big ol’ city.

The walls were adorned with newspapers from ages long lost. Every morning, she’d read a new one and learn about an old Aunt who’d won a knitting contest in the town that week or a successful rescue of a cat from a tree by the local fire department or a 25 year sentence for some nefarious banking tycoon.

She’d read each story a thousand times by now, but each time she relished the chance to read one anew. She took comfort in the familiarity but also always found something new, to take note of and to like and to learn.

Today, she read about a local romance. There was an anniversary celebration in that paper from that day. Celine and Jesse Montgomery; married, 45 years. The two had met somewhat later in life, but they enjoyed a whirlwind romance of the type that would have otherwise only come to a couple twenty years their junior. Now, aged 75, the pair spend their days tending to the grandchildren and entertaining the lazy old dog.

She smiled as she imagined their life. They were long dead by now, but she could just picture herself walking up to some brownstone in the neighbourhood and seeing old Jesse stubbornly fixing the front porch light. She could picture Celine opening the door to bring him out a glass of tea. She could picture the two then stopping for a good sit as morn turned to eve, content and happy and complete.

A knowing grunt beckoned her to turn to her server, collect her coffee, and move to the window seat she always sat at. She placed the coffee before her as she took her seat on her stool and produced a book from her bag.

Her ritual.

She began by opening the book to the page last curled, which she immediately straightened beyond recognition, before clutching the book in her left hand. She’d lick her right index finger, and then with smooth motions: scan, shift, scan, turn; scan, shift, scan, turn; scan, shift, scan, turn. It was rhythmic, fast, satisfying.

Her feverish attention would be drawn in stray moments to the people outside, strolling past, living their own lives. She liked watching them. She liked being ignored by them. She liked being seen by them.

But best of all, she liked being noticed by them, say by the unusual he she always sees, who tends to catch her dark eyes with his and for only but in that moment, each day, the two shared a lifetime in a look before he disappeared again into the crowd.

She sipped her latte and stared at the crowd and flipped her pages until ritual’s end. And as she did every day, she sighed ever-so-perceivable as she recycled her cup and left with the same jingle to which she’d entered.

But she’d be back again tomorrow, and again thereafter, willing slave to the ritual and to the book and the window and its protection from the hurt that lay beyond their walls.

N.b., Ritual is an app that allows you to order ahead from restautants and coffee shops. Its success has been largely driven by the company’s consumer-first approach, which it follows Uber in executing successfully on: it makes the ordinary person feel extraordinary.

Ritual was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

He wrote his ode to “Manhattan”—a love letter to a glam version of the destination that was now tattered in pathetic fallacy, rain meeting tear as they together fell from faces freshly feeling the remorse of a newfound President-elect.

Nah, scratch that. That sentence has more adjectives than the number of courses at a stuffy French prix fixe.

Chapter 1.

He stumbled through the city, dizzied by the city’s technicolor lights as they streaked down the wet canvas of the night as though God had paired pint with paint.

Ugh. Preposterous. Who thinks like that? You’re a fucking idiot. Think about what Da Vinci said. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Chapter 1.

This is a story all about how my life got flip-turned upside, and I’d like to take a second just sit right there, to tell you how I…

Never going to go for that. Too relevant to the day’s conversation.

Chapter 1.

It happened, as it does, in Manhattan. Last time, and this time, and likely every time until a girl was a boy’s or a boy was a girl’s…

He toiled with the novel that wouldn’t start itself, looking up to see his phone glowing at notification’s behest. He couldn’t be bothered. He’d finally gotten in five minutes of productivity between Facebook page refreshes.

Who the fuck hires a deadbeat hack journalist to come to this city to write a business story, anyway?

With his day’s allotment of patience spent, he huffed, slammed his laptop closed, grabbed his phone, and made a break for the city.

Into the crowd he leapt, only to be immediately tossed about like the county boy that he was from the moment he stepped foot outside. He shrugged himself down 44th street in search of a place to eat. As he did, he heard a gaggle of younger school kids roll on by, speaking in the local phonetics.

“Shit, girl, you don’t understand. His kicks was mad Broadway, yo!”

His ears perked at the use of Broadway as an adjective. He stopped in his tracks before, moments later, turning heel and bolting back towards his hotel.

Chapter 1

It started with a Broadway girl.

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N.b., Broadway is most often a reference to the street in Manhattan and the class of theater, but its use as an adjective has pockets of relevance in certain youth circles.

Broadway was originally published in Urban Fictionary on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.